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Ballads. By the Lady Middleton. London: C. Kegan Paul and Co. 1878.

Our first observation of this little work is the daintiness of its appearance. Even a book of poetry, that modern drug, is not unwelcome when it comes in artistic guise.

To the poems themselves a little more attention to form would have availed much. The strength of will that characterises some of them might lead to good work under proper training. It is not given to every one to write as Browning, and live. We take it that the tendency of the author is rather intellectual and practical than strictly poetic.

The volume is dedicated to the clan chieftain Lochiel, and a large proportion of the poems show a trace of Scotland. What the free airs of the hills, mingled with "a waft of old ancestral lore," will eventually do for the "iisting sense " of the writer, we cannot prophecy.

The following is a philosophic poem of fourteen lines, but not an orthodox sonnet :

TO CERTAIN SCIENTIFIC MEN. Like a poor insect, labouring to scale

Yon lofty mount piercing eternal snows, Upon whose latest peak there hangs a veil Of shadowy cloud;-and up the Atom goes

With pain a foot or so-the weary trail; Then looking up, "Yonder's no light,"

he vows, And spreads about with pride the assured tale,

And crawls another inch, and dies, and knows!

So are, as he, ye scientific men,

Who of your scanty knowledge grow too fond ;

How can ye hope in your three-score-andten

To win Heaven's secret to Earth's tired sod ?

Might ye but gain that height, and see beyond,

Would not the light be there attending God?

Allah-Akbar : an Arab Legend of the Siege and Conquest of Granada. From the Spanish. By Mariana Monteiro. London: R. Washbourne. 1878.

This is a story of the semioriental kind, and not without the Moorish glow and colour. We do not, however, find it as interesting as the shorter stories contained in Miss Monteiro's recently published "Gathered Gems from Spanish Authors;" and it would be well, when she brings out a translation, if she would at least cite the names of the original authors.

There are some quaint engraved headpieces in this little volume, many of them reproductions of Arab design. They are from the pencil of Miss Henriqueta Monteiro.

"Bonnie Lesley." By Mrs. Herbert Martin, Author of "Cast Adrift," &c. London: Griffith and Farran. 1878.

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The story of "Bonnie Lesley opens with the rather hackneyed situation of two girls obliged on the death of their father, a professional man, to turn out to earn their own living. Both have received the ordinary education of young ladies, but not having gone in for competitive examinations and the higher education of women, are not qualified for governesses. Marjory, the elder, finds a home with the usual querulous old lady of title, a distant relation of the family, but the more adventurous Lesley, after in vain sending round her manuscripts to the leading periodicals, boldly resolves to go out as ladyhelp. She consults Lady Thornely, the benevolent woman with theories, who offers her the post of lady'smaid in her own establishment. Bonnie Lesley, choking down her pride, accepts the situation, and in that capacity accompanies Lady Thornely to her London residence.

Her duties as lady's-maid appear to be confined to looking out her mistress's evening dress and clasping her jewels for her before she goes down to dinner. Her own meals Lesley takes with the housekeeper, a very superior person, the widow of a surgeon, another of the destitute ladies whom it is Lady Thornely's "fad" to employ as domestics. Lesley is furnished with a little light occupation for an hour or two in the morning as amanuensis to her mistress, who is engaged in preparing a little work for the press; but the very first morning after her arrival Helen Thornely, the invalid daughter, takes a desperate fancy to her, and henceforth Lesley spends most of her time in Helen's apartment, reading to her and shaking up her pillows. Lionel, the only son of Sir Stephen and Lady Thornely, a languid young exquisite, attempts to get up a flirtation with his mother's handsome maid, but Lesley indignantly rejects his advances. He is so smitten, however, that he proceeds to insult his pretty little emptyheaded fiancée, so that she breaks off their engagement. Now he is free to make real love to Lesley, whom he follows to the seaside, where Helen has been sent for the benefit of her health, with her bosom friend Lesley as a companion. Lionel urges his suit, and Lesley is half wavering, when Helen is opportunely seized with a sudden attack of illness. Her mother and sister are summoned and arrive only in time to see her die. Lesley of course does everything for everybody, and comforts them all round. When all is over Lionel renews his proposal, which is refused, Lesley having decided that she can never love him. Lady Thornely, who had been won over by Lesley's

devotion to her lost darling, is rather offended with her for rejecting her boy, but magnanimously forgives her. Lesley, however, concludes that she had better seek another situation, which she finds with a blind literary man, to whom she acts as secretary, residing with a friend of her childhood, whom she happens to meet in church, and who is now married and settled in London. Lesley winds up by marrying her blind employer, who thereupon goes to a German oculist and recovers his sight. Marjory's irascible relative dies and leaves her a fortune, which enables her to marry a young curate with eighty pounds a year and no expectations. It 18 rather an anachronism to represent a curate with eighty pounds a year in the days of lady - helps. Such an exemplary young man as Frank could get 1501. any day, and the cordial welcome of many an overworked rector. Lionel consoles himself with a clever American girl, who makes him go into Parliament; and Constance, Lady Thornely's only remaining daughter, also makes a very good match. All these young married people dine together with Sir Stephen and Lady Thornely, and with the dinner the story of "Bonnie Lesley " is brought to a conclusion. It is not a very exciting romance, and is neither specially well nor specially ill written. The character of Lady Thornely is the best drawn.

We

think it would not be very difficult to guess the original of the character. But if young ladies in a similar position to the heroine's should be tempted, on reading the story, to seek situations as ladyhelps, we fear that they will not easily find any in real life that will be such a sinecure as Bonnie Lesley's.

THE

UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE.

OCTOBER, 1878.

THE REVOLUTION IN PROGRESS IN THE ARTS
OF ATTACK AND DEFENCE.

BY F. R. CONDER, C.E.

THE great object of the mariner, from that early prehistoric epoch when the trunk of some great tree was first hollowed by fire, and dressed by rude stone celts into a primitive canoe, down to the present century, has been the improvement of the art of navigation. To that end the whole range of rudimental art and incipient science was made to contribute. The shipbuilder was led, by the very condition to which his work was subjected, to acquire an experimental knowledge of the strength of materials, the laws of structural form, the power of resisting strains, and the action of wind and of currents, such as forms the primer of the technic art. The study of astronomy was shared between the navigator and the astrologer. If geodesy did not owe its origin to the need of delineating coasts and harbours and shoals and shallows, yet the work of the geographer has been aided and stimulated by the kindred toil of the hydrographer. Astronomical observations for maritime purposes led to the cultivation of mathematical science.

Trigonometry affords the special notation in which observations of the visible parallaxes of the heavenly bodies naturally come to be recorded. And in trigonometry there is requisite, not only geometric definition of form, but a determination of proportions which led to the first recorded use of the value of place, or the adoption of a radix, in the degrees and scrupules of the Babylonian astronomers, in terms of which the earliest observations of eclipses are quoted by Claudius Ptolemy. Conceptions of the relation of the earth to the celestial planets, and thus of the form and movement of the former, must have originated from the combination of distant travel, for the most part carried on by sea, with astronomical observation. Knowledge of the difference of climates and of seasons followed, the notation of the different angles subtended between the zenith and the path of the sun, or between the pole star and the horizon, as the venturous mariner put forth beyond the pillars of Hercules, or even circumnavigated Africa before the

Nile had brought down the deposit that blocked the channel from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. These, to say nothing of the direct extension given to human knowledge by the acquirements of commerce silk and gold, tin and amber," ivory, apes, and peacocks" -the indirect stimulus to study and to industry which was afforded by the requirements of the navigator, have been such as to entitle the seaman to a foremost place among the instructors of mankind.

From the commencement of ship building in the form of the canoe, or the perhaps earlier invention of the catamaran or raft, down to the application of steam to the propulsion of ships, the chief aim of the shipbuilder has been to improve the navigable qualities of his craft. He has sought to combine capacity with such elegance of form as should pass with least resistance through the water. The use of the wind as a motor power has not only led to the perfection of masts, yards, and sails, but introduced a practical acquaintance with the important element of naval stability, that is to say, the resistance which a vessel offers to overthrow by wind or wave. To make a vessel thoroughly seaworthy was indispensable. And with the steady, though slow, progress from the triremes of the fleet of Pompey the Great to the first-rate man-of-war of the time of Nelson, the same consistent requisites have ever been the study of the shipbuilder.

The present century has witnessed a change in this respect. Change is hardly an adequate term; it would be more correct to say revolution. A mighty revolution is in full course with regard to naval construction, a revolution of which no one can foresee the upshot, although there are, as I propose to show, remarkable indi

cations that it is about to enter into a new phase. For an insular people, whose power and freedom depend on their command of the sea, a knowledge of the causes and of the course of this revolution in maritime construction, and especially in maritime warfare, is of primary interest and import

ance.

We may illustrate the difference between the transformation of naval construction within the past two years and the slow advance of preceding centuries and tens of centuries, by the analogy of those insects, which, after spending months, or even years, in a larva state, steadily attending to the one great duty of finding and devouring food, suddenly burst into the dignity of winged creatures, destined to but an ephemeral life. The invention of Watt has added an automatic motive power to the ship quite as much in advance of the capabilities of the trireme, or even of the sailing packet, as are the wings of the beetle compared to the legs and pro-legs of the larva. At the same time the aggressive power of the ship of war has been developed in a no less marked degree. If we refer again to the transformation of the insect, it can only be to remark how far the arms furnished to many of the Hymenoptera-effective as they are for the defence of the social store of the hive, or for the house building of the solitary species, -are proportionately inferior in aggressive power to the artificial projectile. With this increase in the motive power, and in the aggressive power, of the ship of war, has been carried on a development of the resisting power of its skin (far superior in proportion to that of the horny thorax or elytra of the most herculean beetle) which may be measured as the addition of more than an inch of solid iron to

its thickness year by year for the last sixteen years.

Development in the means of attack naturally calls attention to development in the means of defence. Any great invention, which for a time may give apparent superiority to either the active or the passive side of a combat, is likely to turn the inventive faculty towards the discovery of a counterpoise for the new arm. The early use of stone projectiles from catapults or balista led to the attempts to protect walls by wool, by wood, or according to an early fabulist -by leather. The first account which we have, in modern times, of any attempt to protect the decks and sides of war vessels from projectiles, such as were discharged from engines like those which they themselves carried, was at the Siege of Gibraltar in 1782. French and Spaniards then constructed floating batteries for the assault of the isolated rock. They covered the sides of vessels with green timber, junk, and cowhides to a thickness of seven feet, and considered that they had made the decks bomb-proof. The largest of these vessels was 1400 tons burden. They were armed with 32-pounders, provided with furnaces for red-heating the shot, and manned each with five hun

The

dred men. They were repelled, and quickly set on fire by the use of the same novel and formidable projectile which they were built to use. Thirty years later, Fulton, who enjoyed the possession of a diabolical ingenuity in the fabrication of engines of destruction, constructed a steam floating battery for the United States.

To enable a body to float it is necessary that its weight shall be less than that of an equal bulk of the fluid in which it is to float. Wood, as generally lighter than

water, no doubt gives the first idea, as it furnished the first material, for shipbuilding. Cork, which is still used for the construction of buoys-and the introduction of which into certain portions of a war ship is one of the latest improvements, or experiments, of the day-is less than one-fourth of the weight of the water which it displaces. Cedar, which is still used, where the utmost delicacy of line is combined with the least attainable weight of material, in the boats for the annual University matches, is about half the weight of fresh water. Dantzic fir varies in its specific gravity from 478 to 673, taking water as unity. English oak has a specific gravity of 858; African teak, of 993; Spanish oak, of 1.042; Australian blue gum, of 1.029; and Burmese iron wood, of 1-176. But boat-building cannot have very far advanced before the builders became aware that it was rather on the amount of water displaced by the hull of the vessel than on the thickness and weight of the sides and planks, that the flotation depended. The difference in the specific gravity of a pine or an oak plank was as nothing compared to the size of the hull of the vessel. Strength, in fact, is a more important quality in the material required for shipbuilding than lightness. The whole of the ancient, and now unfortunately obsolete, regulations that protected the growth of oak in our English forests were based on a tacit acknowledgment of this fact.

As oak to fir, however, it became evident, half a century ago, might iron become to oak. With the rapid advance made in the manufacture of iron, the applicability of that metal to the purposes of the shipbuilder became more and more obvious. The first iron vessel, the Aaron Manby, was built in

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