If in this privilege consists as is said one of the most powerful adjuncts of civilization, what can we say to proceedings like those we have mentioned— are they the outcome of knowledge?

As a little learning is a dangerous thing, perhaps it may account in some degree for the scenes we have been considering.

There is a variety of phases however in which we may regard it. Learning even in the present day is variously estimated, and we find that the progress made by individuals whose wisdom is in their breeches pocket, often outstrips the gradations of education and refined manners.

Alderman Gobble, no doubt an astute receiver and digester of the "three R's" when in statu pupillari and in a degree equally amenable to thick turtle in the present decade, though his left hand chinked a handful of sovereigns in the hidden recesses of his continuations, was, we maintain, out of his element the other day, when before the full effulgence of the common council, he referred with innocent nonchalance to the classical Aristides and the Birds of Aristophanes, as "Aristid ees" and the birds of "Aristo-phaynees"-and when also in his long rambling speech he made allusion to the effect produced on his mind by the splendid representation of " Pigmalion and Galatea" some years ago put upon the London stage and referred to the scene as "Pigmy-lion in Galatia."!

We do not question but that the same worthy civic would as unhesitatingly dilate on "Belly-ruffun and Pegasus" and regardless of his tender heel take up "Atchillees" with the same freedom and self satisfaction as when a few years back he cut off a pound or two of 'single-gloucester' for a customer and asked him "if there was anythink else ?"

Nevertheless popular society and popular institutions it must be admitted are advanced by the exertions of such men, for whatever the shallowness of their erudition and acquirements, if they have but the means and the parliamentary amount of "cheek," things must to some extent either by their idiosyncrasy or their substance, or the jealousy produced amongst their rivals, derive a fillip and a spurt.

It is not all gold that glitters,-a good conscience, an honest heart, a good will, a full pocket and a free hand will carry the world with them, and if we add to these wisdom, sobriety and discretion we may afford with composure to dispense with that education we have not received!

CHAPTER X.

"Arma virumque cano.`

VIRGIL.

"As our high vessels pass their watery way,
Let all the naval world due homage pay."

PRIOR.

There is another branch of our subject which from the earliest and remotest regions of ancient and modern history, seems to be necessary to the very existence of nations. It is one intimately associated marvellous to say, not only with progress but civilization; yet it has been described as a great and detestable calamity whose frequent recurrence dispenses with the necessity of defining its name— it has been called 'the wanton destruction, the cold blooded slaughter of the human race-the burlesque upon the boasted reason of man' when thousands meet to murder each other for a quarrel with which often they individually have no kind of concern!

'One murder makes a villain
Millions a hero'!

We need not say that the matter we refer to is war. However much we may agree or disagree with the descriptions of it we have here quoted, we cannot get over what appears to us to be the necessity of the thing.

In practice, battle has cleared the ground for civilization properly so called-and that blessing has followed under conditions which, humanly speaking could not we believe have asserted themselves without the aid of its powerful forerunner.

We may look a long way back in the history of this great country as well as that of others and find unmistakeable and repeated evidences of this fact, and we need not revert so far either for like authority.

We do not apprehend that any one, save the "peace at any price" party, however averse such an one may be to aggressive warfare, will or does take exception to those wars of defence in which may be included such as are necessary to the maintenance of the integrity and independence of nations.

With the Greeks and Romans for models, the science of war became the study of nations, and as in ages past different conditions of things from time to time made themselves manifest, so did those amendments proceed which were rendered necessary by altered circumstances.

Bidding farewell to the battering ram and the stalking horse, the arrows and crossbows, the falchions and battle-axes of antiquity, the introduction of gunpowder, as may readily be understood, made a vast change in the art-not however in the salient principles of warfare which remained much the same.

But the late inventions of military and naval science, essentially those of modern times-the tabbooing of "Brown Bess," the substitution of rifles and detonating locks for smooth bores and flints, the subsequent abolition of muzzle loaders and ramrods and the institution of breech loading arms, the construction and use of the big guns and the Gatlings, the supplanting in naval warfare of the "wooden walls of old England"

by iron turret ships, gun boats, and torpedoes, and other new and innumerable discoveries for doing as much wholesale injury and mischief as possible to our brother-man-all these most certainly have brought military and naval tactics up to such a pitch of quasi, if not actual perfection in our changed mode of warfare, that England ought to be able at least to hold her own.

The expense of all this armament and its maintenance is simply enormous, and it is said the commencement of the increased cost dates from the discovery of gunpowder-so much then for the expansion of civilization -the invention and the progress in this branch.

The fighting power of the other great nations of the earth however is not inferior to our own, and therefore unless we choose to run the risk of being caught napping, it is now an absolute necessity that we should incur these outlays.

To allude for a moment to a particular item of military tactics, let us relate the circumstance of a brilliant idea which reached us sometime since, and rumour says was actually carried into effect lately in the Transvaal; but as the same species of offensive warfare was considered and condemned by the Geneva Convention as being utterly uncivilized amongst nations, we feel some reserve in expressing a belief that the statement that has really been adopted is anything more than a canard. The idea was that the balls used in rifle shooting should be explosive, that is to say, that the missile itself, on the principle of a shell, should burst and fly into fragments, but not until its