lodgement in the object fired at has been effected. The result as a matter of course would be that so far as concerns gun-shot wounds inflicted in this way by the rifle, there would be no occasion for surgeons, as the bullet exploding in the body of the man shot, must inevitable at once destroy him; neither would there be any need of ambulance waggons except for the removal of the dead for burial, and altogether the matter would be most satisfactorily complete. Unless however we could induce the enemy to adopt the same principle of projectile we on our part should not we fear derive the benefits in a monetary sense.

The proposal so far as it goes then seems to be to the advantage of the other side, who by the completeness of the slaughter to be inflicted by us must realize a great saving of expense from the nonnecessity of doctors and doctoring! So much again for civilization and the progress of nations!

Perhaps as we have a finanical Premier and as wonderful things are now done, arrangements might be made with the enemy in proximate squabbles by which we may supply him with ball cartridge calculated to forward even in active war our national economy! Maybe cause a penny more to be taken off the income tax!

But let us now finish with wars and their rumours.

Bella horrida bella!-too frequently their production has lain at our own door-at other times has been the work of other countries,-whilst we contemplate the belligerents we sometimes think the strides in

the civilization of the one are too rapid for those of the other, and like the defective construction of a machine, whose working does not in some part of its detail exactly meet and correspond with another, and so produce the necessary power incidental to the proper accurate conjunction of the two, a discordant and dangerous rupture ensues and then a crash!

CHAPTER XI.

"The venturous mariner that way,

Learning his ship from those white rocks to save,
Which all along the Southern Seacoast lay;
For safety's sake that same his sea mark made,
And nam'd it Albion."

FAIRY QUEEN.

To come back from the aspect of ferocity and reinstate ourselves within the comfortable arms of our easy chair with its soft spring seat and stuffed back which even our lumbago will scarce insult, our feet upon the warm fender regardless of chilblains in esse or to come, whilst we gradually relapse into those soothing thoughts of peace, so different from the nervous twitchings produced by the consideration of battle, is to us the perfection of elisium-yet, however pacifically disposed we may happen to be, there are times dear reader, when our once military ardour as an officer of British Volunteers will re-assert itself, and like the old hunter that pricks his ears to the distant music of the hounds we are oft inclined to jump the fence and follow.

But really how cozy a good fire is when the elements externally are so severe that one scarce dare put his foot down lest a glissade forward or to the rear may result in a pirouette and place him after all inelegantly in a horizontal position, before he can say "Jack Robinson"!

With what defiant crackling and brilliance too does the fuel burn when Jack Frost outside cold

and heartless, is doing his utmost to congeal those poor wretches whose town homes are the door steps of houses and open railway arches.

66

Congeal" did we say!-how the term used for starvation leads us to the consideration of plenty!

Has it ever occurred to some of you what a distinct and wholesale step in the universal progress has been taken of late years in the utilization of those modes of rapid conveyance resulting from the discovery of steam power, which in the form of fast-going steamers and with such frequent regularity, span the great Atlantic and supply us with refrigerated quarters of beef and mutton and other raw meat including pork with or without the microscopical but lively trichinoe. A circumstance which in this country by the lowness of the prices charged for the commodity has nolens volens caused the British butcher, that man who unlike a balloon rises but seldom or never comes down, to lower his tariff to the necessities of the times!

From the statistics of last year, our animal importations of pork, bacon, and ham exceed above five millions and a quarter hundredweights-more than seven times as much as those of France, and a very large proportion estimated to be worth £9,500,000 comes from America!

Would that the charges on the exportation of sundry English produce were on a par in some form with those on the importation of foreign produce, or that they were wholly abrogated on both sides -equals from equals, equals remain.

Here we come to the more striking evidences of the wonderful invention of steam.

can scarce

Next to the the art of printing one encompass the magnitude of the beneficent results of such a prompting as Providence afforded to the inventor and improver of steam power and its countless applications. One must visit the precincts of Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, or the Iron Districts to see in this country its multifarious uses.

Nearly all the homely articles we daily see and make use of even in our own houses, from the floor coverings under our feet to the very beams and transepts of the roofs, are now manufactured wholly or in some part by the direct aid of steam.

And what have we to say of all that legion of useful implements, those engineering appliances which but for the power we speak of would be scarce commodities and practically beyond the tether of small incomes.

The long lines of railway, indeed so attached are they to the soil of the world, that we smile at the idea of being without that great power which alone renders those chemins de fer of use to

man.

And what as to the means of transit between island and island, continent and continent.

How dull tedious and tiresome should we find

it had we for this purpose to revert to the old school of sailing vessels, that slow coach, tub