'Culloden' and the Excellent,' were fit to lie in the line against a line which contained the 'Santisima Trinidad,' and the 'San Nicolas,' and the San Josef'; or showed that the 'Swiftsure,' Bellerophon,' and 'Alexander' could engage and destroy the 'Orient.' It was the very point of Captain Wilmot's admirable lecture, which Captain May overlooked.

'As the under-water attack,' he said, 'was then unknown, the natural inference might be that for the line of battle only ships of the largest class would be built, carrying the greatest number of guns. As a matter of fact, this was not the case. Two-deckers of various classes were constructed in the greatest numbers. When it was found that the smallest class could not cope in the line with the heavier craft to which they might find themselves opposed, their construction was abandoned, and the favourite type became the 74-gun ship. It was found that this class stood the blockading work better than the three-deckers. They drew less water, and usually had superior sailing qualities, while they could hold their own against the largest vessels of our enemies.'

But another, and perhaps more generally accepted argument in favour of monster ships, is that their displacement is fixed by the weights they have to carry. The armament, the armour, the speed, the coal endurance essential to a battle-ship of the first class, are the data from which the size of the ship is computed. Mr. White, the Director of Naval Construction, puts it plainly :

The policy of war-ship construction is not a question of first fixing the displacement of a ship and then seeing what is the best which can be done on that displacement. . . . It is the function of the Board of Admiralty to decide at any time what the various types of ships in the navy shall be capable of doing. The work of myself and my colleagues is simply to say what are the sizes and costs of ships fulfilling the requirements laid down by the Board. . . . To fulfil these conditions a very large line-of-battle ship had to be constructed, and the "Royal Sovereign" was the result.

How ably Mr. White carried out the task thus assigned him was sufficiently attested by the behaviour of the Royal Sovereign' during last summer's manœuvres. But the question for the future is whether the requirements cannot and should not be so modified as to permit of their being embodied in a ship of more moderate dimensions. The 'Royal Sovereign' has a displacement of upwards of 14,000 tons. Captain Wilmot conceives that, for fighting efficiency, a corresponding number of ships, such as the Centurion,' of 10,000 tons, would be superior. Mr. Brassey quotes Admiral Colomb and M. Weyl as expressing the same opinion in very forcible terms; and we believe that the greater

number

number of naval officers would say the same, and would agree in denouncing the new-fangled notion that an English ship of war must be crushed with the weight of 67-ton guns, because other navies are oppressed with similar monstrosities.

Such guns, unwieldy and slow-firing, are antagonistic to all the traditions of our navy and to that recorded experience which is called history. Of these 67-ton guns the Royal Sovereign' has four. On the supposition that they can fire, in action, at the experimental rate of four times in nine minutes, Captain Orde Brown, in the Naval Annual,' estimates that they discharge 8.9 tons of shot with 563,472 foot-tons of energy. It is doubtful whether much more than one-fourth of this result would be obtained. On the other hand, she has ten 6-inch quick-firing 100-pounders, capable of firing six times a minute, and thus discharging, in the nine minutes, 24 tons of shot, with 1,438,020 foot-tons of energy. The 'Centurion,' which, by a recent order of the Admiralty, has been rated also a first-class battleship, carries four 29-ton guns as her primary armament; and we look forward with confidence to the time when, reverting to the healthy traditions of the glorious past, our ships will be armed with guns still smaller, still more manageable, still more deadly, and more destructive.

There is another point of view from which the enormous dimensions to which so many of our ships now attain ought to be considered. The increased draught of water fearfully diminishes the available space in almost every frequented harbour, while the increased length demands more space than before. Our recent battleships draw from two to three feet more than did the line-of-battle ships of thirty years ago; and, on actual service, from one to two feet more than is given in the table of dimensions in the Naval Annual.' Formerly, the five-fathom line marked the shore boundary of the harbour or roadstead: a modern battleship cannot ride safely in less than six fathoms; and the difference between the two is often very considerable. At Malta, for instance, it reduces the harbour by about one-third; at Hong-Kong, by about one-half; at Bombay, it cuts off the larger and more sheltered half. A ship drawing 28 feet can hardly go into Bermuda, while several of our ships draw 29; and many others, after an engagement, and with one or two compartments shot through, might easily draw even more. These and similar considerations, which have been much neglected, seem to point most emphatically to the necessity of keeping the requirements of a battleship under some restraint, and of keeping the displacement constantly in mind, even though it is not primarily determined on.

Another

Another point which has been represented as of peculiarly modern interest is the Guerre à l'Aube; a style of war familiar to the contemporaries of Lausulus of Urgo,' and after him to the pre-historic Saxons and Danes; but which was enunciated as a new thing some ten years ago by Admiral Aube, and was afterwards preached as a new gospel by M. Charmes. It is now again brought forward, we will not say prominently, by the authors of Les Guerres navales,' and by the Jeune École,' which they claim to represent. According to this, war with England is to be carried on by crowds of small vessels, torpedoboats or torpedo-cruisers, ubiquitous by their number and speed, evading or fleeing from any armed force, destroying merchant-ships, ruining commerce, and plundering or burning undefended towns along the coast. This, as we have said, is by no means a new doctrine. The French have always professed to find a certain charm in the brutality of war freed from its danger; but, except in 1794, when the Convention passed a decree that all English prisoners were to be at once shot-a decree which the fear of terrible reprisals alone seems to have prevented being enforced more than once-they have not, in the last 200 years, attempted to reduce their professions to practice; probably because they have found, or their more competent advisers have convinced them, that, before such attempts can be safely made, they must have the naval command of the Channel. And that, they have never been able to achieve. Bonrepaus' proposal in 1692 might almost have been written by Admiral Aube in 1882; but Bonrepaus explained it as a thing to be done -not by suddenly appearing and as suddenly vanishing, but-as a sequel to a dominant French fleet having anchored and established itself off the mouth of the Thames. During this time,' he wrote, the 28 available ships of the line and four bombs will have the opportunity to shell, pillage, or levy contributions from the towns on the sea-coast and to capture the enemy's trade as it seeks to enter their ports, and thus to cause the Prince of Orange a degree of embarrassment which he has not expected.' The Prince of Orange had probably not expected it, because he had not conceived the possibility of the French obtaining that absolute command of the Channel which Bonrepaus postulated. The French did not obtain it then; and though they have often desired it, they have not since obtained it. When they do obtain it; when '-in the words of a spirited little poem now half forgotten-'the French ride at the Nore,' the English Empire will be at an end, and we'We'll go to sea no more.'

ART.

ART. VIII. 1. 1608-1611. The Voyage of François Pyrard of Laval to the East Indies, &c. Translated and edited by Albert Gray, assisted by H. C. P. Bell, Ceylon C.S. Two vols. in three. Hakluyt Society. 1887-1890.

2. 1608-1613. Captain William Hawkins, his Relations of the Occurrents which happened in the time of his residence in India, in the county [sic] of the Great Mogoll, &c. The Hawkins' Voyages, edited by Clements R. Markham. Hakluyt Society. 1878.

3. 1615-1618. The Journal of Sir Thomas Roe, Knight. (Pinkerton's Collection of Voyages, vol. viii.) 1808-14.

4. 1615-1618. A Voyage to the East Indies. By the Rev. Edward Terry. London, 1655.

5. 1623-1624. The Travels of Pietro della Valle in India, from the old English translation of G. Havers. Edited by Edward Grey, late Beng. C.S. 2 vols. Hakluyt Society.

1892.

6. 1626. A relation of some yeares travaile_begunne anno 1626. By T. H. Esquier (Thomas Herbert). London, 1634. 7. 1638-1639. The Voyages and Travels of J. Albert de Mandelslo. Rendered into English by John Davies of Kidwelly. London, 1662.

8. 1640-1667. Travels in India by Jean Baptiste Tavernier, Baron of Aubonne. Translated, &c., by V. Ball, LL.D., F.R.S., F.G.S. 2 vols. London, 1889.

9. 1666-1667. The Travels of M. de Thevenot.

Translated

into English by A. Lovell. London, 1687. 10. 1659-1667. Travels in the Mogul Empire by François Bernier, M.D. of the Faculty of Montpellier. A revised and improved edition by Archibald Constable. (Constable's 'Oriental Miscellany,' vol. i.) 1891.

11. 1673-1681. A New Account of India and Persia in Eight Letters. By John Fryer, M.D., F.R.S. London, 1698. 12. 1682-1684. The Diary of William Hedges. Edited by Sir H. Yule, K.C.B. 3 vols. Hakluyt Society. 1887-8. 13. 1689-1692. A Voyage to Suratt in the Year 1689. By J. Ovington, M.A., Chaplain to His Majesty. London, 1696. 14. 1649?-1715. Histoire générale de l'Empire du Mogol depuis sa fondation jusqu'à présent. Sur les mémoires portugais de M. Manouchi, Vénitien. Par le R. P. François Catrou de la Compagnie de Jesus. Paris, 1715.

15. 1695. A Voyage round the World by Dr. John Francis Gemelli Careri. Translated into English. (Churchill's Collection of Voyages and Travels, vol. iv. 1745.)

Towards

NOWARDS the close of the sixteenth century the curious began to listen to rumours, vague indeed, but impossible to be ignored, of a new and singular Power that had arisen in the East. Stories were told of an emperor who had conquered the whole of Hindustan, and was ruling his vast dominions with extraordinary wisdom. Strange tales were bruited about of his toleration. It was said that Christians were sure of a welcome at his Court; that he had even taken a Christian to wife. Toleration was sufficiently out of tune with Tudor England, but in the barbarous East it possessed the charm of the wholly unexpected. The name and character of the Great Mogul became the common talk. Rumour soon grew into certainty. In a few years Englishmen came to see him face to face as no Indian emperor had been seen by Europeans since the days when Alexander met Porus on the plains of the Jhelum.

The seventeenth century is a memorable period in the history of India; yet it is too often hurried over in the popular manuals and books of reference. The average reader is perhaps disposed to consider that nothing of moment intervened in the annals of Hindustan between the edicts of Asoka and the battle of Plassey. He has heard of Akbar, no doubt, but of his successors he entertains the haziest ideas, insomuch that the very title of the Great Mogul has acquired associations almost as legendary and absurd as that of the Great Panjandrum. Yet the Great Mogul of the seventeenth century ruled over an empire as wide as the present direct British dominion in India. His army mustered over a quarter of a million of fighting men. His Court was more splendid, his palaces more spacious and magnificent, than any palace or court in Europe. His capital was as populous as Paris. His annual revenue towards the close of the century amounted to ninety millions, or about the same sum as the Chancellor of the Exchequer now deals with in his imperial budget. His administration was as equitable, in theory at least, as any in Europe. An empire which may be characterized in such terms surely merits attention, and the period in which it is best studied is the seventeenth century. And this for two reasons. The seventeenth century is the period of settled empire, as distinguished from the period of conquest and organization. It is also the period in which the Mogul State first came under the direct observation of European travellers.

The sixteenth century witnessed the birth of the Mogul Empire; the seventeenth its prime maturity; the eighteenth its wretched and decrepit old age. Indeed, it may be added that the eighteenth century killed it; the nineteenth buried it. The real founder of the empire was Akbar, the greatest ruler that modern