A similar contrivance is said by Saxo Grammaticus to have been used by a king of the Goths, against whom his two sons had rebelled. The old Goth, it seems, dispensed with the brazen men, and stuffed his "infernal mixtures" into the belly of horses mounted on wheeled platforms. These horses had holes in their heads to represent eyes, nostrils, and mouth, through which flames and smoke issued. When the two rebellious youths appeared, their cunning old

parent gave them a hot reception by driving these animals at them; they could not endure the scorching blast, and fled in dire confusion, leaving many of their men asphyxiated or burnt to death on the field of battle.

PRESTER JOHN'S ARTILLERY.

Another, very similar, reads as follows:

"Take of pulverized rosin, sulphur, and pitch, equal parts: one-fourth of opopanax and of pigeon's dung well dried, dissolved in turpentine water, or oil of sulphur: then put into a strong close glass vessel, and heat for fifWe know nothing of the nature of the "in-teen days in an oven; after which distill the whole after the manner of spirits of wine, and keep for use." fernal mixtures" with which these automata were charged. It has been suggested that Greek fire was used in this way. It seems pretty certain that the ships of war in the Middle Ages were provided with immense squirts, which were used to deluge the adversary's vessel with streams of this terrible liquid; and occasionally tubes for spitting it were used by soldiers on land. Yet Greek fire could hardly be classed as an explosive, if the recipes given by the old writers for its manufacture were authentic. One of them is in Latin verse. It runs thus:

A mixture of this kind burnt all the better when brought into contact with water, and must have been a fearful missile. Vitriol bottles, of Milesian notoriety, could not compare with it.

"Aspaltum, nepta, dragantum, pix quoque Græca, Sulphur, vernicis, de petrolio quoque vitro, Mercurii, sal gemmæ Græci dicitur ignis."

Greek fire led naturally to gunpowder, which must, of course, have been invented independently by scores of chemists, if it was not imported into Europe by the navigators who visited China. Not a few sedulous seekers for the philosopher's stone must have blown themselves up long before the siege of Algeciras, or the wars of the Genoese. It might have been supposed that this new explosive agent would have met with great success among people who had

been used to scorch. burn, and asphyxiate one another. But so far from this being the case, the priests denounced gunpowder as cruel, and an obvious invention of the devil; and kings and generals fought shy of it. Champions dared each other with the naked steel. So much prejudice of one kind or another was arrayed against it that it was not till nearly two hundred years after its discovery that saltpetre became the god of war. Huge cannon, firing stone balls

of a couple of hundred pounds weight, and muskets which were very likely to be the death of their bearer, and very unlikely to harm any one else, were for a long time the only adaptation of the new discovery.

At last, in the year of the discovery of Jamaica by Columbus, a Dutchman invented the bomb-the crowning achievement of the explosive art. Petards, grenades, and mines followed, and people began to be blown up on scientific principles. Guy Fawkes became possible, in a word.

It was in 1605 that he demonstrated the possibility of blowing up a government, and indirectly a nation, with thirty barrels of the "devil's snuff." And whether his little experiment was held to demonstrate that the explosive properties of nitre, sulphur, and saltpetre were equal to the demand-or people turned their attention to more useful pursuits-for nearly another couple of centuries the explosive art remained stationary.

Gunpowder was not, even in Guy Fawkes's time, the only explosive agent known. Beckman assures us that the fulminate of gold was discovered by a monk in the fifteenth century. This substance, which explodes more rapidly, and with greater local force than gunpowder, is made by precipitating a solution of chloride of gold by an excess of ammonia. It was handed down by tradition from chemist to chemist; the memory of it being kept alive by an occasional explosion from time to time, which established the power of the compound at the expense of the life of the philosopher. If the chemists and professional man-killers had preserved a monopoly of it, it would never have done much damage. But, unfortunately, it fell into the hands of the clergy about the beginning of this century, and was, of course, turned to account. The Rev. Mr. Forsyth discovered that by treating mercury as the old monk had treated gold, an equally powerful, and far less expensive, fulminate might be made. This he mixed with six times its weight of nitre, and the result was the percussion powder, which, in the form of paste, constitutes the essential portion of percussion-caps.

he persevered in firing rockets, and in course of time the French and all other nations adopted them. Now they are one of the most useful branches of ordnance-though Sir William Congreve's idea of firing rockets weighing half a ton, and containing six barrels of gunpowder, which would make a breach in a wall in half a dozen shots, has never been realized.

It was the age of the Napoleon wars, and ingenious men were intent on finding new modes of extinguishing life by wholesale. Robert Fulton announced that he could blow up a ship, with all hands, by means of a patent nautilus. He did, in fact, construct a species of divingboat, which could be propelled under water; in this he proposed to sail at a considerable depth below the surface to the bottom of the ship he

A TORPEDO EXPLODING UNDER A SHIP.

intended to destroy. When he touched her
keel his plan was to fasten to it a machine fill-
ed with the most terrible explosive substances
known, to which fire was to be communicated
by means of a fuse. The plan was tried, but
never succeeded, from obvious reasons.
ton made various experiments in France; then
returned home, and published a tract on the
subject, which has served as a guide-book to all
subsequent manufacturers of torpedoes.

Ful

In the last war with England they were tried here. Before the war broke out, Congress had voted $5000 to Fulton to enable him to make them; and during the cruise of the British fleet on the coast, frequent attempts were made to blow it up with similar weapons. They invariably failed from the impossibility of steering them to the vessel they were intended to de

Public attention thus directed once more to the business of blowing men up, Sir William Congreve invented his rockets, and tried them on the French. He proposed to burn and blow up cities, forts, ships, regiments. Shells and shot, ball and carcasses, he could project them all, and so forcibly-the rocket itself containing the projecting agent-that for a time it seemed that rockets were going to supersede cannon. At the siege of Flushing, where he tried his rockets, the French commandant's feelings were so much hurt by the unfair advantage they gave to the enemy, that he sent to the English gen-stroy. eral to remonstrate against the use of such infernal weapons. The Englishman replied, and rightly too, that if the object of war was mankilling, the speediest and most comprehensive mode of attaining that end was the best. So

More recently the Russians, at Cronstadt, have tried various kinds of marine torpedoes. Some of them have been fished up and examined; a ship or two has received a shock now and then from venturing too near the batteries;

white sugar; and above this was placed a very thin glass vessel containing sulphuric acid. In contact with the vessel, and resting upon it, was a wooden peg, the end of which protruded above the soil, and offered an inviting restingplace for the foot. But woe to him who trod on it! The peg broke the glass vessel; the sulphuric acid poured down upon the chlorate of potash and sugar; combustion took place, and in less time than it takes to read these lines the mine exploded, and all who were within 200 yards of the spot were either blown up or saluted with a fragment of stone or wood.

one of the machines nearly cost an over-curi- | localities, and a large number of similar fouous British Admiral his life. They all, so far gasses were discovered in time to save the Allies as they are known, resemble Fulton's, inas- from their effects. In all of them, it appears much as they are vessels filled with explosive the explosive agent used was gunpowder. A substances, which require to be placed in con- quantity of gunpowder was buried in the usual tact with the ship to do mischief; and all have manner; from this a train was laid to a deposfailed from the same cause as his-the im-it of mixed chlorate of potash and pulverized possibility of directing them with accuracy. It is understood that the commonest form of Russian torpedo is submerged and connected with a wire, or trigger, against which the allied vessels must necessarily strike if they attempt to sail toward Cronstadt. Pressure on the wire will explode the torpedo, and if the ship happens to be within reach, it may receive a rude shock. Another Russian torpedo is said to be connected with an electric battery; it would be exploded, by means of a spark, as soon as the enemy's keel touched it. But neither of these projects appears very formidable. Nothing would be easier than to blow up a ship by means of a submarine shell: this the recent submarine blasting operations prove conclusively; but, like the salt which little boys try vainly to put on the tails of cocksparrows, the difficulty is to fasten the shell. Some ten or twelve years ago, Captain Warner announced that he had invented a shell which would blow up any ship at a distance of five miles. The British government gave him a ship to try, and he blew her up very completely. Unfortunately he had thought fit to visit her a few minutes before the explosion; and the presumption was very strong that he had quietly lit a long fuse which communicated with a couple of barrels of gunpowder on board. The experience of the present war proves pretty decisively that so far as naval operations are concerned nothing better than the old powder, ball, and shells-improved and amended, according to our modern lights-has yet been discovered; painful as the reflection is, we must acknowledge that we are not much ahead of Guy Fawkes.

On land various new explosive apparatuses have been invented. Monsieur Jobard, of Brussels, some time since devised a shell, which was to be filled with fulminate of mercury, and was to explode with such force as to knock a tower to pieces. But it has so often happened that these extra-terrible explosives have victimized their friends instead of their enemies, that we need not be surprised to find that M. Jobard's destroyer does not figure in the list of ordnance used at Sebastopol. In the heat and hurry of a bombardment it would be in the highest degree dangerous to use these fearful fulminates in quantities sufficient to produce any startling results.

When the Russians evacuated Sebastopol, they undermined their principal works, and laid fougasses to blow up the invaders. One of these terrible mines exploded on the 28th September, and tore a hole in the earth twenty feet deep and as many wide, killing and wounding a vast number of the allied soldiers. The catastrophe led to a close examination of other

It will at once occur to those who take an interest in such subjects, that the improvements to be made in the explosive art will be wrought by means of the electric fluid. Isolated electric wires can now be laid for any distance, either in the earth or under water; with their aid mines may be exploded at far greater distances than can ever be required in actual warfare. For instance, it would have been quite possible for the Russians to lay submarine wires across the bay of Sebastopol, and by their means to explode mines under every building in the city, while the authors of the explosion were securely under cover in the northern forts at three or four miles' distance. The experiment was tried on a small scale at the Malakoff; but the French providentially happened to scrape up the earth in order to extinguish a fire which had been kindled too near the magazine, and thus the wires were brought to light and cut. Had Prince Gortschakoff foreseen in time his retreat from the city, it is hardly to be doubted but he would in every case have substituted mines communicating with electric batteries for the common fougasses. In future, it may be expected that this mode of destroying fortresses which are evacuated will be universally employed. A few barrels of powder, and a few miles of wire, carefully laid at a safe depth beneath the surface of the soil, will suffice to make the capture of any fort a loss rather than a gain to the captors.

Where no previous communication has been had with the place to be destroyed, electricity can hardly be of much service. An army encamped before a city, or a fleet riding before a seaport, is reduced to the old process of bombardment with rocket, shell, and ball, to be followed by an assault with immense loss of life. To facilitate matters in this class of cases, some improvement on Jobard's shell may possibly be looked for. None of the fulminates can be used in a gun as a substitute for powder, for the simple reason that their explosive power radiates equally on all sides whatever be the resistance, and would thus blow the gun itself to

atoms without projecting the ball very far. But | the white bed of fast-falling snow upon the there seems to be no good reason why they should not be used in rocket-heads, or even in shells of enormous size. Jobard stated that two pounds of fulminate of mercury, or fulminate silver, lodged in the side of a ship,would infallibly blow her to pieces; and half a dozen such shots lodged in the stoutest earth-work, would knock it completely out of shape. If the European war continues, we may expect to hear that experiments, at all events, have been made with these terrible weapons.

door-step, the occupant of the chamber rose from his seat and looked around him. It was a pleasant face to look upon, the face of Charles Forrest, Esq., with its open, frank expression, the short chestnut curls framing the healthful cheeks, and the smile which seemed habitually to dwell upon the lips. This smile became very distinctly marked as the young man looked around him, dwelling for a moment upon each article of furniture in the bare and comfortless apartment; on the dusty table, piled with law. books displayed with ostentatious intrusiveness, and the bundles of doubtful-looking papers tied carefully with red tape, and the forlorn broom

taining a few old volumes and newspapers.

The gaze of the young man rested curiously upon these objects one after another, and then with a laugh which terminated in something very like a sigh, he resumed his seat again—which seat was the sole and only rocking-chair in the apartment-and betook himself anew to a contemplation of the gradually expiring fire in the old grate.

Lord Dundonald says he has a scheme by means of which he can take Cronstadt without losing a man. It is supposed that it consists in the use of a shell on the plan of the globes in-reposing in a corner beside the plain case convented by Professor Bunsen some ten years ago. Bunsen's globes were made of glass, and contained a liquid called cacodyl, of which the component parts were the same as those of common alcohol, except that arsenic was substituted for oxygen. The calculation was, that when one of these globes was thrown into the port-hole of a vessel, the glass would break, the liquid would ignite and burn every thing it touched; while from the flame arsenical fumes would be generated, which it would be certain death to inhale. It is conjectured that Lord Dundonald has invented a shell, loaded with cacodyl or some analagous substance, and that he calculates to poison the defenders of Cronstadt with its fumes. Hither-mote period of my existence that the world was to the British Government have declined his a place uncommonly full of flowers, and that patriotic offers; possibly, the moderate results my chief occupation in life-in fact, the duty which the two last expeditions to the Baltic to which I was called-was simply to pluck the have attained may induce the allied chiefs to flowers. I had unusually splendid visions; real give Lord Dundonald a little more attention Arabian Nights' visions! I thought the Grand this winter. If the Russians are to be killed, it Vizier would come and tell me that the Caliph matters not whether the killing be done with requested me to accept, as a personal favor to shot, steel, or arsenic; the most effective weap-himself, the hand of his only daughter, the on is, in every case, the most humane in the end. Princess Beautiful!"

BABY BERTIE'S CHRISTMAS.
L-CHARLES FORREST, ESQ., ATTORNEY-AT-

AT

LAW.

"Well," he said at last, in a half-audible tone, "matters are growing complicated, and it seems to me that prospects for the future are not brilliant. This is certainly not precisely what I imagined for myself when I left Shady Oaks and came to town. I thought at that re

The smile with which these words commenced here gave place to an undeniable sigh.

"The Princess Beautiful!" he continued. "I am acquainted with a young lady answering to that description, but it really does seem to me that I am neither expected nor desired to espouse her!"

The young man paused in his soliloquy, and a sad shadow passed over his brow and dimmed the light of his eyes. He remained for a time silent and motionless, paying no attention ap

T the close of a freezing December day, Charles Forrest, Esq., Attorney-at-Law and Commissioner of Deeds for the States of, etc., etc., was sitting in his fourth-story office before a meagre fire, engaged in the profitable or unprofitable occupation of reflecting. The oblong strip of blue-sanded board upon which the above-mentioned indication of the young gen-parently to the wind cutting its antics without, tleman's profession was furnished in gilt letters, appeared by no means to prove that he had been for a lengthy period "at the bar;" and yet the "shingle," in professional parlance, was not entirely new. It was much such a sign as might have been expected under the circumstances; had indeed hung there exposed to the weather just six months; and this was the exact and actual term of Mr. Charles Forrest's legal experience.

As the wind blew more and more drearily, making the sign creak upon its hinges, and threatening every moment to precipitate it into

or to the driving snow, or the forlorn creaking of the melancholy sign. He was aroused at last, however, by the sound of martial music, proceeding probably from a band returning after committing to earth some member of the order of masons or other fraternity. The music was loud and jubilant; and when the wind shifted and blew from the proper quarter, the tune played by the band was distinctly heard, like a loud gush of harmony.

"Good news from home!" said Mr. Charles Forrest, sighing. "What have I got to do with any thing of that sort? They're all well at

whole company among his intimate friends. He very soon found himself, after paying numerous compliments in his passage, by the side of Helen Burnaby. She was a fresh-looking and attractive young lady, with fine dark eyes, hair like the wing of a raven, and "coral lips,” which had a great tendency, it would seem, to satirize the object of their mistress's dislike. Helen seemed to be one of those sensible and

Shady Oaks I know, and that's very good news | and Mr. Charles Forrest counted almost the from home; but beyond that there is nothing. If I could only get some good news from what 'home' used to be, when Helen and myself had not had our unhappy misunderstanding! Every thing was bright between us then, and if any body had said we would now be on terms of actual constraint, I would have laughed at them. I love her more than ever-and I have the right to love her! She has been more to me than any one but my mother, and there is not a love-rational young ladies who look at things in lier character in the wide world. Oh, why has their real light without the least inclination tothis miserable society made us change toward ward romance and poetry; and yet there was a each other! I will not let myself think for a world of good feeling and kindness in her eyes, moment that the lovely girl who made every which indicated a warm and affectionate naone devoted to her when she came to see us at ture. Charles Forrest and herself were cousins, Shady Oaks, can have had her feelings changed and had been brought up together, it might altoward me by my ill success in my profession. most be said. Helen had gone every year, Yet I could not blame her," continued the young from her earliest childhood, to spend the summan sighing, and looking round at the cheerless mer months at Shady Oaks, the estate of the apartment; "this would be a pretty place to Forrests, and Charles had frequently accombring a delicate and tenderly nurtured girl. Ipanied her back to town, and staid for several am like the poor poet I read about in a news-weeks at Mr. Burnaby's. They had been compaper the other day, sitting on his stool, 'poor fool, on his three-legged stool,' in his freezing garret. The writer says he was destitute and sorrowing, though

'His great thoughts had moved them,
Moved millions to tears,

Through years,

To joy and to tears.'

I have never yet given utterance to any 'great thoughts' that I am aware of, and therefore I am worse off than the poor poet!"

panions in all the merry sports of childhood in the country, and were called "sweethearts" by the town children when Charles visited Helen's; and at last this verdict of the little town misses became very nearly the fact. Helen certainly had a very great affection for her young cousin and playmate, whose arm had supported her so often in their rambles, and whose frank and open character was perfectly well known to her. As he grew into a fine young fellow, and she ripened more and more into a blooming maiden, Having come to this melancholy conclusion, this affection increased, and finally when the time Mr. Charles Forrest smiled, in spite of the sad re- for Charles to go to college arrived, the feelings sult of his logic, and looked out of the window. of the young man became the deep and earnest As he did so, a knock at the door attracted passion of the lover. They parted without any his attention, and the next moment a note was mutual explanations, however, and Charles had handed him, the bearer of which disappeared only chance looks and affectionate words to build with a bow. He opened it and found that it implicit hopes upon. That he had not "spoken" contained a request on the part of Miss Helen was attributable to his modest and unpretending Burnaby, that he would come up that evening nature-in truth, he had not had the courage to and spend the same with a few friends-social-place his whole happiness upon one throw of ly. Mr. Charles Forrest turned the note over and over, smiled, sighed, re-read, read it again, folded it, opened it a second time, again read it, and ended by placing it in his private portfolio, among his most precious archives. manner in which he performed these different ceremonies would have clearly indicated to an astute observer, that any thing upon which the hand of the fair writer had rested was henceforth sacred in his eyes.

the dice. He felt that if he were mistaken in attributing to Helen an affection for himself such as he felt for her, and she were to listen to his avowal, and declare herself unable to The return his love, that from this moment every thing would be changed between them, their old intimacy and familiarity be destroyed, and their relations all cooled and injured. He had, therefore, gone away with a last look, in which he endeavored to tell her, as far as possible, his The young man at once proceeded to the feelings, and a last clasp of her hand, which he small adjoining room, which served as his bed-made very tender; and so had betaken himself chamber; and making an elaborate toilet, which nevertheless dealt in nothing gaudy, or exceeding the bounds of the most severe good taste, wrapped his cloak around him, went out, and took his way toward the residence of Miss Helen Burnaby.

IL-THE COUNSEL FOR THE PLAINTIFF URGES

HIS SUIT.

About a dozen persons were assembled at Mr. Burnaby's elegant mansion on Street,

to his studies. He chose the law for his profession on leaving college, and came to practice in the city where Mr. Burnaby resided.

Helen met him with all her old cordiality and affection, and for a time the young man reveled in the idea that she returned his own feelings perfectly. He was soon doomed to see a change, however, in Helen's demeanor toward him. As interview after interview took place, and he grew warmer and warmer in his