-"devilish glut, chained thunder-bolts and hail Of iron globes." In other words, round-shot, grape, and chainshot. It may be a question whether the somewhat loose expression, "devilish glut," will cover shells; the epithet is undeniably appropriate, but "glut" is very vague. The Right Reverend Dr. Pangloss has argued with great artillerymen, and that they blew up nothing but an occasional gun of their own by over-charging it. thorough and satisfactory manner. Or he may go to Sebastopol, and put his foot on a Russian fougasse, in which case the result, so far as his feelings are concerned, would be pretty much the same. Or he may imitate Jean Bart, and smoke a pipe on an open powder-keg, taking care to do what the Frenchman took care to avoid, namely, to drop a spark into the keg, which is a very neat and emphatic way of get-force that shells were unknown to the Satanic ting blown up. Or he may allow a little chlorine to be absorbed in a solution of sal ammoniac, and amuse himself by poking with a bit of India-rubber or a warm poker the yellow drops which are formed, and he will be blown a very long way up in a remarkably short space of time. Or he may throw a wine-glass of water into the stream of molten copper which pours from a smelting furnace, and hold his head over the stream to see the effect; in which case he may not go far, but he is likely to travel several ways at once in detachments. Or he may try the experiment of holding a lighted candle to a jet of carbureted hydrogen in some subterranean cave, which is perhaps the poorest way of getting blown up, though it has been known to answer very thoroughly. The antediluvian origin of the explosive art being thus established, it becomes proper to inquire how far it was understood and practiced by the profane nations of antiquity. Within the memory of persons not extravagantly aged, it was usual to say that explosions dated from the discovery of gunpowder by old Bartholet Schwartz, the Cordelier, who lighted upon the "devilish secret" when he ought to have been reading his breviary. But latterly the skeptical spirit of the age has rebelled against the claims of the black monk, and of his contemporaries generally. Mr. Ewbank, among others, has argued very ingeniously that the bulk of the mythYet it would be a mistake to suppose that the ological heroes may have been nothing more art of blowing men up has been brought to its than men of unusual scientific attainments, and final perfection. Quite the contrary. The ex- the mythological monsters mere machines conplosive science is yet in its infancy, though phi- trived by them for the purpose of levying blacklosophers have studied it for centuries. The mail, and rendered formidable by the use of walls of Jericho were blown up, or rather blown explosive and combustible compounds. It is down in the year before Christ one thousand quite easy to understand how, in a barbarous four hundred fifty-one; in the year of grace age, a slender knowledge of chemistry may have one thousand eight hundred fifty-six the Rus-enabled a shrewd knave to appear to work mirsians and the Allies do not seem able to blow each other up, blow they never so strongly. It is perhaps a mistake to allude to the case of Jericho, as many of the most orthodox commentators reject the idea of Joshua's having been favored by a revelation of an explosive agent, and consider the catastrophe as a naked miracle. Happily we do not need to rely on this case to prove the antiquity of the explosive business. Long before Joshua, nay, before the flood, before the time when Adam and his happy family were the sole tenants of the earth, the explosive power of gunpowder was thoroughly tested and proved. Any incredulous person who may feel disposed to question this indubitable fact, the writer begs to refer to the chronicle of the wars of the angels, by that veraeious historian, Mr. John Milton. His testimony is precise. Speaking of Satan and his engineers, he says: "Sulphurous and nitrous foam They found, they mingled, and with subtle art To blackest grain, and into store conveyed"- Thick rammed, at the other bore with touch of fire Something like the old bell-mouthed bombards, acles, and terrify the rest of mankind. The Colchian bulls, for instance, which belched flame and dashed to pieces with a roaring noise all who attempted to ravish the golden fleece, what were they but a rude species of spring-gun or infernal machine? So Typhon, the monster Still, it appears certain that none of them were used by the Greeks or Romans in war. The terrible machines which frightened the Romans at Syracuse and enabled Archimedes to defend the city for so many months, were prodigies of mechanical science; but chemistry seems to have had no part in their construction. Nor would any writer have circulated the story that Hannibal blew up the rocks on the Alps by heating them and pouring cold vinegar on them, if the military uses of explosive compounds had been known. with many heads, from whose eyes and mouth | ried to such perfection, both at Athens and gushed hissing streams of devouring fire, may Rome, it is not reasonable to suppose that no have been nothing more than a mortar of ec- one of the many known explosive compounds centric form, charged with some explosive sub- was brought to light. stance, and fired off at the great warriors, Jupiter, Mercury, Apollo, etc., by their more scientific adversaries. The Cyclops, who are represented as men of gigantic stature, with misshapen limbs and a single eye in the centre of the forehead, were killed by Apollo, we are told, because they hurled Jove's thunder-bolts at Esculapius and killed him; shall we say that Vulcan, or some other ingenious mechanic or wizard of the ante-historical age, made huge fire-blowing automata, whose vent was compared by the terrified men of that day to a round eye, and that they dealt death to all who opposed them, till Captain Apollo, of the Olympic Voltigeurs, captured and broke them up? This is a simpler way, at all events, of explaining these monsters than to regard them as mere creatures of the imagination. Men who, like the Egyptian magicians, could by sleight of hand appear to turn rods into serpents, may certainly be supposed to have known something about chemistry; and the contrivers of so astute a swindle as the oracle at Delphi, must have been quite competent to pass off a hand grenade for a god. The notion that the mythical king of Rome-Numa Pompilius-was acquainted with gunpowder, and that his successor, Tullus Hostilius, blew himself up in trying to make it, may be destitute of truth; but in later times, when the art of cookery was car In this respect the barbarians of the Middle Ages seem to have been in advance of their more civilized predecessors. Prester John, we are told, practiced the art of blowing men up with marked success. He had a number of "copper images of men" cast, and mounted upon horses, probably of the same material. Within the image was concealed a quantity of combustible and explosive materials, which, when ignited, emitted deadly fumes, and possibly solids. When Prester John was attacked by the Mongols, he marshaled his brazen men in front of their flesh-and-blood comrades; at the word of attack the match was applied, and they charged furiously into the Mongol ranks, spitting flame and poisonous gas on all sides. "Whereby," says the naif old chronicler, "many were slain, others took to sudden flight, and great numbers were burnt to ashes." 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 fif 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. We 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: "Aspaltum, nepta, dragantum, pix quoque Græca, Sulphur, vernicis, de petrolio quoque vitro, Mercurii, sal gemmæ Græci dicitur ignis." GOTHIC FIRE-HORSES. 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 he persevered in firing rockets, and in course muskets which were very likely to be the death of time the French and all other nations adoptof their bearer, and very unlikely to harm any ed them. Now they are one of the most useone else, were for a long time the only adapta-ful branches of ordnance-though Sir William tion 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. 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 general 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 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 intended to destroy. When he touched her keel his plan was to fasten to it a machine filled 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. Fulton 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. 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 destroy. 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 dis tances 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 |