AT the present moment, when every sinew of the national strength is being strained in urgent preparation for war, when the most strenuous pressure is being put upon every department of our military service, it must be with no little amount of anxiety that we wait to see how our resources can respond to the call. It is only at such a juncture that we can appreciate at its proper value the efficiency of those great departments of the military and naval service which absorb in times of peace so much of the public money, and which in time of war always demand a large further expenditure before they can place themselves in a position to be of any service to the nation in case of an emergency. Taxpayers must have been painfully struck by the backward condition in which the present crisis in Central Asia found all those branches of the service whose function is to provide the matériel of war; and whatever issue the Afghan complication may result in, the question must press home upon the public, How have long years of comparative peace, VOL. CXXXVII.-NO. DCCCXXXV. and of large expenditure, been utilised in providing for the military and naval security of British power? Let us take a retrospect of the working of one of our most important branches of the military service, and mark what answer it suggests to the question. Great Britain is without any efficient heavy guns. This startling statement has been made to us on the best possible authority. We are assured that our fleets and our coast defences, our harbours and our dockyards,-on the efficiency of which our existence as a nation depends,- are armed with weapons distinctly inferior to those of foreign Powers. It is not too much to say that we stand in this matter much in the same position as all Europe stood towards Prussia when Colonel Hozier's letters from the seat of war in 1866 revealed to us the overmastering superiority of the breech-loader in the hands of infantry. This information is given us, not as an accusation, but as a confession. It does not come from cavilling in2 R Dedicated by Permission To Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen. ON SOME OF SHAKESPEARE'S FEMALE CHARACTERS. BY HELENA FAUCIT, LADY MARTIN. With PORTRAITS after RICHARD J. LANE, Sir FREDERICK BURTON, and IN ONE VOLUME QUARTO, PRINTED ON HAND-MADE PAPER.] [In May. THE ANGLER AND THE LOOP-ROD. BY DAVID WEBSTER. IN ONE VOLUME, CROWN OCTAVO, WITH ILLUSTRATIONS. INSTITUTES OF LOGIC. BY JOHN VEITCH, LL.D., Professor of Logic and Rhetoric in the University of Glasgow. HOBBES. BY PROFESSOR CROOM ROBERTSON, LONDON. Being the New Volume of "PHILOSOPHICAL CLASSICS FOR ENGLISH READERS." CROWN OCTAVO, WITH A PORTRAIT. WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, EDINBURGH AND LONDON. AT the present moment, when every sinew of the national strength is being strained in urgent preparation for war, when the most strenuous pressure is being put upon every department of our military service, it must be with no little amount of anxiety that we wait to see how our resources can respond to the call. It is only at such a juncture that we can appreciate at its proper value the efficiency of those great departments of the military and naval service which absorb in times of peace so much of the public money, and which in time of war always demand a large further expenditure before they can place themselves in a position to be of any service to the nation in case of an emergency. Taxpayers must have been painfully struck by the backward condition in which the present crisis in Central Asia found all those branches of the service whose function is to provide the matériel of war; and whatever issue the Afghan complication may result in, the question must press home upon the public, How have long years of comparative peace, VOL. CXXXVII.-NO. DCCCXXXV. and of large expenditure, been utilised in providing for the military and naval security of British power? Let us take a retrospect of the working of one of our most important branches of the military service, and mark what answer it suggests to the question. Great Britain is without any efficient heavy guns. This startling statement has been made to us on the best possible authority. We are assured that our fleets and our coast defences, our harbours and our dockyards, on the efficiency of which our existence as a nation depends,—are armed with weapons distinctly inferior to those of foreign Powers. It is not too much to say that we stand in this matter much in the same position as all Europe stood towards Prussia when Colonel Hozier's letters from the seat of war in 1866 revealed to us the overmastering superiority of the breech-loader in the hands of infantry. This information is given us, not as an accusation, but as a confession. It does not come from cavilling in2 R |