refused to do so. General Beauregard thought that it was

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a villainous compound, unworthy of civilized nations;" so thought Lord Raglan, the Duke of Newcastle, and the rest of the English ministry. Mr. Wentworth Scott brought out this "villainous compound" some few years ago, says a writer in the Social Science Review, "and, during the Russian war, he was untiring in his efforts to get it practically in use in our army and navy." Circumlocution bears the blame of having refused Mr. Scott's "fire :" let it also have the praise of rejecting so cruel and so barbarous an engine of warfare. Captain Disney also applied to our Government; and again Circumlocution stepped in; that is to say, a number of soldiers and gentlemen at the War Office were old-fashioned enough to refuse to be the first to apply so deadly and destructive an engine against the shipping and the houses of Sebastopol. Dr. Richardson, who has experimentalized with it, wrote a letter to the Times in 1855, in which he urged its adoption, since he happened to be aware that the Continental chemists, and notably Professor Jacobi, were making experiments with a view to the production of a liquid fire which would soon have enveloped the whole of the English and French fleets in flames. Happily, Peace, like an angel, came and put a stop to the prosecution of these intended barbarities, or the generosity of the Allies would have been sadly repaid. After the end of the Crimean war Captain Norton continued the experiments, and he has invented a small shell for a rifle, which will burst on hitting stretched canvas, and thus, upon touching the sails of a ship, would quickly ignite them. We

believe that Government is in possession of not only one, but a dozen various chemical preparations which could burn any wooden ship, or set any town on fire. The scientific writer whom we have quoted has a preparation which will keep for years, and which will serve all the purposes of Greek fire. We believe that it is a solution of phosphorus in bisulphide of carbon and naphtha.

The physical question, Can we, or can we not, use such an engine of war? is therefore easily answered. We can do so; and we have seen that other nations, less scrupulous than ourselves, have done so, and will do so again. The moral question remains to be argued. But then morality, especially in war, is a very lax and stretchable matter. Even our peace party-a party, however crotchety, always to be mentioned with honour-will tell us that, if we have war, we should have it “short, sharp, and decisive." It is the long wars that eat the heart out of a nation, that are so expensive and depopulating. The Americans have used this Greek fire at Charleston, and none of their papers or preachers exclaim against it indeed, in reply to our questionings, they might exclaim, "What about the red-hot shot with which Lord Heathfield defended Gibraltar? How about the fire-ships which Drake, Raleigh, and Frobisher sent into the Spanish Armada?" It is true that on both those occasions we were acting on the defensive, and that as a rule we have been found, side by side with our old antagonists the French, to be noble and generous in warfare. But what of that? War is wrong altogether; it must exist as long as men continue what they

are; and if we go back to first principles, they had better fight with their fists like English boxers. It is barbarous to use a club or a bow; but what do we say to rifled cannon, bayonets with a triangular blade, Toledo swords, the Gourka creese, with which part of the British army is armed; to fusees, shells, bombs, torpedoes, grenades, serpents, and the whole devilish enginery of "glorious war?" If we employ one, where shall we draw the line, when stop? If we stop, will others do so? Is it very pleasant to reflect that, during the time our shipbuilders were forbidden to work for the American combatants, they were at work building iron ships for the Russian non-combatants-ships which are only likely to be employed against the English and French navies-and that all our forces, all our ships, all our men-of-war, are at the mercy of a foe who will not scruple to use Professor Jacobi's liquid fire, and who, if he did so, would bring our naval force very shortly to the end of the fabled Phoenix which expired in flames?

These are serious considerations. They will show us at least, that what with smoking us out, choking us to death, and setting fire to us, our foreign warrior-chemists will not have much mercy on us. They, as well as we, desire to make war decisive and short. All that our chemists can do is to try to discover the sharpest and most combustible agents, and, at the same time, "the art of effectually neutralizing," to quote Dr. Richardson, an agent of destruction which we may scorn to employ, as beneath our civilization." At any rate, we may well agree with General Beauregard's

indignant protest against such being used against towns wherein are many women and children. If we are to fight at all, let us have reasonable rules of the ring, like prize-fighters do. Moreover, the barbarities of war have a tendency to cure themselves. Soldiers who are hardly pressed and brutally fought with, fight with more bitterness. There is also some comfort in the reflection that the "brutalities of warfare" do not pay in the long-run. Degrade the soldier to the mere chemical sneak, the poisoner in uniform, the town-burner, and the death-fumigator, and "glorious war" will soon be over. It, after all, proves nothing. The French knights, who said that "gunpowder was the grave of valour,” will, after long years, have their prediction realized; and we may, even in our generation, witness some attempt at the realization of that fond prophecy of that glorious time—

"When the war-drum throbs no longer, and the battle-flags are furled,

In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World; When the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm

in awe,

And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.”

Р

THE BARBARITIES OF PEACE.

N the magnificent sonnet which Milton addressed to the Lord Protector Cromwell occurs a noble and never-to-be-forgotten line—

"Peace hath her victories, no less renowned than war;" words which are often cast in the teeth of warriors, and are now fairly enough thrown to the combatants who are fighting to the great distress of themselves and of the whole world : in short, a man thoroughly enamoured of peace would never be tired of enlarging on her blessings, and on the curses and calamities of war. But if peace has blessings, she has blotches upon her fair face-corruptions, rottenness, utter abominations, cowardices, and such-like; cheatings and wrongs, money-makers in the ascendant, Bureaucracy and Mammon-worship, the faces of the poor ground. Why, in the face of these evils, do we prate of the blessings of peace?

"Peace sitting under her olive, and slurring the days gone by,

When the poor are hovelled and hustled together, each sex, like swine;

When only the ledger lives, and when only not all men lie.

Peace in her vineyard—yes! but a company forges the wine!"