whether she may not, in the good providence of God, have received a suitable, perhaps a preponderating, compensation, in the accordant witness of all Christendom, to the truths that our religion is the religion of the God-Man, and that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh?

All this is plain enough, but the reader feels less sure where he is standing when he comes to Mr. Gladstone's remarks upon undenominational religion.

WHAT IS THE DRIFT OF THIS?

Without venturing to fathom the mystery, I will quote the following passage, and commend it to Mr. Diggle and Dr. Clifford to decide as to what Mr. Gladstone really means:

The Church, disabled and discredited by her divisions, has found it impracticable to assert herself as the universal guide. Among the fragments of the body, a certain number have special affinities, and in particular regions or conjunctures of circumstances it would be very easy to frame an undenominational religion much to their liking, divested of many salient points needful in the view of historic Christendom for a complete Christianity. Such a scheme the State might be tempted to authorise by law in public elementary teaching, nay, to arm it with exclusive and prohibitory powers as against other and more developed methods which the human conscience, sole legitimate arbiter in these matters, together with the Spirit of God, may have devised for itself in the more or less successful effort to obtain this guidance. It is in this direction that we have recently been moving, and the motion is towards a point where a danger signal is already lifted. Such an undenominational religion as this could have no promise of permanence. None from authority, for the assumed right to give it is the negation of all authority. None from piety, for it involves at the very outset the surrender of the work of the Divine kingdom into the hands of the civil ruler. None from policy, because any and every change that may take place in the sense of the constituent bodies, or any among them, will supply for each successive change precisely the same warrant as was the groundwork of the original proceeding. Whatever happens, let Christianity keep its own acts to its own agents, and not make them over to hands which would justly be deemed profane and sacrilegious when they came to trespass on the province of the sanctuary.

DO IRISH AMERICANS HATE ENGLAND? AN IMPORTANT CONTRIBUTION TO THE DISCUSSION. IN the American Journal of Politics for July Mr. T. Burke Grant has a very interesting article entitled "A New Ireland in America: a reply to Lord Salisbury." The importance of the article does not depend upon Mr. T. Burke Grant, but upon the fact that the article may be regarded as the first official exposition of the views of the Irish National Federation of America.

A NATIONAL MANIFESTO.

This article has been compiled by the authority of the Irish National Federation of America, with branches in every state of the Union, and which have subscribed a sum of $87,000 to the McCarthy wing of the Irish Home Rule party. The materials have been supplied by three hundred of the leading Irishmen in business or professional circles in twenty-six states of the Union, including Honourable William McAdoo, exmember of Congress, now assistant secretary of United States navy, Honourable W. Bourke Cochran, Doctor Thomas Addis Emmet, and others. It is the first notable expression of any authoritative body as to the terms upon which the Irish of America would make peace with England, and is intended as a reply to the objections of that section of anti-home rulers of whom the Marquis of Salisbury and Professor Goldwin Smith are the most notable examples, who state that the Irish people would be at the mercy of American agitators, who are in turn the most permanent and implacable enemies of imperial institutions and of British commerce.

It was Lord Salisbury's speech at Trowbridge which

led to the compilation of this very important manifesto, which the Liberal Publication Department might do worse than reprint for general circulation in this country. Lord Salisbury's chief point was that

the granting of Home Rule would enable Irish-Americans who are still supposed to hate England to use Ireland as a lever with which to work out a retributive policy against the British Empire at its very gates.

LORD SALISBURY'S CHALLENGE.

In order to meet this charge, says Mr. Grant:

A circular letter has been addressed by me to three hundred leading Irish Americans in the principal cities of the United States with the consent and approval of the Irish National Federation of America.

THE IRISH-AMERICAN'S REPLY.

This circular letter contained a series of questions to which answers were requested. Samples of these answers are printed in Mr. Grant's paper:—

These responses, written out, by each of those to whom they were sent, after calm reflection, aud vouched for by their signatures, are far more authoritative in their nature than even the resolutions of an Irish national convention, which, at most, would represent the combined intelligence of a committee on resolutions, consisting of three or five men. They furnish an inside view of Irish-American opinion, and throw an interesting side light from the shores of America on the whole Irish question. They also unmistakably prove that those English Tories who have heretofore pictured IrishAmericans as a band of desperadoes in active antagonism to the British Empire, and infused by an unchristian, an uncivilised, and an undying hate against England and Englishmen, are very much mistaken in their estimate of Irish-American good sense and character.

Questions covering all the points commonly raised on Tory platforms was enclosed, together with an extract from Lord Salisbury's speech as cabled to America and published in the New York Sun.

Their responses received up to date, together with the circular in question, are given herewith, and speak for themselves. THE TRANSFORMATION WROUGHT BY W. E. GLADSTONE.

It is impossible in our limited space to do more than briefly call attention to the more salient features of this Irish-American declaration. Mr. Grant says:-

It is remarkable with what unanimity all the letters received have testified the change of feeling that would arise in this country toward England by the granting of Home Rule. In other years there could have been only one answer to some of these questions, particularly that relating to hatred of England. That answer would be a loud, unanimous, and emphatic "Yes," but owing to the Christian and civilising character of Mr. Gladstone's legislation, a great change has come over the spirit of Irish-Americans.

In substance the answers may be regarded as being summed up very accurately in the following paragraph :--

"The granting of Home Rule would obliterate whatever hostilities there are, and would completely change any feelings entertained on the part of Irish-Americans into friendship for both the English Government and the English people."

THE GIST OF THE WHOLE MATTER.

One very interesting point is the emphatic assertion of all the correspondents that the Irish-American would distinctly prefer that Ireland should remain an integral part of the British Empire rather than that it should become an independent sovereign state. Of course, the Unionists will stoutly deny that any value can be attached to these assertions, but those who know how fiercely IrishAmericans a very short time back would have repudiated any suggestion that there could be a hearty reunion between the English and Irish democracies will regard this article of Mr. Grant as a contribution to the discussion of the very first importance..

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT'S BUDGET.
BY LORD FARRER.

THE Budget has been discussed at such length in the House of Commons that the general public has only a very vague idea as to what its real provisions are. For confusing the public, next to having no discussion at all, nothing is so successful as too much discussion. It is therefore a good thing that Lord Farrer, whose competence to deal with the question cannot be disputed, has written in the Contemporary Review an account of the leading features of the Budget. I omit his criticisms and reproduce here Lord Farrer's own summary of the ineasure. It will be handy for purpose of reference, and will enable many of our readers to understand for the first time what the Budget really proposes. Lord Farrer says:

SIMPLIFICATION.

What are the leading features of Sir W. Harcourt's Budget? In the first place, he has swept away the complications of the Naval Defence Act and of the Imperial Defence Act, and has brought us back to the original and simple plan of making the income of the year pay for the expenses of the year, and of leaving the control of Parliament unfettered; without vainly attempting to forecast the exigencies of foreign politics, or the ever-changing fashions of naval warfare. But to do this a debt of from five to six millions had to be cleared off, and this has been done by suspending for three years the New Sinking Fund, which amounts to about £1,800,000 a year. In other words, a new temporary debt has been converted into part of the permanent debt of the nation.

REVISION.

But when the Tory debt had been thus cleared off, there was still a deficit of between two and three millions to be met by increased taxation in the present year; and there will in all probability be a similar demand in future years. These demands have been met by one of the largest schemes for the revision of taxation which we have known since the great Budgets of Sir R. Peel and Mr. Gladstone. One million has been raised by taxes on articles of consumption-viz., by an additional 6d. on beer and spirits.

An additional penny has been placed on the income tax, but various exemptions have been made reducing the pressure of the tax upon smaller incomes. The chief feature of the Budget, however, is its dealing with the Death Duties, and the following summary of Sir William Harcourt's two reforms will be welcomed by many who have hitherto endeavoured in vain to penetrate the secret of the Chancellor :

UNIFICATION.

Roughly speaking, these duties are twofold in character. The one class is represented by Probate Duty. This duty depends on the aggregate amount of the property passing on death, and is collected at once. Hitherto it has been confined to personalty. The second class is represented by the Legacy and Succession Duties. It depends on the actual amount of interest acquired by each recipient; it varies according to the relationship of the recipient to the deceased; and it is in many cases only collected when and as the individual interest of the recipient falls in, and then in some cases by instalments, which of course in many cases involves postponement of receipts. It has hitherto been applied both to personalty and realty, but, whilst personalty has been taxed upon its full value, realty has hitherto only been taxed upon a valuation of the life interest of the successor.

The present financial scheme extends the first of these two classes of duties to realty and to settled personalty, and thus does away with the principal exemption which has been so much complained of. All property of whatever kind will henceforth be subject to this tax, henceforth to be called "Estate Duty." This is the first great reform.

GRADUATION.

The second is to apply the principle of graduation to this duty, by charging rates varying from 1 per cent. on £100 to 8 per cent. on £1,000,000. Thus an estate worth £1000 will pay £20; an estate worth £10,000 will pay £300; an estate worth £100,000 will pay £5,500, and an estate worth more than £1,000,000 will pay £80,000. Capitalised wealth will therefore bear a much larger share of the national burdens than it has ever yet done.

In addition to this reform of the Probate or Estate Duty, another inequality has been removed by imposing the Succession Duty on realty, not as hitherto on the life interest of the owner, but on the actual value of his whole interest calculated as in the case of Probate or Estate Duty; and by making it payable at once, instead of allowing it to be paid by instalments, or, if not paid at once, by charging interest upon it.

At the same time, real estate, whilst thus charged in the same manner as personal property, has been relieved in respect of Income-tax by allowing a fair deduction in respect of outgoings.

SUMMARY.

Lord Farrer thus sums up the result of the Budget scheme:

A novel, complicated, and dangerous system of finance has been swept away, and we have returned to the simple plan of paying as we go. This has not been done without making posterity pay the debt which, according to the plan of the late Government, would have been charged on their immediate

successors.

The long-standing controversy concerning the Death Duties has been settled by a plan, which if not absolutely free from faults, has the great merit of taxing all kinds of property equally.

The principle of graduating taxation so that large properties shall pay not only more, but more in proportion to their size, than smaller properties, if not now introduced for the first time, has for the first time been accepted as an acknowledged and permanent principle of taxation.

The Income-tax has been raised, and at the same time its proportionate incidence on the landowner and on the less wealthy classes has been lightened.

By these various means a formidable deficit has been met, and money has also been found to meet a new demand for increased naval expenditure.

Finally, the classes who call for increased naval and military expenditure have had an excellent object-lesson. They have been taught that those who call the tune must pay the piper.

A VOICE ON THE OTHER SIDE.

From this it will be seen that Lord Farrer heartily approves of Sir William Harcourt's Budget. On the other side, the Edinburgh Review declares that

The more the new death duties are examined the more gross appears to be the inequality of treatment they mete out to both properties and persons. It used once to be considered

a canon of wise taxation that it should be certain in amount. Under Sir William Harcourt's scheme a legatee of £1,000 from a millionaire will have to pay an "estate duty" of £80, and legacy duty-possibly another £100-on the consanguinity scale as well; whilst the legatee of £1,000 from a testator worth less than £10,000 will have to pay an estate duty of only £30, including legacy duty. Yet very probably the first legatee may be a richer man than the last. Is this an example of that grand principle of "graduation"-of that "equality of sacrifice"-of which democratic finance is so proud? A "just graduation"! Heaven save the mark! The graduation is visible enough, but where is the justice? What, again, so uncertain as the date when the property will have to provide the tax? One estate will go untaxed for sixty years. Another will, in consequence of rapid successions, have to pay several years' profits several times over in the period of a single average generation. The man who has sacrificed most income to improvements, and to bettering the condition of his farms and his cottages, has in adding to the market value of the estate but subjected that estate to a larger exaction.

FEDERATION OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING RACE. THE PROPOSALS OF SIR GEORGE GREY. ONE of the most interesting articles which appear in the magazines this month is that by Sir George Grey in the Contemporary Review on the "Future of the EnglishSpeaking Race." The veteran statesman, who has returned from New Zealand to the Old Country, is as full of aspirations and ideals as ever he was in the days of his youth. He dreams dreams and sees visions as much as any young man within the four corners of the British Empire. The article, which takes the form of a conversation, is full of many beautiful passages and many pregnant thoughts.

BIDDY AND THE EMPIRE.

Among the former take this tribute to the Imperial services of the Irish servant girl. Sir George Grey

says:

Has it ever occurred to you how beautiful a contribution the Irish girl, driven to another land by starvation at home, has made to the development of the English-speaking race? What a stretch of Anglo-Saxondom, her wages-hardly earned in service, and sent home for the emigration of her father and She is a mother, her sisters and brothers-has peopled. winning illustration of how the hard taskmaster, necessity, has been our architect for building up new races. Ireland has been tortured and beaten, and her daughters and sons through that torture, those blows, have done all this wondrous work for us. WHAT FEDERATION WOULD MEAN.

The article as a whole is devoted to an advocacy of the federation, first of the British Empire, and then of the If this federation were whole English-speaking race. attained, says Sir George:

It would mean the triumph of what, if it is carried out, is the highest moral system man in all his history has knownChristianity. And it would imply the dominance of probably the richest language that has ever existed-that belonging to us Anglo-Saxons. Given a universal code of morals and a universal tongue, and how far would the step be to that last great federation, the brotherhood of man, which Tennyson and Burns have sung to us.

OBSTACLES IN THE WAY.

Sir George Grey, however, is no ideal dreamer; he is a practical statesman who has administered many colonies, and knows what he is talking about. He recognises that there are certain obstacles in the way of federation, and of these he says:

Probably two of the strongest are the appointment of governors by the British Ministry, and the nomination of the Upper Houses of the legislatures, through those governors.

In order to remove them, he would pass an Act giving every colony power to re-model its constitution without any reference to its existing institutions, and by this means he thinks he could get rid both of the appointed governors and the nominated Upper Chambers.

A BRITISH IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.

When he had done this the ground would be cleared for their representation at Westminster. He says:

My preference would be for a British Imperial Parliament of one chamber, because I think that the most effective method of constitutional government, whether it be in the local affairs of a State or in the affairs of a world-wide empire. But no one man should presume to a definite opinion in such a matter, and given once that there was to be a British

Imperial Parliament, it would have to be determined how it should, with the best advantage to all concerned, be constituted.

THE UNITED STATES LEAD THE WAY.

Our American cousins have led the way and shown us how to combine centralisation with decentralisation:It would not be necessary to adhere in any slavish way to it, but undoubtedly the United States of America have shown one way in which the end we must try to gain can be reached. No doubt faults might be found in the American system, but, upon the whole, it ought to be regarded as furnishing us with very useful inspiration. Canada has already federated herself, and it would be an easy thing for her, whilst maintaining her own federation, to become part and parcel of the larger federation. I make no doubt that Australasia would come in colony by colony, or two at a time; anyhow, only she would come. As to the Polynesian Islands, they would be grouped together, and have their place and their representatives. True, New Caledonia and Tahiti belong to France, although if I and the native chiefs had been allowed to have our way, they might many years ago have been preserved for this federation. But as it is, they do not make serious obstacles, and the force of attraction which the greater always has for Samoa I the less, would by-and-by find them amongst us. count secure in the end, thanks to the instinctive-possibly the unconsciously instinctive-action of the United States of America, which prevented those beautiful islands from becoming a dependency of Germany. South Africa I endeavoured to federate in my own time there, and I could give reasons for saying that I believe I should have been successful had the Home Government allowed me to proceed.

THE WORD OF THE NEW EPOCH.

I think that in local decentralisation, coupled with general centralisation, there is the secret of future human stability and vitality. No doubt a federation, the like of which I suggest, would be something never before known. But then the conditions calling for it have never arisen before; there has not, in the past, been the necessity for such a thing. The Ancients had not discovered the art of securing political representation, or what the Moderns call the principle of federation. With the changed conditions of the world, the necessity has arisen, and the call has been to the Anglo-Saxon. Everything-the materials, the tools-is ready at our disposal. In fine, we have reached an epoch of federation, which is, so far as I can see, the new form of human economy.

PEACE AND LIFE.

To all intents and purposes war would by degrees die out from the face of the earth-it would become impossible. The armed camp, which burdens the Old World, enslaves the nations, and impedes progress, would disappear. If you had the Anglo-Saxon race, acting on a common ground, they could determine the balance of power for a fully peopled earth. Such a moral force would be irresistible, and argument would take the place of war, in the settlement of international disputes.

As the second great result of the cohesion of the race, we should have life quickened and developed, and unemployed energies called into action in many places, where they now lie stagnant.

THE EMPIRE AND THE REPUBLIC.

Sir George does not despair of bringing the American Republic into line with the British Empire, but he would at first content himself with working first for eace and a good understanding between Washington and London. He says:

What we have to do is to come to a standing agreement that whenever any subject affecting us both arises, or when there is any question affecting the well-being of the world generally, we shall meet in conference and decide upon common action. An Anglo-American Council, coming quietly into operation when there was cause, disappearing for the time when it had done its work, would be a mighty instrument for good.

THE NONCONFORMIST CONSCIENCE.

BY DISSENTERS OF TWO KINDS.

THE Nonconformist conscience seems to be in a fair way of getting itself established as the only practical religion left in the country, and those who protest against it may be regarded as Dissenters equally as well as Free Churchmen who object to the Anglican Establishment.

THE CHARITY THAT THINKETH NO EVIL.

The writer of an article in the Quarterly Review, who would of course shudder with horror at being described as a Dissenter, thus expresses his contempt and disgust for the Nonconformists, whose power he dreads, chiefly because of their hostility to the Church. After arguing in favour of the Establishment, he says:—

And what is to be set off against all the loss which Disestablishment would certainly cause? Nothing, except the accrual to the State of that damnosa hereditas, a Church surplus, and the satisfaction of "an insolent and aggressive faction" animated by sectarian hatred. We use these words advisedly; but we desire not to be misunderstood. We are far from denying the many excellences of Protestant Nonconformists, whether in Wales or elsewhere. They have maintained faithfully for many generations, according to their lights, the great principle that the State has no right to intrude into the domain of conscience. They have been, and are still, as a body, frugal, industrious, and, although in a sour and superstitious way, earnestly religious. They may truly claim the praise of having done much in the last century to keep alive in this nation the conception of Christianity as a spiritual power, when it was too generally regarded as little more than a system of morality and an adjunct to respectability. But against these merits must be set off their narrowness, their ignorance, their uncouthness, their meanness, their vulgarity. It is not too much to say that the Radical Dissenter, especially in Wales, is animated largely by hatred of the clergyman. And the reason is that the clergyman is a constant reminder to him of social inferiority. He belongs, as a rule, to the lower middle class, for Dissent eschews the very poor, and a very little intellectual cultivation is usually sufficient to lead a man to eschew Dissent. The clergy of the Church of England represent that cultivation. Hence the Radical Dissenter's burning desire to disestablish them, and to level them down, as he fondly hopes, to the range of the Nonconformist ministry.

The Quarterly reviewer writes, no doubt, according to his light, which, as will be seen from that extract, is hardly that of a farthing rushlight.

THE CANCER OF EVANGELICALISM.

Very different is the other Dissenter, Mr. E. Belfort Bax, who publishes in the Free Review what he calls the "Natural History of the Nonconformist Conscience." Mr. Belfort Bax does not love either the Nonconformist or his conscience, neither does he love his country; indeed, it is difficult to discover whether he despises more the British Empire or the men whose sturdy integrity, resolute courage, and shrewd common sense have given to the English-speaking race the leadership of the world. He graciously vouchsafes to absolve the rank-and-file of the old Puritans from the charge of hypocrisy. They really believed in their Bible and the arid and unlovely dogmas they founded on it, but the old genuine and militant Puritanism died before the end of the seventeenth century. Its traditions had their re-birth in the Wesleyan movement, which was eagerly seized by the middle class to point to the cancer of evangelicalism in English society. The two salient features of evangelicalism were always bibliolatry and sabbatarianism. There was another side to evangelicalism, namely, the practical carrying out of an ascetic life. Another aspect was philanthropy, which was a kind of adjunct to soul-saving. Philanthropy was only a plausible cloak for proselytism. Now, says Mr. Bax :

Such has been the history of the Evangelical party up to less than a generation ago-lying, hypocrisy, calumny, and social ostracism were the only weapons known to this band of successful counter-jumpers, cheesemongers, et id genus omne, turned theologians, who terrorised the whole intellectual and social life of the English-speaking race.

JOHN BULL BYPOCRITE!

He is kind enough to admit that perhaps sometimes it was possible for an Evangelical not to be a rogue, but he is careful to add he was always a hypocrite, wherein, Mr. Bax tells us, he was a typical Englishman:

Probably he was in this respect like the rain-maker of the savage tribe, who is alleged to be at once dupe and cheat. Hypocrisy had been so part of his education from his cradle, that he perhaps succeeded in persuading himself that he believed in the dogmatic sweepings which formed his stock-intrade, and that his moral sense was so blunted by custom as not to revolt against them. The Britisher has a special relish for hypocrisy. He regularly enjoys it as a sweet morsel. Other nations take their hypocrisy more or less sadly, as a conIventional lie of civilisation, get it over as quickly as possible, like a black draught, and say little about it. The AngloSaxon chews it, and gets the full flavour out of it. Hence the Anglo-Saxon race alone in the nineteenth century has produced an Evangelical party.

THE NONCONFORMIST CONSCIENCE TO-DAY.

Having thus delivered his soul, Mr. Bax sums up the present condition of the question as follows:

The Nonconformist conscience to-day occupies itself largely in the attempt to maintain intact and keep alive enthusiasm for the conventional class-morality of the bourgeois system. This morality is a compound of the old Christian or Puritan individualist asceticism, and the exigencies of an economicallyindividualist state of society. But the Nonconformist conscience pretends to find in it the power of God and the wisdom of God to all eternity. Sexual abstinence, euphemistically called "social purity," is its great pièce de résistance. In the present social and legal restrictions to the formation of free unions between the sexes, which are based on the natural but perfectly prosaic desire of the ratepayer not to be saddled with the maintenance of his neighbours' children, it pretends to see absolute moral laws, irrespective of social and economic circumstances. But even apart from this, any breach of the conventional ethics of middle-class society is sure of the reprobation of their specially constituted guardian, the "Nonconformist conscience "-whose methods are spying, eavesdropping, and other edifying practices of the amateur detective. It would seek to avert the abuse of any particular thing by forcibly suppressing its use. In fine, the Nonconformist conscience remains like its forebears, the eternal quintessence of the hypocritical type of bourgeois philistinism. Always bitterly opposed to liberty for others, it has known how to whine loud enough when its own liberties have been infringed by some equally bigoted High Church vicar, with whom, bien entendu, it has been only too willing to join hands to oppress the Freethinker. To the latter it was, until recently, if possible, more merciless than any Roman or Anglican Sacerdotalist.

Such is the pedigree of that "Nonconformist conscience" which now arrogates to itself to dictate the character and general walk and conversation of every man holding a public position, and as far as possible the whole public policy of the country. These be your gods, O middle-class Englishmen!

Considering that the Nonconformist conscience, so called, has limited itself to a modest request that law-breakers should not be law-makers, and that men convicted of infamous crimes in a court of justice should not be allowed to sit in the House of Commons to make laws for the repression of vice and crime, Mr. Belfort Bax has evidently emancipated himself from even such a rudimentary conscience as recognises the obligation to speak the truth.

THE NEXT GREAT NAVAL BATTLE. THE FATE OF EMPIRES DECIDED IN TEN MINUTES. MR. H. W. WILSON, in the United Service Magazine for August, has a very interesting paper describing the Naval battle of to-morrow. He says that in all probability the Trafalgar of the future will last ten minutes and no more. His description of the probable course of events is somewhat awesome reading, as may be seen from the following extracts:

The curtain is raised and the tragedy begins. The period of the end-on attack will occupy from two-and-a-half to three minutes, according to the speed with which the two fleets advance. They are not likely to exert their extreme power for several reasons-to keep some reserve for an emergency; to avoid break-downs, which are always possible when forced draught is employed; to relieve the stokers of the terrible discomfort of screwed-down stokeholds, and to allow older and slower ships to keep their place. They will in all probability approach one another at a combined speed of something like twenty-eight knots an hour or even less. The two-and-a-half or three minutes that elapse before the fleets meet will be minutes of the most extreme and agonising tension; in them the fate of the battle may be decided.

The compartments forward in that terrible blast of fire will be blown away or riddled like sieves. Watertight doors will be useless when there are no watertight walls. It is true that the armoured deck will protect the ship's vitals, but who can say what will be the effect of losing her end? She will probably be able no longer to maintain her speed, but drop out of the line, if she does not sink deep in the trough of the sea and slowly founder. Meantime what is the general effect of the fire that is being directed on her? The whole ship will be covered with débris: her appearance will be rapidly transformed by the loss of her funnels and the destruction of the superstructure and upper works.

The rain of mélinite shells which will be poured from guns firing smokeless powder will wreck all parts of the ship outside the heavy armour. In three minutes six 6-in. guns can discharge seventy-two projectiles. If 20 per cent. of these strike the target their effect on it will be most destructive. It is during this period that powerful bow fire will be of the greatest importance, enabling the captain to get the most out of his ship. Woe to vessels which are weak in this respect.

Ships like the Benbow or Baudin, where the barbettes are insufficiently supported, the explosion of shells under them may bring them down with their weight of seven hundred or eight hundred tons. If once they give way, the armoured deck cannot support them, and they may be expected to go clean through the bottom of the ship, involving her destruction in their downfall. The result of the destruction of the funnels seems to have escaped notice. The draught would fail, the ship be filled with smoke, and the decks not improbably set on

fire.

The extinction of the electric light may be looked for, and the ship's interior will be plunged into darkness. The work of the captain will be rendered ten times more difficult than ever, from the wreckage of the chart-house above him and the hail on the conning-tower itself. If the guns in the auxiliary battery are not well protected from a raking fire and isolated by splinter-proof traverses, the carnage amongst the men there will be awful. One mélinite shell might render it untenantable, as the fumes, quite apart from the effects of the explosion, are suffocating.

But supposing all goes well, the big guns will be discharged at five or six hundred yards. What the effect of the detonation of their huge shells in the ship will be it is hard to picture. They will probably, like the explosion of a powder inagazine, reduce the already wrecked ship to a hopeless chaos, destroying all her organisation and the nerve thread that conveys the captain's orders to the engine-room. Even if the armour resists the blow the shock to the ship will be terrific. Striking the turret of an ironclad one of these projectiles would probably, if it did not hurl it overboard, stun or kill every man in it and wreck all its complicated mechanism.

The moment of collision is now at hand. The ships wrecked. smoking and dripping with blood, are close to one another. Funnels and masts have been swept away. The ships have come through the wreath of smoke that shrouded them at the discharge of the heavy ordnance. The first stage of the encounter is over, and the survivors of the terrible slaughter are driving the battered hulls, low in the water, at one another. Some again are halting in this charge or falling behind, their captains dead or steering gear deranged. Such ships are the certain prey of their opponent's rams.

Mr. Wilson concludes by saying that the engagement, other things being equal, will be decided by the superiority of numbers. The loss of life will be very heavy, both from the foundering of ships and the slaughter of shells. He suggests that it might be well to build ships armed entirely with six and eight-inch quick-firing guns, which penetrate at one thousand yards any armour of twelve inches and under.

THE BIBLE AND THE MONUMENTS.
WHAT IS PROVED AND WHAT IS NOT.

IN the Edinburgh Review a writer endeavours to sum up the net result of the addition to our knowledge by the recent discoveries of tablets and monuments which throw light upon the Old Testament history. The reviewer says that the external sources of confirmation for the history of Israel have become numerous and conclusive, but probably we do not possess a tenth of the information which will hereafter be gathered by prosecuting the same line of research. He is careful, however, to warn us that the discoveries up to the present time are far from verifying the whole of the Bible narrative:-

But it is necessary to be entirely honest in stating what the monuments do not record, and in estimating the character of the legends which we meet in cuneiform tablets. The Assyrians, like the Hebrews, believed in an underworld of the dead, and in angel messengers from caven. They, too, had prophets and seers; they saw visions, and dreamed dreams. They told wonderful tales of miracles which the gods had wrought in the former days, though these never enter into the contemporary history of their victories. The Persians believed in ancient heroes who crossed great rivers dryshod; in a prophet who received from God a Divine Law on the summit of the Holy Mount; and in other heroes at whose command the sun stood still in Heaven. We read of these things in the Avesta; and in later Persian works we read of a future Messiah, of a Resurrection of the Just, of a time of trouble and of future triumph for the pious. The cosmogony of Persia is not the only point of contact between Hebrew and Aryau beliefs. The figure of Satan, which appears in the Bible only in works of the Persian period, formed a most important element in the Mazdean religion.

The monuments have as yet told us nothing of an Eden or of the Fall of Man; but they have transferred the infant hero floating in his bulrush cradle, from the Nile to the Euphrates; and this story is also found in the Zendavesta at a later date. No monuments as yet speak of the Exodus; no records of Moses, or David, or Solomon have been found. The earliest known notice of the Hebrews (unless they appear in the Tell el Amarna tablets) belongs to the period of their later kings. It is from their own monuments in the future that we must hope to learn more. The cuneiform tablets and the Moabite Stone show that, not only was Jehovah the sacred name among Hebrews in the ninth century B.C., but that it was also widely used in Syria and Assyria from about the same period

Nor do the monuments help us to explain difficulties in the Old Testament where these are internal. The chronological errors of the Book of Kings (as they may be justly called on the evidence of self-conflicting statements) may easily have arisen in copying, during the lapse of centuries; but the historical difficulties of some of the later books, especially Esther, Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah, are not so easily explained. Fresh light may be thrown on them by future discovery.