teak from India; pine from Norway. The Victoria
is a testimony to our imperial power, which
she is to help to defend, not a creation of
the island only. Tropical birds have flaunted
through one batch of her timbers; another has
been carted in waggons of which the wheels
were heavy with snow. And she will be worthy
of so great a range of empire, such a world-
embracing trade. There is a set against line-of-
battle ships now. But the tendency of the age
is to concentrate force in masses—money in
millions—troops in gigantic armies—populations
in great cities—and ships like the Victoria
are the naval results of the law. She will be
swift as well as strong; and it is a great thing
to have power in a lump. That big ships will
be "slaughter-houses" is a favourite objection
to them, and the use of shells in sea-fights has
yet to be fully appreciated, the taste of it at
Sebastopol (where some of our ships were on fire
in more than one place) having proved ugly
enough. But if there is more danger, it will be
the sooner over; the superiority of the better
combatant will be the more quickly and heavily
felt, the prize won by him will be the greater
and costlier for all these changes. Meanwhile,
all such argument is superfluous, for other
powers build great ships, and with great ships
we must oppose them. One shell might blow
up the Victoria, as it might blow up a magazine.
But then she is heavily armed just that she
may be the more likely to make quick work of
the gentlemen desirous of blowing her up, and
her size contributes to that object.

On the whole, we leave the dockyard with
an agreeable feeling. Much remains to be done;
and there is a flutter among the officials when
"Sir Charley" makes his appearance at the
"Fountain" in High-street; but the present
resources of Portsmouth Dockyard have been
actively worked this summer. The very smell
of Portsea—for it is low water—does not dissipate
the sense of satisfaction as we leave; and
being in an active mood, we resolve, after an
early dinner, to cruise round the Channel squadron
at Spithead, and to crry a Russian vessel or
two by boarding, in a friendly and genial spirit.
Mr. Baker, the Russian vice-consul, who is very
busy just now, is not too busy to be polite and
attentive, and kindly undertakes to introduce us.

A cruise round our squadron has again the
effect of making us feel the increased size of
modern vessels. The two-deckers are all of
recent build, all of ninety-one guns, all more
spacious and more heavily armed than was the
case a few years ago. They are all screws, as a
matter of course, we may now add. Perhaps,
the most striking vessel of the fleet is the frigate
Mersey, of forty guns, and more than three
thousand seven hundred tons. In size and
room, beam, length, distance between the ports,
she is of a class of frigates altogether
unknown to the last generation, and of which very
few exist in the world. All her guns are of the
heaviest description used afloat.

The weak point of our Channel squadron is
still the manning, the difficulty of getting, not
mere men, but "leading" and able seamen.
Precise information on such points is not easily
attainable at Portsmouth; but the general tone
about them is hardly one of satisfaction. As to
the "order" in which the ships are, there being
many degrees of order from respectability up to
perfection, it would be presumptuous to speak
confidently. The squadron is still young. It
will get disciplined and trained at sea, and it is
to be hoped will have a good deal of cruising.
Meanwhile, we must remember that it is getting
more and more difficult to induce men to submit
to the restraints and confinement of man-of-war
life. There have been incidents in one or two
ships, lately, both at home and in the Mediterranean,
calculated to set our authorities thinking
on this subject. The problem is, to make the
men happy without damage to discipline, without
that preference of the men's convenience to
the officers' authority, which one hears
complained of. By all means avoid this danger
while popularising the service. One grievance
of the men at present seems reasonable; it is
the delay that occurs before their families can
get the pay which they set apart for them.
Painful stories are told about the consequences
of this tardiness, due, it is said, to the clumsiness
and complications of the account-keeping
in London. Surely, in a "commercial country,"
we can remedy evils like this—evils turning on
a want of rapid arithmetic, good clerks, and
handy ledgers.

Meanwhile, we sweep round, out boat-hook,
and glide alongside his Imperial Majesty's
frigate, Polkau. She is of forty-four guns,
four hundred and thirty men, and four hundred
horse-power. She was modelled on our Arrogant,
as the Svetlana was built at Bordeaux,
for all nations contribute something to the
development of the great Northern Power, which
hopes to learn from Europe how to excel Europe
by-and-by. The Polkau is a good specimen
of the Russian navy, has been in commission for
some years, and has lately returned from the
Mediterranean. She is not the largest, we
believe, of their frigates, but perhaps, on the whole,
is in the best order.

On reaching the deck, our first impression (as
when we saw the Russian sailors ashore) is, how
like to our own ships! The decks are beautifully
clean, the ropes neat, the woodwork polished.
The guns are not of the Mersey calibre, but
they are of the average size, with percussion
locks, &c., just like ours, and with boarding-pikes,
tomahawks, and so on, hanging up near them,
in the orthodox manner. Look aloft, the yards
are as neatly squared; look along the bulwarks,
and the hammocks are as compactly stowed, as
in an ordinary English man-of-war. You miss
the marines, but there is a seaman armed with a
musket doing sentry at the gangway instead.
The officers don't look like soldiers (our ancient
impression, somewhat borne out by the Russian
brigs we used to see in the Levant), but reasonably
nautical. The men we have seen before;
but they look "at home" between decks, and
we scan them still more closely. Ugly fellows,