Dahlgren guns, twelve inches in diameter, now
used as pivot guns in the American navy, have
withstood every proof.

The Whitworth and Armstrong guns and
projectiles were fully described by their inventors
in the course of the discussion. The Armstrong
gun, as everybody knows, is a built gun, strong
by might of binding rings; the Whitworth is a
casting of what is called "homogeneous iron:"
in fact, a mild steel, forged solid and bored out
in the usual manner. Sir William Armstrong
first designs the most effective shot to fire, and,
when he has invented his projectile, makes artillery
to fire it. His outer layers and rings of
metal are put on without any of the
mathematical calculation upon which Mr. Longridge
relies; but are simply applied with a sufficient
difference of size to secure all the shrinking that
the metal could bear without hurt.

If we and our readers are much puzzled after
we have gone through all these facts and
doctrines, we are evidently not more puzzled than
our teachers. Ignorance never doubts; there
is a time when knowledge is all doubt. New
paths of inquiry lead to unsuspected difficulties,
and the more study the more mystery; till, in
an hour, the work of years comes to an end
in full achievement. It concerns all men,
however, to know what doubts are still besetting
the whole question of improved artillery. "If,"
said a gentleman, in the course of this debate,
"cost were essential to great and undoubted
superiority, the English nation ought to rejoice
at it, as giving at once the advantage to their
long purse. But if an equal effect, or a greater
effect, could be produced by simpler means, then
it would be a sorrowful disadvantage to the
English nation to make expensive guns while
their foes were making cheaper ones." It is
hard to think that we must spend much, and
hope that we spend well, on guns, when such a
debate as this to which we call attention represents
the present state of knowledge. It was
closed with the chairman's conviction that we
had "made little progress in the science of
gunnery; a few weeks ago, he thought that he
was on the eve of ascertaining some definite
results; but he felt now, after a more careful
investigation"—and after a five nights' discussion
among the chiefs of the science—"that far
from being at all advanced in the science, the
threshold was only just reached, and scarcely
anything was really known."

A ROMAN DONNA.

A FIERCE sultry day, with the sun grilling
steadily into toast the yellow church walls, has
glided on into cooler evening, and the great
luminary now lets down his huge furnace fires
slowly, light cool breezes come like breaths
round corners, and up narrow streets. Mendicancy
finds it chilly, and lifts itself from the
grateful steps uneasily: presently shoulders its
crutch (not with descriptive views), and is gone.
The well-ordered mind should be gone also and
at home; for bells gastronomic will be
presently ringing out cheerful invitation to "host's
table." And but for a horrid mysterious familiar,
who chooses precisely this season—neither
earlier nor later—to steal in through the great
Gate of the People, gliding by unconscious blue-
friezed guard, lean enough to be excellent
company for him, I should be well content to stay
awhile and flâner it up and down the long Corso.
Even, however, as I stop for a second to look in
at Antonelli's meagre print store (no familiarity
is here intended with the name of S. E. the
Cardinal Secretary, but allusion is made to a feeble
printseller of the same name), and turn away
nauseated by those hard-lined presentments of
that famous church and its dome, with other
public edifices, reduplicated in a rough harsh
manner, I feel his hot purulent breath over
my shoulder, and am crushed by his skinny
fingers. When, at this special hour of the day,
you are about turning homeward cheerfully,
and feel a dampness of a sudden on the forehead,
with a quick tremor and shivering, as
though a cold hand were laid upon your
spine, know that Miasma, who has his lodgings
in the Campagna fens, and who takes horse
exercise in marsh mist, is passing, and has
hinted that it were only wise to make for home
with all speed. Curiously opportune and
grimly appropriate to this vein of thought,
comes swinging round the corner, the heavy
lumbering railway omnibus, mountainous with
baggage, crowded with travellers and blue
familiars of the institution hanging out from
inconceivable places. And I recollect how,
years ago, when there was a fierce plague at
work, these very public carriages bore a shape
slightly altered, and trundled daily out at the
city gates with a horrid complement of corpse
passengers inside. These two or three vehicles,
which so often run jingling by, do indeed suggest
the hearse, and were hearses once—so the legend
runs—giant dead-carts. Burgher Romanus—
eminently practical in his views—when the
plague time passed over, had these carriages on
his hands, and, adapting himself happily to the
spirit of the times, made alterations in cushioning
and interior economy, and thus utilised his
mortuary vehicles. It is a dismal proof of that
reckless demoralisation which hangs by the
skirts of ravaging plague and pestilence, that
this diurnal sortie and re-entry of the omnibus
dead-cart was ingeniously perverted to wholesale
smuggling purposes: contraband wares
being concealed under the heaps of mortality.
No wonder that customs officers at the gates,
shrinking back from search, should bid the
black wain go on its way unvisited.

And yet it is precisely about this unwholesome
season that our noble ladies of quality are
wont to break their boudoir shells, and flutter
forth, in state, upon the public places. It
is not the mere breath of a passing "aria
cattiva," as Romans lightly style it, that will
keep preux chevaliers on their travels—and for
whom women's looks are books, and those by no
means sealed—from lounging down the great
thoroughfare of the "Course," and seeing the