a north-east wind to devote his exclusive attention
for a month or two in early spring. If it
should happen that the same individual who
possesses this taste is also partial to prospects
characterised by a certain bareness of look, if he
be fond of stunted trees, for instance, if he would
like a chance twice in every twenty-four hours of
spending six hours in the contemplation of
several miles of wet mud—then would he find
himself in his element at Shoeburyness.

Everybody knows that Shoeburyness is the
scene of several terrific combats, which have
taken place at various times between the guns
of Mr. Whitworth and Sir William Armstrong
on the one side, and, on the other, the iron
targets, which, at the expense of a couple of
thousand pounds or so apiece, are erected by
various illustrious mechanicians for the purpose
of being battered to pieces. Any one, however,
who did not know this, would have his ignorance
removed very quickly, when he found himself
standing on the battle-field where these desperate
engagements have taken place. The evidences of
recent warfare are to be seen in every direction,
and are unmistakable. Ruin and devastation
everywhere, and iron ruin, and iron devastation.
The objects, the shattered remnants of which you
see at every turn, are not—as you might at first
imagine, seeing how utterly they are broken to
pieces and destroyed—mere fabrics of wood or
some yet more frail material. It is iron—iron, the
hardest that can be got, chosen for its strength,
that one finds here crushed into unseemly
shapes and beaten into atoms. Massive plates,
five and six inches thick, and fastened with iron
rivets of prodigious strength, to huge beams of
wood, lie about here twisted, and rent, and torn
to pieces. The beams are broken, the rivets are
scattered in all directions, their heads lie thick
upon the ground, like the berries under a
September mulberry-tree. As to the great earthworks
thrown up behind the targets, no
doubt they get some uncomfortable knocks
too, but they stand it well, and the dust comes
together again when the splinter of a shell has
parted it, and the evidence of the wound is
pretty well effaced. But the targets themselves,
lie about upon the ground in such contortions
as almost to suggest a thing in pain, with such
ghastly wounds, such ragged indentations all
over them, that you feel something nearly akin
to pity as you note how nobly they have
resisted, and how cruelly they have suffered.

While you are observing all these things, and
are noticing with a divided attention that in the
distance a swarm of men in white dresses, who
look something between stokers and house-
painters, are busy adjusting guns in their places
by means of some enormous three legged engines
whicli look like preposterously strong easels—
you are suddenly brought to yourself by the
sound of a bugle, which "warbles"—to use
Mr. Tennyson's expression—a note of warning,
and the last echoes of which are succeeded by
the command " Visitors retire." The visitors
take this hint with all speed, and soon find
themselves in a large ungainly looking edifice,
with hugely thick walls, and a strong roof, but
with an aperture at one end through which it is
still possible to see what is going on outside;
for one side of the building is closed with an
old iron target, which, like everything else
around you, shows signs of having been in the
wars, and the opening in this through which
you peep has been made in the course of some
former experiments with shot or shell, and
is irregular in shape, with ragged and torn
edges. This building, like the ground outside,
is strewn, as to its floor, with all sorts of scraps
and fragments of iron, nuts, and rivets and
screws, all broken and rusty. All is suggestive,
beyond a doubt, of an iron age; the temporary
inhabitants of this grim cavern are most of
all suggestive in this wise. There are some
officers of both services, but probably most of
the company are professionally mixed up in
some way or another with iron. Here are
engineers, and mechanicians, gun-makers, and
armour-plates workers, all so redolent of iron
that their very faces have something of the
gravity and hardness of the metal: while one
gentleman, who is himself an artificer in iron, has
his head covered with short crisp wiry grey
hair, which looks exactly like steel-filings. And
here are gentlemen, too, to carry this idea out
still further, taking notes of everything that is
said and done with metallic pencils. Besides all
these there are a few artillerymen lounging
about, whose services will be required presently
to keep an open space round about the target,
while the effect of the shots upon its surface is
being tested. Joining company with these,
who are standing by that aperture through
which one could see something of the world
outside, I peeped through, and saw that the
preparations for firing were going on briskly,
and that the business of the day was about to
begin.

In the middle of a great bare plain, outside,
the guns with which the practice was going to
be made, were ranged in a row, with their
muzzles towards us; it must be remembered that
the building in which we were lodged was close
to, and in line with, the target. So there they
stood, looking like some new kind of ferocious
animal longing to be at us. The men in white
dresses, who looked now more like Pierrots than
stokers, were busily at work about the guns, one
of which they were loading, while officers were
striding about and gesticulating wildly, as is
usual on all great military occasions. After a
deal of this sort of thing, and when the
preparations were at length complete, a word of
command was given, and all the soldiers, and all the
officers, commenced a hurried retreat from the
neighbourhood of the guns: some retiring to
stations near the target, but under shelter: and
others withdrawing to a position behind that
occupied by the cannons, and at a very
considerable distance. So at last not a soul remained
near them, and these savage monsters were seen
in the middle of the plain all alone in their
terrible glory. To see them standing there alone,
full of mischief, and capable of creating dreadful