be raised by the Country, and by the liberality
of its endowment let it show how Englishmen
appreciate the man who takes the highest
measure of his duty, and yields up his life to its
performance.

           THE IRON WAR-SHIP.

WHEN Spenser represented his iron man,
Talus, beating whole armies to powder with
his redoubtable iron flail, he foreshadowed by a
rude type the future power of England, and the
iron ships with which she was to guard the
Channel and repulse the alien in a thousand
seas.

The recent vote in parliament of two
million five hundred thousand pounds for five new
iron frigates had made me rather curious to
see one of the new vessels; so, one day last
week I started for Greenhithe, where the
Warrior was then lying, to judge for myself. The
newspapers had so dosed me with accounts
of iron masts, rifle-towers, shot-proof shields,
and steam rams which were to cut unplated men-
of-war through like apples, that I had really
quite lost the clear impression of the new craft
that I once thought I possessed.

We followed the river—that is, I and the train
did—attended all the way by lines of masts that
gave me the idea of my being escorted by a
regiment of gigantic lancers. Rapidly the dull red
roofs changed to scrubby green fields, brick-
fields, cressy ditches, and factory yards.
Presently, we get away into freer air, far from
shipwrights’ yards and the ribby skeletons of
ships and barges; we come out into broad fields,
where, over hedges and above haystacks, you
could see the masts of vessels moving.

Wandering cries of the names of several
stations, and I reach the little quiet countrified
Greenhithe, where the air, fresh with October
influences, is all alive with yellow leaves that swirl
and flutter about like so many golden butterflies.
I trudge down a chalky lane leading to the
river-side. There can be no doubt that I am in
the right road, for here come rolling along, a gang
of sailors, and on the band of every flat cap I see
in great gilt letters “WARRIOR.” These frank,
brave-looking fish out of water, do not let me
forget that l am in Kent, for every one of them
carries in his hand or in his cap a great bough
tufted with ripe hops; they roll along, shouting
out to each other as loud as if there was a gale
of wind blowing, and nothing short of a speaking-
trumpet would carry a request more than ten
yards.

Yonder, a few hundred yards across the water,
lies the Warrior: a black vicious ugly customer
as ever I saw. Whale-like in size, and with as
terrible a row of incisor teeth as ever closed on a
French frigate. I turn off down the main
street of Greenhithe, the shops striking me
as primitive and countrified, and I stop for
lunch and information at a small inn called The
Jolly-boat. The rooms are small, low-roofed,
and as like uncomfortable cabins as they can
well be. A deep yellow engraving of the Battle of
Trafalgar is on one wall, and The Jolly Arethusa
on the other. The parlour, from the centre of
which hangs a bell, looped like a halter, and
dreadfully tempting to a moody man who has
defrauded the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
looks out on the river; and on a little causeway
of knobbly stones that runs down into
the water, a great slovenly green boat, laden
with people, is just discharging its cargo: two
of them are sailors from the Warrior, and one a
marine.

“Can I go on board?” I say to the waiter,
who appears like the spirit of the ring in Aladdin,
when I pull the bell.

“What, go on board the wessell? Why, in
course, sir; there is a boat waiting now with
some gen'lemen.”

So down I went to the boat and found two
cunning-looking watermen handing in some
country people, who were bent on the same
errand as myself—evidently small tradespeople
from Charlton, Erith, or Lewisham, fresh from
tea and shrimps; the men of a winking, nudging,
boisterous, good-natured kind; the women fussy,
timid, laugning, hearty, vulgar, common-place
people determined to be amused with
everything.

The boatman considered us as mere “yokels,”
who did not know a spanker-boom from a top-
sheet. I could see Jack making tremendous
telegraphic faces to Joe in front. He was
going to try how much we could swallow.

“Lucky, gents, as you come when you did.
An hour ago, and there was such a sea on, we
could not have pulled you out if you had given
us five pound. The captain of the Warrior did
not dare come on shore. Dare he, Jack? The
werry captain put his gig back. Didn’t he,
Jack?”

“But this isn’t the sea, boatman?” said one
of the country people.

“Well, not just what you may call full sea,
but we have a tidy tide here, too, when the wind
blows as hard as it does to-day. Here we
are, gents—take care how you step out. One
at a time, ladies. Sixpence out, sixpence in;
that is our fare, gents. When you return will
do, and take care, please, not to upset the
boat.”

I clambered and balanced myself from boat
to boat (a fleet of boats, laden with meat and
vegetables, lay round the Warrior), and made
my way up a temporary ladder that led almost
perpendicularly up the side of the monster: a
boatman running before us to introduce us to a
master gunner, who would show us over the
ship. A sturdy lad, just arrived from the
fleet in the Clyde, came with us and asked for
the master-at-arms. The country people, gaping
and bewildered, were led off on their labyrinthine
walk.

There were townfuls of men at work in the
great leviathan, shaping bulks of timber,
dragging about trim Armstrong guns, hammering
at steel plates, tugging at gun carriages. I
mused. Wooden walls of old England, farewell
for ever. No more shall ye float upon the brine,