of her great captains by land and sea, than the
sorry rogueries of those other disreputable
captains who answer to the name of Macheath,
Turpin, Sheppard, Duval, or Sixteen-String-
Jack. I would sooner purchase the Life of the
Duke of Wellington in twelve penny numbers,
with an engraving of the Battle of Waterloo
gratis (be sure to ask for Stubbs's edition), and
which work I have recently perused with
immense satisfaction, finding it to be written in a
style far above the general average of such
publications—so much so, that it occurs to me that
I have read most of it before, in an obscure
publication relative to the Peninsular War by
one Napier—I say I would rather purchase
Number One (with which are presented
Numbers One and Two of the Life of Admiral
Nelson), than I would subscribe to the Penny
Murder Sheet or the Minerva Press with
new steam to it.

Another, though perhaps a more
questionable, amenity of war, occurs in the astounding
development which it has given in that
desirable quality in a civilized people
cultivating the arts—the imaginative faculty.
The stock signs and wonders of the
newspapers, the enormous gooseberries, showers
of frogs, black rain, gigantic cucumbers,
singular births, and curious lusus naturæ,
have quite disappeared of late, and are now
replaced by bombardments of cities, captures
of ports, destruction of fleets, abdications of
crowned heads, and slaughters of illustrious
personages, all absolutely ideal. The electric
telegraph starts up as a lyric poet—
quite an Ossian, of the genuine Macpherson
order; and on its many stringed lyre
sings pæans of advances that never were,
and retreats that never will be.
Enthusiastic artists see with prophetic souls their
uncles sinking in burning transports far
out at sea, and give us authentic pictures of
the same. A view of the battle of Navarino,
becomes, by a stretch of imagination, the
bombardment of Odessa; and amid rumours
and counter-rumours, telegraphic despatches,
and private letters, a new question is added
to the already lengthy list of those awaiting
human solution, namely, "Who tells all the
lies about the war?"

I have not come to the end of my catalogue
of the war's amenities yet. I can proudly
point to this consoling fact, that the war has
completely "shut up" the bores. They have
not a leg to stand upon. The Protectionist
bore; the "what are we to do with our
produce?" bore; the Irish bore (a dreadful
creature); the colonial bore; the tiger bore
(generally in the H.E.I.C.S.); the sporting
bore, who wishes some one would name the
winner of the Squapter cup; the statistical
bore; the story-telling bore; the doctrinal
bore—the war has annihilated them, drawn
their tusks, stuffed the lemon-gag of silence
between their jaws. If a man attempt to
bore you now, be down upon him with the
Crimea; if he persist, tackle him with the
Bamberg Conference; if he show any remaining
spark of vitality, finish him with the relief
of Silistria, and the probable draught of
water of the Russian ships of the line
in the Baltic. There is, to be sure, a new
species of bore who has started up since the
commencement of hostilities—the war bore,
the man who is far from satisfied about the
treaties of Unkiar-Skelessi, who would like to
know more of what passed between Catherine
the Second and the Grand Vizier in seventeen
hundred and eighty-two, and who is desirous
of telling you how far the provisions of the
Tanzimat have been carried out by the
Sultan Abd-ul-Medjid. But we can bear
with the war-bore. He can't last. He is
sure to break down after a little, over
some hard Turkish word, and then you can
lead him gently back to the question of
the guardsmen's stocks, or the discipline of
the Zouaves.

Such are a few of the amenities of war.
Happy and grateful should these nations be
if the dreadful undertaking we are upon
assume no more repulsive form than that
which it has already taken. The war will
have had its amenities indeed, if it terminate
without a famine, without a press-gang, without
national poverty, without a dreadful
slaughter. Nor, among the amenities of the
struggle, should we fail to reckon—chiefest
among them, should we reckon rather—the
fact that the war has brought closer and
firmer together the bonds of intelligence and
union between the two bravest, wisest, gentlest
nations of the world. The hot eastern sun
may melt away, ere it sets, many mutual
hatreds, dislikes, prejudices, ignorances,
jealousies, misunderstandings. Then when the
steam argosies bear the peacemakers of the
world back to their native shores again;
standing hand in hand in a better brotherhood,
Saxon and Gaul will agree, rather to
repudiate every victory gained in ages gone,
in contest with each other; rather to cast
every tattered standard, every hard-won
trophy, every bloodstained glory, into the
fathomless sea, and let their memories perish
there; than that one fresh bickering, one
new jealousy, one angry word should arise
between the great twin brothers of civilisation.

NEW TALE by Mr. CHARLES DICKENS now publishing Weekly in HOUSEHOLD WORDS
ON the Twenty-second of July will be published, in Household Words, the SEVENTEENTH PORTION of a New Work of Fiction called
HARD TIMES.
BY CHARLES DICKENS.
The publication of this Story will be continued in HOUSEHOLD WORDS from Week to Week, and completed in Five Months (twenty weeks) from its commencement on the First of April.
Price of each Weekly Number of HOUSEHOLD WORDS, (containing, besides the usual variety of matter), Twopence; or Stamped Threepence.
HOUSEHOLD WORDS, Conducted by CHARLES DICKENS, is published also in Monthly Parts and in Half-Yearly Volumes.