towards that place, had been reproving them
for their carelessness in not attending to him,
and had just turned his head towards the
enemy, when he observed this shot, and
instantly called for them to take care; his
caution was, however, too late; the shot
entered the embrasure, and had the above-
recited fatal effect. It is somewhat singular
that this boy should be possessed of such
uncommon quickness of sight as to see the
enemy's shot almost immediately after they
quitted the guns. He was not, however, the
only one in the garrison possessing this
qualification; another boy, of about the same age,
was as celebrated, if not his superior. Both
of them belonged to the Artificer company,
and were constantly placed on some part of
the works to observe the enemy's fire; their
names were Richmond (not Richardson, as
Drinkwater has it,) and Brand; the former
was reported to have the best eye." Thomas
Richmond and John Brand went, for this
value of theirs, by the nicknames of Shot
and Shell. Richmond was called Shell, his
being the better eye at a look-out. The
fathers of these two boys were sergeants
in the company. Richmond's was killed
at the siege. After the siege, the boys,
noted for their good service at the batteries,
were sent to the best school in Gibraltar;
where, by their quickness and ingenuity,
they earned the patronage of certain
officers of Engineers. They became in their
own corps corporal and lance-corporal, were
discharged, and appointed by the
commander-in-chief assistant-draughtsman, for
they had already distinguished themselves
by their skill as modellers. After several
trial-models of various subjects, these
young men completed, on a large scale, a
model of Gibraltar, which obtained so much
repute that they were ordered to make
two other models, one in polished stone of
the King's Bastion, and one of the north
front of the rock. When these were
completed they obtained the warm approbation
of the highest authorities of the fortress;
and Richmond and Brand, still going through
the world together, were recommended to
the Duke of Richmond for commissions.
They were sent then to Woolwich for
preparatory training, where they were so apt at
learning that few months sufficed to qualify
them for appointments as second-lieutenants
in the Royal Engineers. Their commissions
were both dated on the one day—the
seventeenth of January, seventeen 'ninety-three.
Before the year was out, both young men
died, in the West Indies, of the same disease.
These are the only instances of commissions
having been given from the ranks of Sappers
and Miners into the corps of Engineers. The
great model of Gibraltar (on a scale of an
inch to twenty-five feet), executed by these
youths, was brought from the rock in the
year of their death, and deposited in the
museum of the Royal Arsenal, at Woolwich.
Nine years afterwards the museum, and the
model in it, was destroyed by fire. The other
two models mentioned in this story are now
to be seen in the Rotunda, at the Royal Military
Repository, Woolwich, and are the most
beautiful things in the place.

Through changes which it is not requisite
for us to specify, we come to a period in the
history of the Sappers and Miners, when the
Duke of Richmond, being Master-General of
the Ordnance, and having extensive plans of
fortification for the defence of the country,
did not see how they could be effected
economically with the ordinary labour of the
country, and suggested to Mr. Pitt the necessity
of raising a corps of Military Artificers on
the model of the companies employed at
Gibraltar. Experience was in favour of the
proposition, and without reference to the
House of Commons, the warrant for the first
embodying of such a corps was signed on the
tenth of October, seventeen 'eighty-seven, not,
of course, wholly unquestioned, but sheltered
under cover of more stirring topics, the
innovation slipped through the fingers of the
Commons easily enough. Country gentlemen
did not fail to declare that "if the house
should agree to put six hundred Englishmen
under martial law, merely for the
paltry consideration of saving two thousand
a-year, they would betray their constituents,
and would be devoid of those feelings for the
constitution, which, &c. &c. &c." Lord Carlisle,
in the upper house, pointed out that "if the
rights and liberties of six hundred artificers
were worth just two thousand pounds, they
would see that the Noble Duke valued the
rights of every individual exactly at three
pounds ten shillings a-piece." The suggestion,
nevertheless was adopted, and the corps
of Royal Military Artificers—consisting of six
companies of a hundred men each,
commanded by officers of Royal Engineers—was
duly constituted.

Civil artisans in the government service
showed, at first, grave discontent at the
authorised employment of Military Artificers;
and the Dock workmen at Plymouth
interfering in a trifling dispute between a member
of the new service and a sailor, brought about
a quarrel between the Military Artificers on
the one side, and the dock labourers and
sailors on the other, which ended in serious
battles, the killing of three or four men, and
the wounding of many. The courage, good
conduct and efficiency of the new corps, as
well as the tender nursing of the Duke of
Richmond, made it easy to surmount such
difficulties. Military Artificers, living only
at stations in England, were in fact treated
more like citizens than soldiers, until the war
broke out with France in seventeen hundred
and ninety-three; then men were, for the first
time, demanded from the English companies
for active service in Flanders and the West
Indies. The demand was made in pursuance
of an agreement that had almost fallen into