hands, shows that no writer could be better
able than he to do justice to his theme. His
immediate motive for taking it up arose from
his unsuccessful attempt to discover any
published statement calculated to give, in the order
of time and occurrence, a consecutive memoir
of what has taken place since the war in the
Crimea, in connexion with the improvement of
rifled arms; and finding that none such existed,
he was induced to compile the present volume,
"in the hope to supply the want, so far as
concerns the progress made in England." As we
have already intimated, in The Story of the
Guns that want is most ably and amply
supplied.

Sir Emerson Tennent's work is divided into
three parts; the first treats of "The Rifled
Musket;"  the second of "Rifled Ordnance;"
the third bears the title of "The Iron Navy."
By this division the whole subject is exhausted.

If, according to the old military saying,
"every bullet has its billet," its meaning, when
Brown Bess (the old regulation musket) was the
weapon from which the bullet issued, must have
been greatly qualified. The bullet was generally
lost in space, or buried in earth, and only
exceptionally found its billet in the quarters for which
it was intended. At the battle of Salamanca, for
instance, no more than eight thousand men were
put hors de combat, although three million five
hundred thousand cartridges were fired: together
with six thousand cannon-balls; to say nothing
of cavalry and infantry charges, so that, as
regards the line, only one shot in four hundred
and thirty-seven took effect. Instances of this
kind might be quoted ad infinitum, illustrative
of what Sir Emerson Tennent appropriately
calls "the chance performances of the clumsy
and capricious Brown Bess." And so little
reliance had the soldier on her capabilities, even
within the certified range of two hundred yards,
that it was his working rule to reserve his fire
until he saw the whites of his enemy's eyes, and
even then it was said that, before he could bring
down his man, he must discharge the full weight
of his body in lead. This might very well be
the case when, according to the testimony of an
engineer officer who, in one of the great battles
of the Peninsula, had an opportunity of witnessing
the effect of musketry upon cavalry charging
a square, a volley at thirty paces brought down
only three men; while another officer engaged
at Waterloo has stated that he could not see
more than three or four saddles emptied by the
fire of one side of a square of British infantry
upon a body of French cavalry close to them.
Witnessing these abortive performances, a
general commanding, might well have joined in
Corporal Trim's remark upon the Sieur Tripet's
gymnastics, that "one home-thrust of a bayonet
was worth them all;" and, indeed, it was "the
cold steel" that generally did settle the
momentous question.

But the proved inefficacy of Brown Bess was
held to be no disqualification on her part,—or
rather, no attempt was made when the war was
over, to render her more efficient when next called
upon to exhibit her capabilities; for when, in
1838, a series of experiments was undertaken
by the officers of the Royal Engineers at
Chatham to ascertain what the properties of
the service muskets really were, though the
results were perfectly ludicrous, no attempt was
made to improve the weapon. Among other
examples of failure on this occasion, at a target
six feet wide, and eleven feet six inches high—
beside which the grenadiers of the King of
Prussia would have seemed like dwarfs—shot
after shot was fired, from a distance of only
three hundred yards, without one hitting the
mark. Even a more striking instance of
ineffective firing is cited by Sir Emerson Tennent.
"Not very long ago," he says, "a well trained
marksman, provided with an old regulation
musket, was placed to fire at a target eighteen
feet square, at a distance of three hundred yards,
and found that he could not put even into that
spacious area one bullet out of twenty. At two
hundred yards, his success was not greater, and
yet the fire-arm thus tested was the regular
weapon of the British soldier so late as the
year 1852." A faithful follower of routine,
Brown Bess continued thus to illustrate the
official principle by showing that she knew
perfectly well "How not to do it."

It has been over and over again asserted
that the Duke of Wellington's objection to
change was the reason why no improvement in
the regulation musket was attempted; but tardy
justice has been done to him in this particular,
and Sir Emerson Tennent observes: "So far
from being opposed to the armament of troops,
his personal friend and biographer, the Chaplain
General of the Forces, has placed on record that
the Duke of Wellington was often heard to say
that 'looking to the amount of mechanical skill
in the country, and the numerical weakness of
our army as compared with those of the great
continental powers, British troops ought to be
the best armed soldiers in Europe.'" The
Duke, however, did more than pronounce an
opinion. When, according to his invariable rule
of waiting until the success of an experiment
justified the adoption of a new system, he
ascertained, not only by example, but by personal
inspection, that the Minié rifle exhibited a
marked superiority over the old musket, he did
not hesitate to recommend its introduction into
the service, or to express a wish that every
soldier of the line should be armed with it.
Improvement (as was manifested by the adoption
of the Minié rifle) was steadily kept in view
by Lord Hardinge, the Duke's successor in the
command of the army. But, practically
acquainted with the subject, Lord Hardinge soon
found that the Minié rifle, however great a
triumph over Brown Bess, was far from being a
perfect weapon. Its weight was excessive, it
displayed many faults of construction, and the
ball exhibited grave disadvantages, the principal
of which are thus enumerated: "Its tendency to
fouling was considerable, the distended portions
of the projectile sometimes detached themselves
and clogged the grooves, rendering loading