and priest-hanging; all the atrocities of those barbarous times were presented to the multitude in inflammatory language, while the sufferings and fidelity of priests and people in those times were dwelt upon in the most pathetic terms. 'But,' cried the orators, 'the hour of deliverance for God's people has struck at last, the hour of retribution and restoration. The Holy Virgin has heard their piteous cries. The blessed Jesus, at her request, has come forth in His almighty power to vindicate their cause, and His Vicar will soon reign over the Irish people, now for the first time to be truly emancipated, gloriously regenerated. And oh blessed and praised for ever be the God of justice and mercy, the new Pope whose advent they expected would be an Irishman, the first of the race that ever occupied the throne of Peter. Would they not hail his approach with rapture? Would they not go forth in their tens of thousands, singing hozannas to the Vicar of Jesus?'

In the intervals of the speaking prayers were said and litanies were chanted-all suited to the occasion, and producing a flood-tide of excitement. Old men wept aloud with joy, and fell prostrate on the floor, kissing the earth in thanksgiving that they had lived to see that day. Young men rushed forth in the open, jumped about, and flung their hats and caps in the air. Young women embraced one another hysterically, while mothers and grandmothers pressed their children to their bosoms with convulsive affection. There was nothing that those people were not then ready to do at the bidding of the preachers. . . .

We may suppose, further, that the future historian would have to record that all the southern cities had given their keys to the Pope's representatives, and proclaimed the Sovereign Pontiff King of Ireland.

But then would come the inevitable reaction, as fatal to the Papacy as the Revolution has been to it in Spain and Italy. An Americanised democracy would rear its grim communistic head in every town, crying, 'Down with the Pope!'-Down with the priests!' upsetting Catholic platforms, trampling upon Catholic altars, and proclaiming the Republic. The Orange Society would have enlisted under its standard the whole Protestant population of the country, prepared to fight to the death, without quarter or mercy, for the extirpation of Popery. A civil war, as fierce, as bloody, as destructive as the fratricidal combats that desolated Paris, would rage throughout Ulster, and extend itself into other parts of the island.

Nothing could equal the calamity which the experiment would bring upon the Irish people, except the ruin with which it would overwhelm the Irish Hierarchy. As in Bavaria, so in Ireland, the libertyloving people would have to repudiate the Pope and fall back upon the old Catholic Church; while the Imperial Government would be found the only guarantee of peace between antagonistic races and religions. That Government must take its stand somewhere, and say to the Roman Hierarchy-'You must come no further.'

ECENT naval disasters have given rise to much public discussion on the capabilities of the present generation of naval officers as compared with those of their predecessors. Old admirals, who have not been afloat for a generation, have come forward to state that the old race of officers managed their ships better than the new, and have raised the well-worn cry that the service is going to the dogs. Young admirals have apologetically replied, giving all honour to their forefathers, but by no means reassuring timid folk that a milk-andwater softness has not permeated the British Navy. Others have thought that an exaggerated regard for the proprieties, the etiquette, and the details of everyday life, with the inundation of foolscap and multitudinous returns on every imaginable subject and the constant use of the telegraph, have eliminated independent action and responsibility, and diverted the studies of captains from the properties and capabilities of their ships and from the higher occupations of naval command. Others, again, have supposed that Mr. Childers, having swept away the younger and more intelligent officers, whose only fault was early promotion and temporary employment in those public offices on shore for which their intellectual acquirements and active habits specially fitted them, the residue are not fair representatives of the modern Navy.

The issue as to the decline of modern seamanship is deserving of careful investigation, involving as it does so much of our pre-eminence as a maritime nation. Those who support the adverse view, base it chiefly on the late disasters; and these, it must be conceded, have

been quite numerous enough to call for enquiry. The unprecedented overturning of the low freeboard Captain, in a moderate summer gale, in the very midst of a squadron of other ironclads, heads the list. The blowing ashore of the gun vessel Slaney in the Chinese seas comes next in fatality. The running ashore of the Megara, a wornout iron storeship, on the uninhabited island of St. Paul, in the midst of the Indian Ocean, in order to save the lives of the three hundred and eighty passengers en route to Australia, comes next in risk. The loss of the Psyche despatch steam vessel on a rock a few hundred yards from the coast of Sicily, whilst carrying a portion of the Solar Eclipse Expedition, occurred in the interim. This is a tolerable list of total losses in the Royal Navy during about a year. But even these have scarcely attracted so much attention as the grounding in daylight and in fine weather of the ironclads Agincourt at Gibraltar, and Lord Warden and Caledonia in the Mediterranean, and of the wooden training vessel Racer off Ryde. Doubtless, these are

not all or even the majority of the ships-of-war which grounded within the same period. It is chiefly on this evidence that it has been assumed that modern seamanship is not of that type which won for the British Navy and nation its ancient maritime reputation. Yet we venture to say, that a dispassionate examination of these premises will not support such a conclusion, which, to be sustained, must be founded on more substantial considerations. To begin with, the grounding of ships-of-war is not a new evolution, nor does it necessarily suggest a lack of nerve or of

skill on the part of the captain. Even Admiral Rous acknowledges this, as well he may, seeing that he never would have performed, about thirty years ago, one of the most daring, skilful, and arduous feats of seamanship had he not first ran H.M.'s ship Pique on shore, and most seriously damaged her hull and rudder, &c. We have rarely served in a ship-of-war which has not either been stranded, or been in imminent danger of being so, during her three years' commission. Indeed, it would be by no means difficult to prove that an excess of nerve leads oftener to the grounding of a ship-of-war than its absence. One of the most skilful sailors of this or any other time is a gallant admiral who recently held the chief command of the China Station. Few officers have ever run their ships on shore so frequently. We question if he ever commanded a ship which did not touch the ground more than once, whilst one frigate he commanded was so frequently ashore in the Chinese seas that it became a standing joke, and another was lost by him in the same waters. On the other hand, a lack of enterprise, of nerve, or of skill, leads to timidity and over-caution; nothing is ventured, nothing is dared, a wide berth is given to all dangers, and no risks are incurred; but when the time comes for deeds of daring, these are not the men who furnish the Cochranes, the Pellews, the Brentons, or the Nelsons of the Navy.

Nothing could be more prejudicial to the spirit of enterprise in war than an excess of rigour against those who by an apparent lack of circumspection ventured much to win much. This was well understood in olden times, when the adventurous spirit was not crushed to death under that awful bugbear of responsibility. Clarendon tells us of Blake, who, as we know, was not

in the modern sense a seaman at all, that he despised those rules which had been long in practice, to keep his ships and men out of danger, which had been held in former times a point of great ability and circumspection, as if the principal art in the captain of a ship had been to be sure to come home safe again.'

The fear of risk, the dread of responsibility, timid anticipation of adverse public opinion, and anxious apprehension of the personal consequences of ill-success in perilous enterprises voluntarily undertaken, are paralysing considerations most dangerous to the nation, which may be engendered amongst modern seamen by too severe imputations of rashness or recklessness, and too servile a worship of circumspection and safety. Even so lately as the Russian war, Lord Lyons inculcated on courts-martial lenity towards officers whose ships had grounded by excess of daring. Our cousins understood this well during the late American civil war, when ships were risked freely and lost frequently, in the hope of attaining desirable objects.

If it be insisted that the circumstances under which the recent naval disasters occurred were not such as involved the exercise of nerve, we shall still have to consider how far they arose from the absence of seamanlike skill. But here we must ask, what do we mean by seamanship? We believe that seamanship may be divided into three separate parts, mutually allied, but rarely united in the highest order in the same person; and we venture to add, that many of the bravest and most successful admirals have been deficient in one or more, and even in all three, of these points. These divisions are, first, the handling and manoeuvring of ships and their appurtenances in open water; second, the general navigation of ships on the high seas,

involving, not only asterial observations, and calculations, but experience in discerning the peculiarities of distant land and water; and, third, the local pilotage of ships in narrow channels and harbours. Admiral Rous has the reputation of having been, thirty years ago, a thorough seaman, and we venture to affirm that he is so still, yet we doubt much if he acted as navigator of the Pique, and he certainly was not a local pilot, or that ship would not have knocked so large a hole in her bottom. Nelson had all the decision of purpose and firmness of character which a sea-life engenders, yet he was dependent on the 'master' for navigating his ships, and on local pilots for taking them in or out of harbours or narrow channels. Blake never pretended to be competent either as a local pilot or as a deep sea navigator, nor yet as a handler or manoeuvrer of ships and gear, still he managed to raise the renown of the British Navy to an eminence unknown before, and compelled respect to the British flag on whatever sea it appeared. Hitherto, what has been claimed in this respect for eminent British admirals and captains is rapidity of observation, promptitude in acting, readiness of resource, and generally, though not always, facility in handling their ships and gear. It was character, rather than technical acquirements, which usually won the battle. Such men as General Monk and Prince Rupert, no less than Blake, nailed success to their standards, in defiance of their ignorance of technical details, by that superiority of character and of general information which overawed and directed their more experienced subordinates. And if we come to more recent times, the admirals who came to the fore at the conclusion of the Russian war were in no sense mere local pilots, nor deep sea navigators, nor, we may even

add, were they mere handlers and manoeuvrers of ships, skilful though some of them may have been in this latter capacity. Of the men in chief command of our great fleets in the last campaigns in the Black Sea and in the Baltic, one had been for a generation attached to the diplomatic service, and the other had been employed for years at the Admiralty or otherwise on shore. When, then, we speak of seamanship as having been the mainstay of the British Navy, and that which distinguished it above all other, we mean that professional training had given to our captains quickness of observation, self-reliance, and decision of character, and to their subordinates facility of execution. In old times the famous sea-captain told the 'master' to lay the vessel alongside the enemy. More recently the captain did it himself, but not always, and rare indeed are the instances in which the captain took asterial observations and calculated the ship's position for the purpose of navigation. The navigating officer has in the British Navy always devoted his life to the study of deep sea navigation and of the conformations of sea coasts, with the high land above; and consequently the British have always been the best navigated of any ships in the world. Hence it is, that, in the British Navy, seamanship has come to be regarded as the handling and manoeuvring of a ship and her gear, &c., in open water. And when it is said that British seamanship has declined, it is meant that the art of using a ship, irrespective of local piloting or of navigating from place to place, is not what it was.

Moreover, the declension of modern seamanship is not said to be that modern officers cannot handle modern ships as well as ancient officers managed antiquated ships, but that the present generation could not manage obsolete vessels so well as

those who lived when such vessels existed. This truism is equally applicable to the old officers still living, who would have been quite as much adrift in command of an ancient galley. They would have found it quite as difficult to row an old 'jackass' frigate in the 'wind's eye,' as modern officers would find it to claw' an ironclad off a lee shore without the aid of steam. It is no proof that a modern soldier is not as good a warrior as his forefathers, that he cannot handle a battle-axe or shoot an arrow as his ancestors did. The common sense question is, can the modern sailor handle the modern ships as skilfully as the old officers managed the old ships? Otherwise, it might quite as fairly be asked, where would the captain of the old 'jackass' frigate of 500 tons be, if suddenly placed in command of an enemy's frigate of 6,000 tons, which would not do anything under sail alone, but 'sag' to leeward like a washing tub, and was dependent on hostile engineers, who understood how to disable an engine or burst a boiler?

Let us see, then, how far the late naval disasters support the assumption that the present race of naval men are less capable of handling modern large steam ships than the 'old school' were of managing their obsolete small sailing vessels. It is admitted on all sides that the officer in command of the Captain at the time of her loss was one of the best of modern seamen, and that he was at his post when the ship was overturned. Any lack of skill on his part must be accepted as telling against the whole class of which he was an acknowledged type. Let it be remembered that the catastrophe occurred in the presence of high-sided ironclads, some of which commonly roll through arcs of 50° and even 60°, whilst the Captain rarely rolled through half those arcs, and that at least one

A

very crank ship was present, whilst the Captain was said to be the stiffest vessel in the squadron, elements which seemed to indicate perfect freedom from the special danger of overturning, whatever lurking tendency might be suspected of sinking from other causes. legal examination of the seventeen survivors failed to elicit any lack of precaution before the fatal squall struck the Captain, and the rapidity with which the ship turned bottom up forestalled any attempts to right her. Admiral Rous assumes that the topsail brace, a rope not more than two inches in diameter, was not properly adjusted, and that such an adjustment might have saved this 4,000-tor vessel. The first assumption is alto gether groundless, and the last is sim ply monstrous. As high-sided ships being thrown on what is figuratively called their beam ends' is not uncommon, others have asked why the customary expedients for righting such ships were not resorted to? The reply is, that this was not a case of being thrown on the beam ends and lying there, but of suddenly turning bottom up and going down. In the former case, the helm, the lee screw, and an extemporised drag or sea-anchor, might, in the course of an hour or more, turn the prostrate vessel round so as to bring the wind to bear in a lifting direction; but in the five minutes which elapsed between the first blow of the squall, or in the one minute which elapsed between the first symptom of danger, and the overturning of the ship, all that was possible was done. Whatever reputation may have suffered shipwreck with the Captain, that of her gallant commander stands enhanced by the skill and devotion he displayed, and modern seamen may well be proud to have had such a comrade.

The Slaney belonged to a class of gun vessel which can neither steam nor sail in a gale, and must helplessly drive wherever it carries