condemned. The man who reads a hundred books on a subject, in order to write one, confers a real benefit upon society, provided he does his work well. But some very capital work has been written without the necessity either of research or of original investigation. Trollope drew his famous Archdeacon without ever having matter with him? I anxiously enquired. 'It's my heroine,' he replied; 'I've got her in such a fix that I cannot extricate her without a slight violation of the rules of propriety.' Then let her be improper, and don't let us be late for the train,' I flippantly said. 'My dear friend,' he replied, do you want to ruin me? Are you not aware that I live by never allow-met a live Archdeacon. He never lived in ing my heroines to do anything to which the most stringent mamma might object? If once the slightest doubt were raised about my novels being sound reading for the most innocent of schoolroom girls, my occupation would be gone.' And so we missed the train; but the heroine emerged from the pages of the novel a model of all the heroine ought to be under difficult circumstances." Much might be said of the feelings of readers in reference to the fate of the characters drawn by the novelist. "Mrs. Burnett, how could you kill Tredennis?' asked a reader of Through One Administration. "Why, I wrote two conclusions," was the answer. "First I killed both, but that would not do, and there was nothing for it but to kill the soldier. It broke my heart, for I loved that man, but he had to die!" On the other hand, the Mrs. Proudie of Anthony Trollope became such a bore that he determined to get rid of her by killing her. The difference in the methods adopted by different authors is as great as the difference in their choice of subjects. There is a story quoted in illustration of the different characteristics of three great nationalities which equally illustrates the different paths which may be followed in any intellectual enterprise. any cathedral city except London; Archdeacon Grantly was the child of "moral consciousness" alone; he knew nothing, except indirectly, about Bishops and Deans. In fact, The Warden was conceived not primarily as a clerical novel, but as a novel which should work out a dramatic situation that of an honest, amiable man who was the holder, by no fault of his own, of an endowment which was in itself an abuse, and on whose devoted head should fall the thunders of those who attacked the abuse. Bryan Waller Procter had never seen the ocean when he wrote The Sea; neither Schiller nor Rossini had seen Switzerland when they wrote their William Tells. George Cruikshank's sketches of the Boulevards and the Palais Royal, elaborated from sketches furnished to him, were wonderfully spirited and true, although he had never been across the Channel. Indeed, he never got beyond a French seaport in the course of his long life. A day at Boulogne comprehended all his Continental experiences. Harrison Ainsworth, the Lancashire novelist, when he wrote Rookwood and Jack Sheppard, relied absolutely on his power of reading up and assimilation, and never had the slightest intercourse with thieves in his life. It is said that when he wrote the really admirable ride of Turpin to York, he only went at a great pace over the paper with a road-map and description of the country in front of him. It was only when he heard everybody say how truly the country was described, and how faithfully he had observed distances and localities, that he actually drove over the ground for the first time, and declared that it was more like his account than he could have imagined. An Englishman, a Frenchman, and a German, competing for a prize offered for the best essay on the natural history of the camel, adopted each his own method of research upon the subject. The German, laying in a stock of tobacco, retired to his study in order to evolve from the depths of his philosophic consciousness the primitive notion of a camel. The Frenchman resorted to the nearest library, and ransacked its contents with a view to collect all that other "A man would do well to carry a pencil men had said upon the subject. The English-in his pocket, and write down the thoughts man packed his carpet-bag and set sail for of the moment. Those that come unsought the East, that he might study the habits for are generally the most valuable, and of the animal in its original haunts. The should be secured, because they seldom blending of these three methods is the return.' This was the advice of Lord perfection of study; but the Frenchman's Bacon, whose example has been followed method is not unknown even among by many eminent men. For instance, it Englishmen. Nor is it to be absolutely is said of Hobbes that, when he composed his Leviathan, he walked much, and mused as he walked, and that he had in the head of his cane a pen and inkhorn, and a notebook in his pocket. As soon as a thought darted into his mind, he entered it in his book. Miss Martineau has recorded that Barry Cornwall's favourite method of composition was indulged when alone in a crowd, and best in the streets of London. He had also a habit of running into a shop to write down his verses. Tom Moore's custom was to compose as he walked. He had a table in his garden, on which he wrote down his thoughts. When the weather was bad, he paced up and down his small study. It is extremely desirable that thoughts should be written as they rise in the mind, because, if they are not recorded at the time, they may never return. "I attach so much importance to the ideas which come during the night, or in the morning," says Gaston Plante, the electrical engineer, "that I have always, at the head of my bed, paper and pencil suspended by string, by the help of which I write every morning the ideas I have been able to conceive, particularly upon subjects of scientific research. I write these notes in obscurity, and decipher and develop them in the morning, pen in hand." The philosopher Emerson took similar pains to catch a fleeting thought, for, whenever he had a happy idea, he wrote it down, and when Mrs. Emerson, startled in the night by some unusual sound, cried, "What is the matter? Are you ill?" the philosopher softly replied, "No, my dear; only an idea." for instance, boomed his verses so as to be The question of the authorship of certain popular works has given rise to a great deal of speculation. A few months ago, the Americans were puzzling their brains to discover the name of the author of The Breadwinners. Amongst other stinging charges against him, to induce him to break the silence, was that it was a base and craven thing to publish a book anonymously! "My motive in withholding my name is simple enough," he said to his furious critics. "I am engaged in business in which my standing would be seriously compromised were it known that I had written a novel. I am sure that my practical efficiency is not lessened by this act, but I am equally sure that I could never recover from the injury it would occasion me if known among my own colleagues. For that positive reason, and for the negative one that I do not care for publicity, I resolved to keep the knowledge of my little venture in authorship restricted to as small a circle as possible. Only two persons beside myself know who wrote The Breadwinners." A far more serious dispute followed the publication of the Vestiges of Creation forty years ago. The theologians of Scotland were wild with rage at the audacity of the author, who would have been torn to pieces had he been discovered. Thackeray confessed that the title for In scientific circles Mr. Robert Chambers his novel, Vanity Fair, came to him in was credited with the authorship; and the middle of the night, and that he Henry Greville seems to have had no jumped out of bed and ran three times doubt upon the matter. In Leaves from round the room, shouting the words. the Diary of Henry Greville there is an Whether in town or country, Landor entry under the date December 28th, 1847, reflected and composed habitually out as follows: "I have been reading a novel walking, and therefore preferred at all called Jane Eyre, which is just now making times to walk alone. So did Buckle. a great sensation, and which absorbed and Wordsworth was accustomed to compose interested me more than any novel I can his verse in his solitary walks, carry them recollect having read. The author is unin his memory, and get wife or daughter known. Mrs. Butler-Miss Fanny Kemble to write them down on his return. His who is greatly struck by the talent of excursions and peculiar habits gave rise to the book, fancies it is written by Chambers some anxious beliefs amongst the ignorant-who is author of the Vestiges of peasantry. Even his sanity was questioned. The peasantry of Rydal thought him "not quite bissel," because he always walked alone, and was met at odd times and in odd places. Some poets have been in the habit of humming or repeating their verses aloud as they composed them. Southey, Creation-because she thinks that whoever wrote it must, from its language, be a Scotchman, and from its sentiments be a Unitarian; and Chambers, besides answering to all these peculiarities, has an intimate friend who believes in supernatural agencies, such as are described in the last Nobody knew Charlotte Bronté; but she was unable to keep the secret very long. The late R. H. Horne was present at that first dinner-party given by Mr. George Smith, the publisher, when Currer Bell, then in the first flush of her fame, made her earliest appearance in a London diningroom. She was anxious to preserve the anonymity of her literary character, and was introduced by her true name. Horne, however, who sat next to her, was so fortunate as to discover her identity. Just previously he had sent to the new author, under cover of her publisher, a copy of his Orion. In an unguarded moment Charlotte Bronté turned to him and said: "I was so much obliged to you, Mr. Horne, for sending me your- But she checked herself with an inward start, having thus exploded her Currer Bell secret by identifying herself with the author of Jane Eyre. "Ah, Miss Bronté," whispered the innocent cause of the misfortune, "you would never do for treasons and stratagems!" The late John Blackwood corresponded with George Eliot some time before he knew that she was a woman. He called her "Dear George," he says, and often used expressions which a man commonly uses only to a man! After he found out who "Dear George" was, he was naturally a little anxious to recall some of the expressions he had used. Charles Dickens, however, detected what escaped the observation of most people. Writing to a correspondent in January, 1858, he said: "Will you by such roundabout ways and methods as may present themselves convey this note of thanks to the author of Scenes of Clerical Life, whose two first stories I can never say enough of, I think them so truly admirable? But if those two volumes, or a part of them, were not written by a woman, then shall I begin to believe that I am a woman myself." BELLONA'S WORKSHOPS. THERE is no need to ask the way to the Arsenal, finding ourselves just outside Woolwich station shortly before two o'clock, post meridian, for all along the streets a general trudge is going on, tramp, tramp, through drizzle and mud, hundreds upon hundreds of men and boys all plodding in the same direction. A solitary but active bell is raising a discordant clangour, to the music of which, if any music can be found in it, everybody sets his pace. The whole population of the town, indeed-the male population, that is, for among all the swarms of sad-coloured garments there is not the flutter of a petticoat to be seen, or the jaunty handkerchief of a factory-girl all the gloomy crowd is moving upon one central spot, leaving only women and children to take care of the houses and mind the shops. A squad of artillerymen is marching in the same direction, and with a few other uniforms scattered here and there, gives the slightest military aspect to the scene; but the general crowd is not distinguished by any military smartness, being indeed rather slouching and depressed in general appearance. are The crowd that is marching back to work is indeed an army in point of numbers. Something like six thousand men employed in the Arsenal, which is the one and only centre of manufacture of all kinds of warlike implements and equipage. And here we are at the main gate of the Arsenal -a gateway of homely red brick, with a couple of old-fashioned mortars gaping over the entrance, and a low tower at the side, within which the noisy bell can be seen vigorously wagging up and down. main gate is held by a strong body of metropolitan police, who scrutinise every face as it passes the barrier. Within is a maze of sheds and shanties with tramways running in every direction, among which rise the handsome old brick buildings of the Georgian period, the officers' quarters, and the old gun foundry, built at a time when founding a gun was a species of solemnity almost like the launching of a ship. The The Arsenal has a history that carries us farther back than its Hanoverian buildings. Some kind of a depôt of arms occupied a small portion of the present site from the days of Elizabeth and the Armada. A store-account of the reign of Elizabeth, taken at Woolwich, is still in existence, and specifies, "IV. backs and brests for Almayne Corsletts, beside I. od backe. Lxxv. collers with bombards. xlviii. Burgonets and huskins. cccxxxiii. murrions blacke, and xii. Burgonets, old and nothing worth." And among the old buildings pulled down in the last century was a conspicuous tower, which bore the name of Prince Rupert's Tower, while somewhere among this maze of sheds and stores, a footpath once existed, that was known as of which or destruction by the enemy Prince Rupert's Walk. It is well-known would paralyse the whole military force; that the old soldier, convinced by ex- while we, confiding in the immunities of perience of the futility of mere cavalry our sea-girt isle, have collected all our charges, took much to science in his later Bellona's eggs into one basket. days, and was curious in the matter of chemical compounds and explosives, and it is likely enough that the Prince made a beginning of the laboratory which has grown to such huge proportions. The element of danger in this state of things has not escaped official recognition. A commission in 1860 recommended the establishment of a central arsenal and manufactory at Cannock Chase in Staffordshire, with plenty of the raw material and skilled labour close at hand, and this connected with a western arsenal at Runcorn. But these daring suggestions have never been carried out. And, after all, seeing that our warlike stores are mostly wanted for foreign expeditions, the advantage of having our arsenal placed upon our great river, and in immediate communication with all the executive departments of the administration, may be held to outweigh the undoubted risks referred When the Dutch, in Charles the Second's time, sailed up the Thames and Medway, and burnt the ships in Chatham Dockyard, they were expected to pay a visit to Woolwich, and ships were sunk across the river channel to obstruct their progress. The damage then to be done by an enemy would have been trifling compared with what might be done now. But the development of torpedo systems has been so great of late years that it would be little short of madness on the part of a naval commander to bring his ships so far up an intricate channel, when once there had been the opportunity of planting it with torpedoes. All this time the site of the present arsenal was known as Tower Place or King's Warren. Rabbits frisked in the sunshine, and flashed in and out of sight where now great guns show black and ominous, and where the ground shakes under the blows of the steam-hammer. As early as 1668, guns, carriages, and stores were concentrated at Woolwich, and a quarter of a century later the royal laboratory, which had been established at Greenwich, was removed to the same neighbourhood. The big guns were to. still cast at Moorfields, in the foundry which was later to become famous as Wesley's first chapel, till an explosion in 1716, when the guns captured in Marlborough's victories were being recast, was the cause of the establishment being removed to Woolwich. The popular story of the young Flemish engineer who foretold the explosion, and was rewarded by being made chief of the works, has no distinct corroboration from contemporary records, but the hero of the storyone Schalch, of Douay - undoubtedly became the head of the new department. In 1741 an academy or school of gunnery was established in connection with the works, the embryo of the existing Royal Military Academy on Woolwich Common, which turns out all the engineer and artillery officers of the Queen's service. Finally, in 1805, the whole establishment was dignified with the name of the Royal Arsenal, and the forty-two acres of land which constituted the original Tower Place have expanded to the three hundred and thirty-three acres-be the same more or less-now covered by this great factory of warlike implements, probably the most extensive establishment of the kind in the world. Not that this country has by any means the monopoly of the manufacture of warlike engines, or that the great military nations of the Continent are much behind us in the application of machinery to war material, but that other nations have avoided a concentration of such establishments at one spot, the capture Anyhow, the approach to the nucleus of our national defences is not marked by lines of ramparts or redoubts, but by a strong body of the metropolitan police, far more effective, no doubt, against the secret foes, who, just now, are most to be dreaded. The bell has ceased its clangour, the workmen are at work, and the noise of engines and the hum of many wheels are to be heard. As we enter an immense machineshed, where the primary work of bulletmaking is going on upon a great scale, our guide leads the way to an inner room, on the door of which is marked, "Lead-squirting Room," as if there were beings within who amused themselves with Quilp-like malignity with squirting about the molten metal. So far, the squirting seems to be of a harmless character. But on one side is a row of furnaces and cauldrons, which we may look upon with interest and awe. Veritable witches-cauldrons are they, round about which the stern sisters, who ride on the battle-clouds and revel in human slaughter, might dance to esctatic measure. For these cauldrons boil and bubble with the lead that shall hiss over the battlefields of the future. The lives of brave men are bubbling in those fatal cauldrons. The lead having been properly amalgamated, is now run into a sunken cylindrical holder, where, having been allowed to cool a little, so as to acquire a treacly consistency, an end is drawn through a funnelshaped opening and pulled out in a bright, flexible rod, cooling as it goes-which some men now wind up on a big reel-a long, drawn, solid gas-pipe, only looking rather like silver than lead in its brightness. And we may follow this bright serpentine roll into the big bullet-factory beyond, where innumerable machines are waiting for it, to cut it into little quids, or chunks, bright still and innocent-looking, while, with here a bang and there a snip, the little innocent quid assumes the aspect of one of those bullets which peep so wickedly from the ends of the Martini cartridges. In another shed thin sheets of brass are passing under the fingers of other machines, fed by boys and young men, and are punched and twisted into so many little brass cylinders, which are finished here and gauged there, and finally pass under the view of keen-eyed detectives, who, taking them up in batches of twenty or so, throw aside now and then a defective specimen, while the rest are shovelled into baskets and carried away. In another place are being made the capsules which close the cartridge with the strikers that are destined to explode the charge. The final meeting of brass case and leaden bullet with the villainous saltpetre that completes the charge is not effected within the walls of the Arsenal. Down there among the marshes are little detached sheds, where such more or less dangerous operations are conducted with all due regard for safety and privacy. Little accidents happen now and then, and once or twice in a lifetime such an explosion as that wild flight of war-rockets which scared all London, and gave Woolwich a notion of what a hostile attack might be like. And in the way of brasswork, what marvellous finish and minuteness are there in the component parts of those fuses, destined for explosive missiles-time-fuses and percussion-fuses in all their varieties, with new varieties in process of being thought out and elaborated, with all their delicate appliances. How far removed are all these from the primitive roughness of the early fuse-the plug of wood, with the morsel of slow-match inserted, cut long or short in the rough judgment of the artilleryman, and ignited by the flash of the discharge! But all our mechanical appliances have not got rid of the element of uncertainty in the fuse - dangerous even under careful management, as the recent sad accident at Shoeburyness conclusively shows. From fuses we may move on to rifled shells, which have also reached an elaboration undreamed of by our earlier artillerists. From the great furnaces molten iron runs out in a bright, glowing stream, with showers of hot, fiery stars flying in all directions-runs into the wheeled metal carriers, and is rolled off to the moulds, and poured into the elaborate cases, which squirm and squirt forth fire and flames in all directions. Often the shell is built up of various pieces - the interior filled with iron bullets in a resinous compôte suggestive of plum-jam, with a wooden cap to make all tight, and the conical point screwed upon the top of all. Before the case is filled, however, it is pitted at regular intervals, by the drilling-machine, with round holes, while another machine scoops out a groove round the bottom of each pit, and a third engine gives an inexorable thump to a copper stud, and drives it in with such force as to fill the inner groove, when the stud can be sooner torn asunder than plucked out. These are for the rifled guns, into the grooves of which the copper bolts are made to fit. It is worth while here to pay a visit to the pattern-room of projectiles, where models of all the projectiles in use are carefully preserved in all the radiance of polish and lacquer; monster shells for the monster guns, dwindling down to the little steel-tipped spikes that do duty for the toy-like mountain guns. Here, indeed, are two lofty rooms filled with all kinds of death - dealing apparatus of the most elaborate structure, while in the lobby, by an unconscious satirical stroke, stand two primitive-looking tubes of simple construction, labelled as for "the preservation of life" in shipwrecks. From the projectile-room, which somehow suggests the reptile-room of a great zoological collection, full of bright, shining things carefully wrapped up, so elegant and so deadly-from this we pass by a natural transition to the Royal Gun |