available projectile force of one volume of Schultze's powder equivalent to the available projectile force of two volumes of black powder? If not, it may be averred with tolerable confidence that the new material could never come into extensive practical use as a gunnery-projectile. If the era of breechloading had not so completely set in, the exact length of column in any gun-barrel occupied by any powder-charge would not perhaps of itself determine the issue of acceptance or rejection. But the question of length of column occupied by any explosive gun-charge is one of the most vital importance in all that concerns breechloaders. If by chance an otherwise efficient substitute for gunpowder should be discovered, occupying, power for power, less space than gunpowder, then intrinsically would it be better in direct ratio to the diminution. Having regard, however, to existing systems of breechloading, the intrinsic superiority contemplated would prove a bar to utilisation. The breeching-gear of every breechloader is laid out to a scale of very minute fractions of an inch. The breechingchamber must be full of material-it can be no more than full. The breech slot, screw, hole, or other contrivance for admitting the charge, is equally amenable to minute scales of measurement.

Assuming the ratios of volume reversed, theoretical advantages of variation depart, and fundamental objections make themselves manifest. It is a settled conviction in the minds of military authorities that the shorter a military cartridge admits of being made, the better. Thereby not merely is the gunmaker's labour facilitated, it being easier to fashion short than long breeching-gear, but the cartridge itself is more strong and serviceable. From time to time the question has arisen, whether the small-bore type of weapon may not be advantageously substituted for the regulation Enfield type. Nobody doubts the increased accuracy and far-shooting of small bores; and the defect of their more speedy fouling, often adduced, hardly applies to the case of breechloading small bores. Still, various military men oppose the military use of small bores; not the objection of least weight being the necessarily inconvenient length of cartridge. A small-bore cartridge, they say, is too much like a pencil-case, too delicate for rough military

usage.

These considerations would seem to have had due weight with Captain Schultze. His powder is so devised and elaborated that each effective charge shall occupy equally the same space as a charge of common powder would have occupied. All his gunnery arrangements, therefore, are taken on the basis of matching volume against volume, the equivalent in weight to one volume of his powder being two volumes of ordinary gunpowder.

I have made no experiments with the Schultze powder, either by fire-arm practice or by chemical analysis. All that I know of it comes from conversation with gunmakers, and observation of general appearances. It has taken fair hold on the English sportsman's appreciation,

as before stated; but, as may be assumed, drawbacks, real or alleged, to its use there are, otherwise it would have gone further than it has to displace ordinary black powder. The chief disparagement I have heard alleged against it, is the difficulty—rather, the impossibility of measuring-out charges with the accuracy needful to practice. It is necessary to weigh the charges, gunmakers aver, if identity of result be contemplated. This allegation, if well borne out, implies a serious defect. Practical people will grasp its full purport, however much the unpractised may make light of it.

A few words of explanation now relative to a point some way back adverted to. It was stated that gun-cotton, under the ingenious manipulation of Baron Lenk, was subjected to a treatment that obviated the necessity of grainage. The treatment is this: inasmuch as the filamentary structure of gun-cotton is incompatible with the formation of grains, Baron Lenk seeks and finds an equivalent in threads of vary ing degrees of fineness and closeness. A close-spun yarn of gun-cotton undergoes more rapid combustion than its opposite; taking advantage of this fact and applying it, Baron Lenk thereby secures any amount of combustive velocity. A still further modification on gun-cotton has been lately effected by Mr. Abel. He reduces his xyloidine to a sort of paper pulp. His process has been made known since this article was written, or further reference would have been made to a device which has the merit of ingenuity, though the gunnery value of guncotton in this or any other state would seem to be small, if any.

JOHN SCOFFERN, M.B.

BELGRAVIA

APRIL 1869

MY ENEMY'S DAUGHTER

BY JUSTIN M'CARTHY

AUTHOR OF "PAUL MASSIE," "THE WATERDALE NEIGHBOURS," etc.

THIS

CHAPTER XVI. AGAIN-AT LAST!

HIS is not a story of the struggles of a poor artist and adventurer, though so much of my life was indeed just such a story. But lives like mine have been told so often before, that I could add little new by dwelling on the professional and adventurous part of my existence, even if I had the art to tell such things as other men have told them. Therefore I frankly intimated to my readers long ago that I do not mean to enter into the details of my struggles, my disappointments, my privations, my temporary success. Of all these I shall only say, like the fair dame pressed to explain the duties of the cicisbeo, "I beseech you to suppose them." In brief, the professional story of my life is this: I struggled long and wearily. At last I succeeded, for a time. Then I lost the best of my voice, and I faded back into quiet obscurity, not without comfort. For what Carlyle calls four-and-twenty resplendent months, I was a brilliant success in the popular sense. I know myself, and I know that I never was or could be a great singer. I never was in the high sense an artist. I never had a genius for music, or for anything; but I had my run of success—I had my day. It was a short one, and it is over; and I don't regret it. "I cease to live," says the poet's Egmont; "but I have lived!"

In my days of swift success I came to know a great many authors, sculptors, painters, critics, artists of every class, who had all more or less succeeded in life; and I found that the actor or the singer has some splendid chances which are denied to any other adventurer after popular favour. Worst off of all his brethren I rate the literary adventurer, although Thackeray, with the complacency of recognised and triumphant genius, pointed out the immense advantage the author enjoys in requiring neither patronage nor capital, but only a few sheets

VOL. VIII.

L

of paper and a steel pen. Where is his arena, his tribune? He has written his grand tragedy. Very good. Who is going to play it?— nay, what manager is going to read it? He has finished every chapter of his novel; and then begins the dreariest part of his business. I remember literary friends of mine used to say, when sometimes the author of Vanity Fair showed his grand white head among us, that he had had toil enough to persuade the public to read what he had written, that he had hawked about his great book long enough before any publisher could be induced to run the risk of printing it. The difficulty was to get any publisher to read it. Change Vanity Fair into a picture or a statue, and it would at least have found a place in an exhibition, where a crowd, coming for the sole purpose of looking at pictures and statues, would have seen it, and some eye would surely have found out its worth. To read through thousands on thousands of scrawled Ms. pages in the hope of sometime coming on a literary treasure is a wearisome diving process which only stubborn souls long endure; but to hunt through an art-exhibition is a pleasant and easy work. I rate the chances of the painter or the sculptor, then, rather above those of the literary man. But while it is true that not everyone can get a chance of exhibiting his picture in any gallery, it is also true that even in the gallery it may pass unnoticed of the crowd, who only run to look at the pictures of men with names, or pictures they have been forewarned to look at. Suppose, however, that everyone going into the gallery were compelled to look at every picture in turn-were compelled at least to stand before it, and look at that or nothing for a certain number of minutes, would not the obscure artist's chances be immensely increased in value? But this is precisely the condition of the actor or the singer. Once, at the very least, in his three or five acts he is in absolute possession of the audience. No one may speak or sing but he. It is his chance. If he can speak or sing in any way worth listening to, there is his opportunity of doing it. I have known scores of men in other professions who only wanted just one such chance to crown their ambition, or, at all events, to crush it, and who never got the chance, but went along through life disappointed and embittered, girding at the successful, snarling at popular favour, wailing against destiny, and always convinced that if the world could but have seen or heard them, it would have fallen in homage at their feet. The public, indeed, will not go fishing for talent, like pearl-divers. It is enough to ask that they shall recognise it when set before them. "Genius," says Mürger, "is the sun; all the world sees it. Talent is the diamond in the mine; it is prized when discovered." This was my chance. I got an opportunity of holding up my poor little artistic diamond. The opening came; I had the stage all to myself for a few moments, and I really had been gifted by Nature with a voice which then, at least, could hardly have failed to make an impression. It made its impression, and I succeeded.

This was in Italy. I came home to England, after an absence comparatively very short, a success. My way began to be clear before me. I began to have friends, admirers, rivals, detractors, satellites, partisans, and enemies. I grew familiar with my own name in print; I became accustomed to the receipt of anonymous letters-some full of praise, not a few full of love, a great many breathing contempt and detestation. I began to judge of journals and critics only according to their way of dealing with myself.

I must say that hardly any kind of life seems to be more corrupting to independent and generous manhood than that which depends upon the public admiration. It is hardly a whit better than that which hangs on princes' favour. The miserable jealousies, the paltry rivalries and spites, the mean, imperious triumph over somebody else's failure or humiliation, the pitiful exultation over one's own passing success, the womanish anxiety to know what is said of one, the childlike succession of exaltation and depression, the absorbing vanity, the sickening love of praise, and the nauseous capacity for swallowing it— all these seem to be as strictly the disease and danger of artistic life as yellow fever is of the West Indies, or dysentery of the East. I have indeed known strong natures both in men and women which could defy the contagion, and retain their healthy and self-reliant simplicity to the last. I have seen, even in stage-life, virgins who could tread those hideous hot ploughshares of vanity and jealousy, and come out unscathed. I have known men who to the last kept the whiteness of their souls, and never felt a pang of mean joy over another's failure, or of unmanly pride or unmanly grief at success or failure of their own. But such natures are indeed the rarest of phenomena, and only make the general character of the race show more repulsively. You can't help it; I mean, we common natures cannot help it. Some of us go in resolving that we will not be like the others, that we will not lay down our manhood, and our courage, and our generosity, and succumb to the poisonous atmosphere of praise, and rivalry, and jealousy. But we soon grow like the rest; we rage at a disparaging word; we swell with pride over the most outrageous praise; our bosoms burst with gall when some new rival is spoken of too favourably or applauded too loudly; we rejoice with a base and coward joy, which our lying lips dare not confess, when someone whom openly we call a friend makes a failure and falls down. Our nature becomes positively sexless; and man detests woman if she outshines him, just as rival beauties of a fribble season may hate each other. I protest I did not, until I came in for some little artistic success, ever believe it possible I could hate-or, indeed, that any man could hate-an attractive and pretty woman who had never either slighted or betrayed him. I soon learned that the wretched creature who lives on the favour of the public can get to envy and detest any being that stands between him and the sun of his existence.