Is

immediately following, are all characteristics of an explosion. there not something suspicious in the sudden fog and darkness shrouding the Roman army immediately before the Carthaginian attack? If an earthquake happened at any time nearly contemporaneous with the battle, the terrified survivors would have confounded it with what they really experienced; and, in the process of a generation or two, the story which we now have would be sufficiently concocted, and those who in reality were the only persons who felt the motion of the earth, would have been described as the only men by whom some earthquake, confounded with the affair of Thrasymene, was not noticed. Hannibal had decoyed the rash Flaminius into the narrow pass, and having mined it, destroyed, by springing the mine, a part of the army, and threw the rest into such confusion as to render them an easy and sudden victory to his troops, rushing down from the hills into the valley. This at least explains the phenomenon of the earthquake, which, as it is told at present, is utterly incredible.

This paper has spun out longer than we intended, but we can not conclude without drawing the attention of our military readers to the battle of Cannæ, and ask of them to explain the manœuvre by which the legions were drawn into the wedge or crescent of Hannibal, and there totally destroyed; suffering such a clades as never has occurred before or since, almost without resistance, and in an incalculably short space of time. If they do so, they will have done what no commentator, scholar, or soldier, has yet accomplished. We refer them to Folard, who was both, and beg them to say how came it that the disposition of Terentius Varro (an ill-used man in history), which Folard admits to be admirable, was destroyed with so much ease and completeness. We can not here enter upon the subject, which has been the cause of endless controversies, but the slightest examination of the battle will be sufficient to convince an intelligent reader that there is something connected with it that has not yet been explained.

If IIannibal knew the use of gunpowder, it may fairly be asked, How was the knowledge lost? We may answer, that this question applies to many other things beside gunpowder. The knowledge of the Egyptians has vanished, and yet there is every reason to believe that it was equal to what has resulted from the most

celebrated of discoveries and speculations of the moderns in art and science. The Phoenicians, of whose blood was Hannibal, knew many a secret in chemistry, navigation, art, and manufactures, some of which were only recovered in later centuries; some, perhaps, are still unknown. If our hypothesis be correct, the secret was confided to none but the highest class of engineers, and with the fall of Carthage it perished. Hannibal might have been the only man who knew how to apply it successfully as an agent for the purposes of war, and the occasions on which he could have applied it were rare. It might also have been difficult in the manner of operation.

Again, it may be asked, Why did he not use fire-arms, as he knew the use of explosive powder? The answer is, that what appears to those who have been accustomed to the use of any physical agent, a matter that could not have been overlooked for a moment, is often the result of long-pondering or fortunate accident. All the world knew the nature of steam from the days that water was boiled. Centuries elapsed before it was applied to a steam-engine. In our own times, men, now alive, remember that the idea of a steamboat was looked upon as chimerical. If any one asserted, twenty years ago,* that a steamer would ever cross the Atlantic, he would have been voted mad. Less than a dozen years since, who would have thought that steam-carriages would be traversing England, sometimes at the rate of fifty or sixty miles an hour! In like manner Hannibal might have known, that a combination of charcoal with nitre and sulphur was explosive, and applied them to the purposes of blasting, mining, or rocket-making, without it ever having occurred to him that it might, by being confined in iron tubes, rammed down and let off, convey those messengers of death which have so completely changed the face of warfare, and produced such important effects upon the course of civilization.

This was written in 1838.-M.

MR. GRANTLEY BERKELEY AND HIS NOVEL.*

THERE is a set of persons in London, who most particularly pique themselves on being men of elegance, wit, and refinement, and who are continually declaiming against people who are not gentlemen.† Their set, and their manners, and their ideas, are to

* Berkeley Castle, a Historical Romance, by the Hon. Grantley F. Berkeley, M. P. 3 vols. Bentley. London, 1836.

·

† It may be as well to state, at the commencement, that this article -extremely personal against the Hon. Grantley Berkeley - had several serious results. Mr. Berkeley, one of the legitimate brothers of the Earl of Berkeley (a clergyman, who has never claimed the title, nor ever taken his seat in the House of Lords) and of Earl Fitzhardinge — better known, first, as the notorious Colonel Berkeley, seducer of Maria Foote, the actress, now Dowager Countess of Harrington, and then as having been made Lord Segrave by the Grey Ministry -sat in the House of Commons for about twenty years, as Member for West Gloucestershire. He owed his seat to Lord Fitzhardinge, his brother, who possessed large estates in and was Lord Lieutenant of the county of Gloucester, and was accustomed to make his tenants vote, not as they wished, but as he desired. At the general election of 1852, Mr. Berkeley was defeated, after a severe contest. The first effect of this critique on the romance called "Berkeley Castle," was to make Mr. Berkeley, the author, greatly enraged. The second was to make him, a powerful and strong man, commit an assault on Mr. Fraser, the publisher, which caused his death, some time after. Thirdly, it led to a suit-at-law (Fraser v. Berkeley) for this assault, the verdict being £100 and costs against Berkeley. Fourthly, it led Dr. Maginn to avow the authorship of the article. Fifthly, it caused Berkeley to challenge Maginn, which, being accepted, the parties went out and exchanged three shots. Sixthly, it made Lord Euston (who succeeded to the Dukedom of Grafton, in 1842) demand "an explanation" from Mr. Maginn, in consequence of an allusion to Lady Euston. Lastly, the whole circumstances of the case, thus involved, were sufficiently important, on public grounds, to justify Maginn's writing that strong article, to which he subscribed his name, with which the present volume concludes.-M.

form all that is worthy of imitation in this world. They can talk -and some of them talk pretty well too-of horses, and carriages, and operas, and parks, and the last parties, and so forth; and their own sayings are recorded among themselves as miracles of talent and genius. Their boots and their hats, and all tailorly ingredients of appearance occurring in the intermediate space between these zeniths and nadirs of attire, are irreproachable, or at least they deem them so; and their conversation is lauded by themselves as the summit of perfection. We think that these persons should be contented with such trophies, without wandering out of the dignified and high-minded sphere in which they are If they consulted their own interest, they would certainly take our advice. But fate is imperious; and it often drives men to show the utter futility of their pretensions. We do not know one of these fellows who, when he comes forward from the circle in which he is a "gentlemanly man," does not prove himself to be a blockhead, and something worse. When he takes a pen in his hand, he not only displays a dire ignorance and stupidity, but, in nine cases out of ten, an utter meanness of thought and manners, and a crawling vulgarity of soul.

won.

This may seem paradoxical. People may say, here is a man brilliant at a dinner-table-elegant at a soirée-dressed after by the men-run after by the women—and why should it be that he is a leper, wretched of heart and lowlied of thought. It is the fact, nevertheless; and the paradox, after all, exists only in appearance. These people know nothing beyond the conventional slang of society; but as the society in which they move is of that rank which will always command the attention, and ought always to command the respect, of other classes, what they say and do is matter of wonder to the tuft-hunter, and, we admit, fairly a matter of curiosity to those who, like the ladies in the Vicar of Wakefield, love to tell about dukes and lords, and knights of the garter. But slang is slang, no matter how disguised, or to what purposes used. The slang of the gilded cornices of St. James's is not in essence one whit more dignified than the slang spoken over the beer-washed tables of St. Giles's. He who is possessed of a perfect knowledge of the tone current in Buckeridge Street, would outshine the cleverest master of the art who had not dwelt amid the select circle

of that interesting locality. Ask this star of Hibernian emigration to write, or to dictate (if he has not acquired the art of writing), the results of his long experience in the style and manners of the region which he adorns, and you will find that he breaks down. The jest is lost unless he prints his face. Pierce Egan, or Jon Bee, or even Edward Bulwer*- but above all, BozBoz the magnificent (what a pity it is that he deludes himself into the absurd idea that he can be a Whig! Mr. Pickwick was a Whig, and that was only right; but Boz is just as much a Whig as he is a giraffe) — any of these authors—thou, too, among the rest, Vincent Dowling, whom we shall no longer call the venerable Vincent, since it gave pain and sorrow to thy most pugilistic soul-would in half an hour extract all that the most celebrated hero of the Rookery had invented, thought, and devised, during the whole current of his life.

So in the case of the other saint, the patron of Spain, St. James. The chatterers and praters there have nothing in them. We forget what is the exact distich‡ of Pope, describing the conversation

*Pierce Egan, the historian of the Prize Ring, who- from 1815 to 1830 was considered the best authority in England on sporting matters. His "Boxiana" is a scarce and standard work. Jon Bee was a contemporary "seeing-the-elephant" writer, of less weight, whose chief work was a Slang Dictionary. Bulwer was pressed in, to complete the trio, by virtue of his exhibition of slang in "Pelham,” “ Paul Clifford," and "Eugene Aram."-M.

† Vincent Dowling, for over thirty years editor of "Bell's Life in London,” the best sporting paper in London, died some three years ago, at an advanced age. He had previously been mentioned, in Fraser, as "The Venerable Vincent," and, seriously offended at the imputation, gravely remonstrated against the application of the adjective to his proper person. — M.

Distich.] We greatly admire Mr. Grantley Berkeley's opinion of the meaning of this word. Of course, as he writes a historical romance in the manner of Sir Walter Scott, he must have legends, and prophesies, and mystic rhymes. How Sir Walter manages these matters it is now somewhat useless to say-for we rather apprehend that our readers know as much about it as ourselves. How Mr. G. B. makes use of them will be seen from the following charming effusion:

"Lord Lisle and his party came hither to dine,

But Berkeley hath chased them from venison and wine,

And lest a live witness a lie should record,

Here hangeth a dead one to stick by his word.'

"After laughing heartily at the attempt, Sir Maurice added, ‘By my faith