Dec. 15, 1887] 



NA TURE 



149 



the importance of range-finders "in lessening the amount 

 of ammunition to be carried in the limbers, the dynamite 

 gun for use in sieges, and other modern developments. 



After the Battle of Waterloo we went comfortably to 

 sleep on our laurels, and awoke to find ourselves engaged 

 in the siege of Sebastopol with exactly the same weapons 

 we had employed in the Peninsular War. Sebastopol 

 with modern weapons could have been taken with one- 

 tenth of the hundreds of millions that were lavished ; so it 

 is important for the future that the taxpayer should take 

 an intelligent interest in military preparations and see 

 that we are provided with the very best weapons that 

 money can procure. Such an intelligent public has been 

 educated in the Volunteer force, and these "men with 

 muskets" are not prevented by military discipline from 

 criticizing their muskets, or equipment in general ; and it 

 is to them that we owe the healthy criticism that has 

 lately been exercised on our armaments and state of 

 military preparation. 



Hotspur's description of the regular military officer say- 

 ing : " It was great pity, so it was, that villainous saltpetre 

 should be digged out of the bowels of the harmless earth, 

 which many a tall fellow had destroyed so cowardly ; but 

 for these vile guns," &c., is true to this day ; for the modern 

 artillery officer's pride in his gun varies inversely as the 

 weight, for certain tangible reasons ; and generally a 

 soldier looked upon his weapons as something to keep 

 clean and to drill with until some recent warfare taught 

 him the importance of the despised musketry instruction. 

 The officer's attention is fully occupied in attending to 

 the drill and discipline of his men according to the regu- 

 lations ; and we find that the scientific development of 

 methods of destruction is generally due to amateur 

 civilians like Benjamin Robins, of Quaker extraction, the 

 father of modern gunnery, and the Rev. Mr. Bashforth ; 

 while the Catling gun is a product of Philadelphia, the 

 City of Brotherly Love. Clerk's " Naval Tactics," written 

 by John Clerk of Eldin, a relative of Prof. Clerk Maxwell, 

 and an Edinburgh barrister, was the treatise which put a 

 stop to the ineffective naval engagements of the last 

 century — ineffective because culminating in the failure 

 of the fleet to relieve, and the consequent surrender of, 

 Yorktown. 



Major Mackinlay's treatise appears to be very carefully 

 compiled, and taking into account the restrictions under 

 which the author works, it is fully up to date with the de- 

 velopment of our own artillery ; whether with the artillery 

 of foreign countries is another question. We notice, 

 however, with some regret that the guns illustrated in the 

 text are all muzzle-loaders, as if breech-loading was the 

 temporary fad which the rifled gun was considered in the 

 time of the treatise of 1866. 



A valuable chapter on steel, new in this edition of the 

 treatise, reminds us that our authorities are now after 

 thirty years' delay taking up the Whitworth method of con- 

 struction of ordnance, omitting, however, the Whitworth 

 hexagonal bore. An official Solomon gave decision in 

 favour of Armstrong against Whitworth in their cele- 

 brated competition, with the effect of alienating the 

 greatest steel manufacturer of the world from Govern- 

 ment purposes. His great prototype would have 

 encouraged now one and now the other, without com- 

 mitting himself to an absolute decision, and would thus 



have reaped for his country the benefit of the invaluable 

 services of both competitors. 



Major Mackinlay has done good service by collecting all 

 the ballistic tables based upon the important experiments 

 of Mr. Bashforth, and by showing how they are applied 

 to the questions of artillery. We must be on our guard, 

 however, against using ink instead of gunpowder, from 

 economy, and against imagining that there is no further 

 need of careful experiment and practice. It is of the 

 greatest importance, too, that cadets should learn 

 from this treatise that the science of artillery is not 

 entirely comprised in guns of the smallest dimensions, 

 manoeuvred over rough country, and the doing of some 

 snap shooting The history of recent wars teaches us that 

 the field artillery of both sides is used up in the first two 

 or three engagements, and that the conflict finally resolves 

 itself into a vast siege, in which the whole army and navy 

 are converted into garrison artillery. 



The article by the author of " Greater Britain " in the 

 Fortnightly Retnew, tells us of the immense pains now 

 taken on the Continent in military preparations. Let us 

 avoid in time the necessity of the dreary up-hill labours 

 which the French have been compelled to undertake, 

 now at length beginning to culminate in an organization 

 which, it is important to keep in mind, might at any 

 moment be tested by being brought to bear against this- 

 country. 



ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY. 



Romantic Love and Personal Beauty. By H. T. Finck. 

 Two Vols. (London : Macmillan and Co., 1887.) 



IN dealing with the subject, or, rather, the group of 

 subjects, here indicated, Mr. Finck seems to have 

 had before him a twofold object, scientific and practical. 

 On the scientific side he deals with romantic love, show- 

 ing {a) that it is a recent growth, (b) what are its condi- 

 tions, and {c) what are the conditions of beauty as essential 

 to romantic love. From a practical point of view he (a) 

 gives rules for health, which is essential to beauty and 

 therefore to romantic love, and {b) insists upon the neces- 

 sity of free choice in love being left to young people. Let 

 us see briefly what he has to tell us upon these points. 



Goldsmith, in the " Citizen of the World," was wrong, 

 Mr. Finck holds, in teaching that love proper existed 

 in ancient Rome. " Romantic love is a modern senti- 

 ment, less than a thousand years old. ... Of all personal 

 affections the maternal was developed first, and the senti- 

 ment of romantic love last." Here Mr. Finck has cer- 

 tainly got hold of a truth, but he puts it much too strongly. 

 There is nothing improbable in the growth of a new 

 emotion, or (as we would rather say) in an old emotion 

 receiving a new direction and a great expansion. Vol. I. 

 (pp. 34-37) shows that parental and filial love have little 

 or no existence among animals and among some savages ; 

 and if civilization can develop these feelings to their pre- 

 sent pitch of intensity, it might well do the same for the 

 mental, as distinguished from the bodily, attraction be- 

 tween man and woman. But the modern form of love is 

 not a new feature ; it is essentially a development. It was 

 stunted and kept down at Rome and in most of Greece 

 but still it was in existence ; and, if Mr. Finck will extend 



