Reviete of Revi^icg, 1/8/OG. 



Leading Articles. 



171 



PROGRESS OF THE FIREARM. 



Captain E. J. King contributes to the Untied 

 Service Magazine a very interesting paper on the rise 

 of firearms. He says that explosive substances akin 

 to gunpowder seem to have been found in very 

 early times, but it is quite impossible to say when or 

 by whom they were invented. It is not even certain 

 when gunpowder first began to be used in war. In 

 the twelfth century the Chinese were using some 

 rough kind of cannon. The Spanish Moors were the 

 first to introduce fireamis into Europe, in the 

 twelfth or thirteenth century. In 1326 Florence 

 ordered the manufacture of cannon, cannon balls, 

 and gunpowder, and in 1338 cannon and gunpowder 

 were found in the Tower of London and the arsenal 

 at Rouen. In 1372 small cannon were used on 

 board French ships. 



The earliest cannon were bombards for use in 

 sieges. Thev consisted of an iron tube, very 

 heavy, and were carried in -waggons. Stone balls 

 weighing 200 lbs. were thrown before 1400. The 

 first bronze cannon date from Augsburg, in 1378. 

 Bv 1450 a gun-carriage was in use. The Germans 

 led the way in the use and improvement of firearms. 

 Artillery was first used on the battle-field at Rosbeck 

 in 1382. John Ziska and the Hussite Bohemian 

 peasants developed a mobile artillery. A mobile 

 field artillery, in the modern sense of the word, first 

 appeared in the campaigns of King Gustavus Adol- 

 phus of Sweden. 



The hand-gun was first made in Flanders during 

 the latter half of the fourteenth century. It was 

 simply an iron barrel, fastened to a long straight 

 stock of wood. King Edward IV., when he landed 

 at Ravensbourne in 1471, had with him 300 hand- 

 gun men. In 1470 the first lock was invented, with 

 cock and trigger. This was known as the arquebus, 

 or hackbut, which weighed about 12 lbs., was 3 feet 

 3 inches long, and fired a bullet weighing four-fifths 

 of an ounce. The first musket came shortly after 

 1520. In 11567 the Duke of Alva re-armed his arq,ue 

 busiers with the musket. The musket was 5 feet 

 5 inches long, its bullet weighed one and one-third 

 ounf'e. Its extreme range was 500 yards. 



In the middle of the fifteenth century cavalry used 

 a sort of hand-gun, but Oliver Cromwell was among 

 the first of generals to realise that cold steel is the 

 true cavalry weapon. 



England is described as having been much 

 behindhand in the use of firearms, her pride in her 

 archers and hi-r innate consen'atism checking the 

 innovation. 



Introduced by Edward IV. in 1470, the hand- 

 gun was actually prohibited after the Battle ot 

 Flodden in 1530. In 1537 a charter of incorpora- 

 tion was granted to what is now the Honourable 

 Artillery Company. As late as 1567 the use of the 

 longbow was still being enforced in England. The 

 Catholic rising in 1569 proved the longbow out of date. 



INTELLECT AND INCHES. 



An article with this title in the June Grand 

 Magazine comments on the number of intellectually 

 famous men who have had fine physique, or at least 

 been tall. Scott is cited in proof of this supposed 

 connection between " intellect and inches " ; 

 Thackeray, who was well over six feet, and broad 

 in proportion ; Trollope, who was nearly six feet, 

 and enormously strong; and Burns, Burke, Cole- 

 ridge and Wordsworth, who were all, at any rate, tall, 

 and sometimes well endowed physically as well. 

 Sw^ft was '' tall, strong, and well-made, robust and 

 manly." As for Bunyan, " a more manly and robust 

 appearance cannot well be conceived." Raleigh 

 was about six feet in height, and Sidney was " tall, 

 shapely and muscular." But De Quincey and Pope 

 were, of course, of poor physique, and in our own 

 day Darwin and Finsen. Gibbon was '' a thin little 

 figure with a large head " ; and what Dryden lacked 

 in length he made up in girth. Milton —to quote a 

 contemporary description — was " a puny piece of a 

 man, a homunculus, a dwarf deprived of the human 

 figure," an exaggeration. Lamb and Keats were 

 both small. Surely the writer is wrong in saying 

 George Eliot was little and fragile. However, he 

 asserts that of 250 men and women of intellect whose 

 stature he has been able to ascertain, 89 are cer- 

 tainly more or less tall, 78 middle-sized, and only 

 83 short. 



THE CRY OF THE BRITISH INDIAN. 



In the Empire Review, replying to a paper on the 

 Asiatic danger in the Colonies, Mr. Henry Polak, 

 English editor of Indian O pinion, protests strongly 

 against South Africa's dread of the Indian, stating 

 that in Xatal the Indian agriculturist and in the 

 Transvaal the Indian commercial have proved them- 

 selves necessary. He says plainly that if the white 

 man in South Africa will not have Indian labour, 

 he may (i) work the land himself, which he will not 

 do, (2) compel the native to work, which hardly seems 

 practicable, (3) let the country lie fallow. He thinks 

 " ten years' moral instruction " will be wanted to 

 teach the white man not to be ashamed of manual 

 labour, and asserts roundly that " no nation that 

 ever shirked the duty of tilling the soil ever con- 

 solidated its nationality, or became aught but a race 

 of serf-owners." The grievances against the Indian 

 are factitious, the restrictions against him so galling, 

 that if he ever comes he soon leaves again. The 

 writer concludes, perhaps rather intemperately : — 



Are three-quarters ot the population of the Empire to 

 be agrgrieved by reaaon of British breach of faith Are 

 the "frontiers of tlie Empire" to be encIanKered by tbe 

 dissatisi action of three hjndred millions of liis Majesty's 

 Indian subjects because Imperial pledges are disrepar'led 

 and Imperial promises are callously broken at the bidding 

 of a few fanatiral provincials? Is India to bee >me a 

 menace to the Empire because its people are debarred 

 from their riirhtful share in the privileges and responsi* 

 bilitiea of British citizenhin in any part of the Kine'S' 

 dominions? How long will the East bear such treatment? 



