ARMOUR PLATES. The earliest recorded proposal to employ armour for ships of war (for body armour, &c., see ) appears to have been made in England by Sir William Congreve in 1805. InThe Timesof the 20thDefence for ships.of February of that year reference is made to Congreve’s designs for an armoured, floating mortar battery which the inventor considered would be proof against artillery fire. Among... more...

IMPRESSIONS OF "IL TROVATORE." (By a Matter-of-Fact Philistine at Covent Garden.) ACT I. SCENE 2.—Leonora's confidant evidently alive to the responsibilities of her position. Watch her, for example, when her Mistress is about to confide to her ear the dawn of her passion for Manrico. She walks Leonora gently down to the footlights, launches her into her solo, like a boat, and stands... more...

To expatiate on the advantages of printing, at this time of day, would be "wasteful and ridiculous excess." We content ourselves with the comparison of Dryden's "Long trails of light descending down." In a retrospective glance at our previous volumes (for can the phrenologists tell us of a head capacious enough to contain their exhaustless variety?) our readers will perceive that,... more...

INITIALS USED IN VOLUME VII. TO IDENTIFY INDIVIDUALCONTRIBUTORS, WITH THE HEADINGS OF THEARTICLES IN THIS VOLUME SO SIGNED.A. B. F. Y.Alexander Bell Filson Young.Formerly Editor of theOutlook. Author ofChristopher Columbus;Master-singers;The Complete Motorist;Wagner Stories; &c.{Dance(in part).A. Bo.*Auguste Boudinhon, D.D., D.C.L.Professor of Canon Law in the Catholic University of Paris. Honorary... more...

IS THE SINNER A MORAL AGENT IN HIS CONVERSION? There are a great many questions asked upon the subject of conversion, and as many answers given as there are theories of religion, and many persons listening to men's theories upon this subject are left in doubt and darkness in reference to what is and is not conversion. You ask the Mormons, who fully believe their theory of conversion, and they will... more...

CHAPTER I. We were all sitting on the pig-sty at T'NOWHEAD'S Farm. A pig-sty is not, perhaps, a strictly eligible seat, but there were special reasons, of which you shall hear something later, for sitting on this particular pig-sty. The old sow was within, extended at full length. Occasionally she grunted approval of what was said, but, beyond that, she seemed to show but a faint interest in... more...

While living in the neighborhood of Chelsea, we determined to look upon the few broken walls that once inclosed the residence of Sir Thomas More, a man who, despite the bitterness inseparable from a persecuting age, was of most wonderful goodness as well as intellectual power. We first read over the memories of him preserved by Erasmus, Hoddesdon, Roper, Aubrey, his own namesake, and others. It is... more...

THE MYSTERY OF MR. E. DROOD. AN ADAPTATION. BY ORPHEUS C. KERR. CHAPTER XV. "SPOTTED." When the bell of St. Cow's began ringing for Ritualistic morning-service, with a sound as of some incontinently rambling dun spinster of the lacteal herd—now near at hand in cracked dissonance, as the wind blows hither; now afar, in tinkling distance, as the wind blows... more...

A CHILDREN'S PARADISE. In one corner of the Bois de Boulogne is a pretty zoological garden known as the Jardin d'Acclimatation. The Bois de Boulogne is the pleasure-ground of Paris, and is one of the most beautiful parks in the world. It comprises about twenty-five hundred acres of majestic forests and open grassy meadows, through which flow picturesque streams, tumbling over rocky cliffs in... more...

Part I."España de la guerraTremola la pendon." Cancion Patriotica. It wanted about an hour of sunset on the last day of September 1833, when two young men, whose respective ages did not much exceed twenty years, emerged from a country lane upon the high-road from Tarazona to Tudela, in that small district of Navarre which lies south of the river Ebro. The equipments of the travellers—for... more...