selves with one more illustration. The only placed his troops behind such ramparts coasts of this country are dotted round with as an American army could have thrown up Martello towers, designed for protection in a few hours. The way to extract the against invaders. They have become perfectly useless. A single modern projectile would smash them to pieces, and they could not carry our heavy ordnance. But there is no reason in the world why the vulnerable parts of the coast should not be studded with sunk works in the form of Moncrieff gun-pits, capable of carrying any ordnance, alike invisible and impregnable. This invention, in fact, bids fair to have one most beneficent result. It may make the defence far stronger than the attack, and to England, whose motto is "Defence, not defiance," this will be the most invaluable of all boons.

From The Morning Star, Oct. 13.

CAPTAIN MONCRIEFF's invention renders it possible to raise the largest guns out of a trench to a level for firing, and by a selfacting process to sink them again for the purpose of being reloaded. A trench has many advantages over a parapet, and, even if there were no others, that of altering the position of the guns at will would be sufficient to insure its superiority. The gun under the elevator system can be moved about on a tramway, appearing at unexpected places to discharge its contents, and immediately disappearing. The objection may be suggested, that if the gun is so completely sheltered from an enemy's fire, it must also be in a position from which it is impossible to take aim. Captain Moncrieff has provided for this by means of a mirror, from the reflection in which the officer in charge can lay the gun as close upon the object aimed at as if he actually took his sight along the barrel exposed to the missiles of the enemy.

sting from the Chassepot is to intrench, while the needle-gun behind the temporary field defences would be more terrible and destructive than ever. The guns which are taken into a battle-field cannot, of course, be nearly equal in calibre to the great machines which are regarded as necessary for the defence of fortifications; still, every nation will strive to bring into conflict ar tillery as heavy and powerful as possible. There is nothing to prevent Captain Moncrieff's invention being applied to field artillery also. Natural defences would be taken advantage of as far as possible. They would give protection to the men, while the gun could be raised to a level at which the protection would be no impediment to the fire. Where such a position as a village is selected as the centre of a position, the spades would at once be set in motion to dig intrenchments instead of raising batteries. Altogether, the invention is one which, while it proves Captain Moncrieff's skill as a mechanician, seems destined to have as much effect upon the mode of fighting artillery as breech-loading has had upon the evolutions and requirements of infantry. Above all, it seems to put a period to the foolish outlay of money upon fortifications.

From The Spectator.

ELDERLY TRAVELLERS.

WE wish some one of our readers who knew the Continent thirty years ago would tell us whether it was then the custom for middle-aged or aged English men and woAs regards field artillery, the new sys- men to travel much. It is certainly the tem would bring into still greater promi- custom now, and we, who can speak only nence that indispensable article in the cam- from an experience of twelve years, have a paigns of the future the spade. All fancy that it is comparatively recent, and a through the American war the superiority of certainty that it has increased enormously the spade as a warlike weapon was at- during the last decade. The number of tested. The army which could intrench it- English men and women over fifty-five self in the shortest space of time was, other whom one meets in France, Switzerland, things being tolerably equal, certain of vic- Italy and Madrid, - we do not say Spain, tory. The army which assaulted intrenchments was almost invariably defeated. The development of the breech-loading principle in Europe has rendered it more than ever a necessity that the hands of the soldiers should be frequently practised in the indispenable art of digging and intrenching. The Austrian commander at Sadowa would have deprived the Prussians of a great part of their superiority had he

is astonishing, quite sufficient to be marked as a distinct feature in the tourist's life. It is probable that the main stream of such visitors is confined to certain wellworn routes, and even to a certain class of rather expensive, very homeish, and decidedly "easy" hotels; but in those hotels, and on those routes, their presence is an unquestionable and, to some eyes, a very pleasant fact. It chanced to the writer re

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sixty would at home chuckle with glee at the thought of walking over the St. Gothard with one night's rest. Such travellers, when accompanied by their "families," are intelligible enough. They have been forced abroad by their daughters, like the life, brighten up, and enjoy those brief periods of second youth which are so charming to

The motives of another class, too, are not obscure. They have always travelled, and are loth to give up, or they are revisiting scenes admired in youth; but there are hundreds of old and apparently lonely Englishmen about in Switzerland every autumn who never were there before, cheery old men who take small mischances as boys take them, who are the delight of guides, and the betes noires of all travellers who hate wasting money. Who are they? Are they people who have always wanted to see Switzerland and never had the money in youth, or men weary of England, or widowers whose children have quitted home, or what? They go about, usually alone, sometimes in couples, with knowing faces and decided ways, utterly free of mauvaise honte, entirely devoid of the irritability which characterizes their compeers at thirty-five, the pleasantest, easiest, best informed "tourists" to be met.

cently to be on the line of the old " grand tour," and to be driven by stress of impedimenta to hotels he rather avoids they are the best in the world, but one might as well be in London and he made in no less than eight a careful calculation. Threefourths of the company at the tables d'hôte were over fifty years of age, and a third of those three-fourths looked sixty, while near-all who can perceive the beauty of old age. ly a half were women, travelling either alone, or attended by a courier and a maid. They were decidedly for their ends successful travellers. Accident having called his attention to their extraordinary number, he made it an occupation to watch them, and arrived at the conclusion that of all travellers on these well-frequented routes, the old, and especially the decidedly old, were the cheeriest, the most enterprising, and the least embarrassed. The men, no doubt, made a point of dinner, were slow and slightly selfish in their choice of dishes, and showed a tendency to order a luxury unattainable on the Continent, old pale sherry. They were not very quick either about languages, old gentlemen who talked French very fairly getting utterly puzzled with that tongue when spoken German fashion, and still more with English when pronounced in no fashion at all. "What on earth," said an old gentleman at Basle, with sharp grey eyes, who looked like a Still more remarkable are the old ladies, solicitor in great practice, can bloom-women of fifty and upwards, widows, spinboye' mean?" and the correct suggestion sters, or it may be in a limited number of that it was 66 plum pie" quite lowered his cases wives. The writer, or rather his wife, confidence in himself and his education. counted on the beaten route in a journey of Apart, however, from these trivial weak- six weeks upwards of two hundred such nesses, the old men travelling are decidedly Englishwomen travelling without men, or, pleasant companions, very cheery, very tol- rarely, with a courier in attendance, and erant, very well informed, and adventurous maintains that of all travellers they were to a fault. They see everything worth see-the easiest, jolliest, and in their way least ing, and not requiring too much exertion, vexatious to other human beings. He is better than the young; keep up with facts inclined, from his own experience, to lay it much better, learn more, so to speak, from down as an axiom that wherever in Switzeranything they see, or rather fit it more land a goat can go a British female over neatly into the proper pigeon-holes of the fifty-five thinks it her duty to go, and is brain. They receive more through their perfectly safe. She can be cheated, but the mental pores, partly, we suspect, because cheating must be done en règle, which means they are less reserved, partly because on according to Murray. She can be fatigued, the Continent the liking for mature age is but it is only by the presence of weak-kneed better developed, partly, we fear, because companions of the male sex. She can be there is more cash to be got out of them, frightened, but it is only by the absence of and so the harpies take trouble to make a Protestant Church or the presence of things pleasant. Anyhow, they enjoy them- something very decidedly Ultramontane. selves without worrying other people, and Her main difficulty, after the general fact they attempt expeditions from which the that she wants two glasses of claret, and young seem to shrink, walking, for exam- does not know what in the world to do with ple, distances they would consider in Eng- the rest of the half-bottle, is whims, but it land utterly out of the question. The is one. she surmounts with a courage and Gemmi, for instance, in England would good-humour far beyond rivalry. seem quite a walk to an Anglo-Indian of seventy, and we question if many men of

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One we met, a cheery old lady of, say, not to offend her, fifty-nine, had a clear de

termination to have her dog, an energetic nearly white Skye, with her in the trains. Of course no such proceeding could be endured, - people in cocked hats were horrified, people in blouses were bitten by that dog. It was utterly forbidden that it should go anywhere except in the proper van; but still at three separate stations there in the waiting-room was the old lady and the dog. How she managed it was a mystery, till the third occasion, when she stepped into the compartment, carrying a great blue bag, such as lawyers' clerks put deeds in. The guard assisted her in, - she weighed fourteen stone, quite politely, sniffed a little at the bag, which was vibrating wildly, but came to the conclusion, as we did also, that it was a parrot in a cage, - birds are not forbidden, or hens, as we know by disagreeable experience, — and said nothing. The compartment was full, the door was shut, and the old lady seating herself with the faintest chuckle, looked round with steady eyes, asked of the air, "I wonder if anybody will be annoyed?" and drew out of the bag the Skye terrier not stifled a bit. We have not a doubt she reached Florence without once suffering the annoyance of parting with her pet. She was only a specimen of scores of women of her kind, who in autumn travel about the frequented routes, see everything, enjoy everything, set all manner of rules aside, ask anybody anything, talk an astounding tongue which no nation would acknowledge, but which is intelligible none the less; bleat gently about the charges for voitures, and enjoy themselves, we verily believe, more than any women in the world.

nent, save and except young Scotchmen. There is a grave, simple, heavy-voiced way, a tone of "Is that the law now?" in which these particular people resist disbursements which somehow overawes even the Swiss, and saves them thirty per cent. upon their total expenditure. The calm way in which a Glasgow student brought a Bernese tariff to bear by the side of the Lake of Constance, and argued that he was being plundered contrary to "Swiss" law, was a thing not to be forgotten. No woman could have won such a victory as that boy did, and he will die a millionaire, which she will not.

We wish the Americans on the Continent would behave like the Scotch, whom on points they closely resemble, but they don't. Nobody in the world is quite so kindly or so tolerant as the American who knows something, but there is a class of Americans just now in Europe who are to experienced travellers the most intolerable of mankind. American gentlemen say they are "the shoddy aristocracy," but they have uniformly three distinctive and annoying characteristics, boxes for which they ought to pay rent and not merely fares, loud voices, and bad tempers. In a pretty large acquaintance with Americans of all grades, we declare that except on the Continent, we never heard a loud voice or met a visibly bad temper, and their own description of themselves is that a valise with a toothcomb and two" dickeys" is too much luggage. Nevertheless, a class with the peculiarities we have mentioned, in fact a class exactly resembling the English of thirty years since, is flooding the Continent, is ruining half its best hotels, not by extravagance, but by the introduction of a bad tone, and is concentrating on the Union all that angry distaste which for years was felt and expressed towards our own countrymen. The wildest caricatures friends of the South ever painted of Yankees are weak descriptions of some of these people, who are at last, fortunately for us, ceasing to be mistaken for Englishmen. Who they are, why they want half-a-dozen boxes apiece, why they should always quarrel with all service, what induces them to criticize the guests at tables d'hôte in an audible voice, above all, why they should be so invariably cross, passes human comprehension. Americans at home or in England display none of

Who are they all? They must have money, for in a quiet way they are pillaged to a considerable extent; and they must be independent, or they could not be so free of male interference; but who are they all? Is there really a class of women longing all their lives for change, and adventure, and variety of life, who never obtain till old age a chance of realizing their aspirations? Or, when the children are married off, and the husband dead or impossible, does the thirst for excitement suddenly spring up to supply the blanks? We do not know, but this we do know, that this year there were literally hundreds, probably thousands, of Englishwomen above fifty wandering over Switzerland and North Italy, taking care of themselves, enjoying themselves, and those foibles, and why a special class of leaving, on the whole, decidedly pleasant impressions of old Englishwomen. For one thing, they fight an evident overcharge in a quieter, more persistent, better-mannered way than any human beings on the Conti

them should give themselves that reputation on the Continent remains to be explained. The evil will pass away, but if some American satirist would laugh his travelling compatriots out of their " ways," as English-·

men have at last been laughed by satirists | marked that she liked sweets, and gravely out of theirs, he would make the great routes far pleasanter to the remainder of mankind.

From The Spectator.

BABY TRAVELLERS.

went in for dinner. Of ten or twelve dishes that child tasted every one, insisted on a separate glass of claret, and at last fixed the affections of her over-filled little person on some cheese-cakes. First she ate her own share. Then she sidled up to her governess, remarked in American that she had not had half enough, and, in French, that the lady opposite was clearly English, and, under cover of her chatter, quietly stole and bolted the poor woman's cheesecakes. Then she turned to her mother; but her mother had passed the dish, and we thought she was at the end of her resources. Not a bit of it. In the shrillest and calmest of trebles she ordered the head waiter, then about fifty feet off, "to bring papa some more cheesecakes," clutched three, and putting one on the governess's plate,— either out of a theory of restitution, as we hope, or an idea of making her an accomplice, as we fear,- bolted the other two, and then nudged her mother for admiration. With insignificant variations of circumstance she was the typical American female child as encountered in Switzerland, the most independent, self-helpful, greedy little imp alive. Male children from that continent, we are bound to say, are different, their main characteristics being a portentous gravity, and a certain slow, but real, politeness wonderful to behold. Outside the table d'hôte the last remnant of self-restraint seems to be thrown off, balconies are turned into play rooms, passages into racecourses, till the entire building seems given over to shrill-voiced, dyspeptic, highspirited little imps, who in an hour or so attract to their sides a cosmopolitan assembly of all colours and ages, make them all as wicked as themselves, and, we are bound to add, rule them all with the most serene aplomb.

ENGLISH travellers on the Continent rarely or never take young children with them. French people do, Russians do, and so do Americans, though the latter seem to prefer boys and girls just out of the nursery. Germans, however, seem to be the great offenders, wealthy persons of that nation thinking no shame to be accompanied by entire families, children, governesses, nurses, wet-nurses, and all. What with one people and another, children are numerous enough on the great routes to form a distinct feature in tourist life, a class well worth studying, a race who supply to observers perhaps the most distinct and curious of all subjects of speculation. They are, to begin with, so very separate and so very national. We would undertake in any hotel on the Continent to tell the nationality of any child by the arrangements made for his or her food, and by his or her relations to the servants. There is the American child, first. whose position is the simplest and easiest conceivable. She, if above three years of age, is "a grown up," paid for like any other guest, entitled to the same privileges, displaying the same entire independence of any kind of control, and evincing all the curious national contempt for servants of all grades. An American child of four in a Swiss hotel is perfectly capable of ordering a petit verre after dinner, and if she did would get it without the slightest interference from mamma, or the governess, or indeed any human being except possibly the waiter, who would speedily Next to the American children, the Gerbe brought to a due sense of his position and man are the most prominent; but their responsibilities. Dining at Zurich, a few prominence is not at dinner. There they days since, the writer noticed a perfect spec- are at work on the business of life, and are imen of the kind. She was a bright-eyed, remarkable only from the half quizzical, fair-haired little thing, probably seven years half servile attention paid to them by their old, but in appearance scarcely five, who fathers, and their astounding linguistic camarched into the room with the air of min- pacity. One of them, who sat opposite us gled curiosity and pomp so comical in sharp a fortnight since, a meek, staid-looking, children, made way for her father, a grave self-impressed little person, with red hair, man of fifty, but calmly ordered her mother talked three languages with equal fluency, to take another chair. Mamma had seated ordered her father's wine, dictated some herself outside her husband, and Baby in- extraordinary combination of footstools and tended to sit between her and the gover- chairs which ultimately seated her about ness. This arrangement accomplished, and six inches above the table, and was watched a waiter who proffered a high chair sum- by her father, a widower obviously, with a marily sent into disgrace, Baby unrolled sort of admiring awe. Somehow she was her napkin, read the menu carefully, re-like Pauline in Currer Bell's Villette, and

before she had been in the hotel three hours pay a franc for a glass, then, as the train some specialty in the child was recognized; started, buy the glass itself, and then, when everybody nodded, or rather bowed, to her, the little imp threw glass and water out of — salutes which she returned with the grav- window in a pet at the delay, take him on est of inclinations,- and the waiters watched his knee and spend half an hour in vain ather as if their places depended on her fiat. tempts to bring him to a happier mood. We have an impression, quite without evi- One could understand after that why freedence, that her father was a man of consid- dom of bequest seems unnatural to Frencherable rank, but anyhow, in twenty-four men. Sulkiness among French travelling hours the child had made her presence dis- children is, however, very rare. As a rule, tinctly felt throughout the house, and so they seem as happy as birds, and like birds completely asserted her position that if she they are everywhere at once, till they form had ordered champagne for breakfast some a distinct feature in the prospect. Their one would have brought it without a glance to momentary importance pleases them, and seek the father's consent. She, of course, so does the variety of scene, and when not was not typical, being in her way a char- suffering torments from indigestion they acter and, as we suspect, but do not know, generally contrive to fill the hotels with aided by her father's place in the world; life, and movement, and happy if somewhat but it is true that, next to the Americans, shrill laughter. Though not left indepenthe Germans seem to accord their children dent, they are left with servants much more the most liberty, to treat them with the than English children are, and not always least reference to disparity of age. Both with the most beneficial result. They see nations spend for their children, too, with too much of the great vice of French sera liberality which approaches extravagance; vants, their indifference to truth. Apthe Germans lugging about small armies proaching Paris from the South a little of retainers, and the Americans submitting, while since, the writer and his wife noticed on their behalf, to the most preposterous a child, obviously of very good class, atclaims. We met in the Oberland one party of nine, for whom a careful mother had not only engaged nine mules, but nine guides, all strictly charged to prevent the slightest attempt at rapid motion.

The French children are much less independent. French mothers also allow their children to join the table d'hôte, but they do not allow them such independence, on the contrary, restraining them, if anything, more than English people do. On the other hand, they pay them infinitely more attention. A Frenchman cares probably a great deal more about his dinner than an Englishman, but he will interrupt it much more frequently to talk to a child, will mix its wine more carefully, will discuss with a waiter more at length the suitability of particular dishes. The American child seems to rule the family much more; but the French child absorbs it, and has, we suspect, much more influence upon its movements. It is very unusual, for example, for any but a French family to seat a servant at dinner; but they, if they have children with them, do it constantly, solely that the little ones may be well and quickly looked after, and compelled rigidly to observe les convenances. A certain forethought for the little people, a sense that they have rights, is very perceptible in their arrangements, the care sometimes, no doubt, degenerating into most injurious fondness. We saw a French father whose son, about five, had expressed a wish for water en route to Chur,

tended by two nursemaids, and a young seminarist, whose relation to the party was not easily intelligible. Arriving at the ticket station, the superior bonne produced two tickets, and remarked audibly that she intended to carry the child through without paying for a third. The little lady was about seven; but the conductor was informed, with all the gravity of a Frenchwoman when telling a deliberate lie, that she was under two. "Under two! butMesdames." It was of no use, she was under two, and the conductor turned to the theological student, still reading his breviary. At least, Monsieur, you will not affirm a story so monstrous, so incredible." The seminarist half-raised his eye-lids, bowed in a manner quite sacrosanct, and replied, "I know the child, and she is under two." 'Well," affirmed the conductor, with some slight temper, "if you get that child through the barrier without a ticket I'll eat her," and disappeared. The women seemed frightened - having, we suspect, received the fare from their mistress — and we anticipated a scene; but we had underrated French ingenuity. "Fan must play baby," said the nurse, and Fan was obviously delighted. In a minute or two she was stripped, clad in a nightgown or chemise of some sort, a handkerchief folded over her head, her hair combed back, and she herself transformed into a baby in long clothes. No human being could have detected the deception, unless he had no

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