as soon have thought of telling a falsehood the moment before he knew he was to enter upon eternity as telling a comforting lie to this girl

now.

"I must. Theo, forgive me?"

"I have nothing to forgive," she said with a strong effort. She had made her appeal, poor child, and it had failed, and now her pride prompted her to show him that the failure could be borne. Her pride and a something softer; there was such misery in the man's eyes, that her generous woman's nature urged her not to increase it by showing him how fully it was shared.

and she was deliriously happy. She never doubted what this embrace should result in; she never doubted but that it was the prelude to a never-ending series of the same, on which the world should smile. Very confidingly did she submit to his caresses, very modestly and sweetly did she respond to them. The dream was bright that she dreamt in those momentsbright and pure; and he shrank from the task of awakening her from it, his heart still governing his head in an unaccustomed way.

"Why awaken her from it at all?" he asked himself presently. "Love would be more to her than the world." Thus he thought for a

pressed his lips to her forehead, and pleaded for her pardon for the unuttered wrong. "Theo, forgive me, forgive me?” "For what?"

"I'll tell you to-morrow. Let me go now," he added, disengaging himself from her, "I can't stand it, Theo."

"Oh, Harold," she cried, passionately, "you try me-you try me. Why not now as well as to-morrow, to-morrow that will be so long in coming?"

"No it won't, poor child, dear little Theo. It will soon come, and you'll listen, and I shall speak better than now. Let me go, darling; don't turn your face away, Theo, there's no harm in it." When he had so said, he departed, leaving Theo in feverish expectation of that morrow which was to make known to her so much.

(To be continued.)

THE ROYAL SOVEREIGN.

THE permanent attraction in Portsmouth Harbour is, of course, the Victory, Nelson's Victory, the ship in which that greatest of seamen, and most admirable of heroes, conquered and died; and in which every memo

They had come home during this conversation, for the things spoken had been spoken at intervals and had taken some time to say. Now they were in the little drawing-room alone, and even the twilight was dying out of the sky. Theo's last plaint went straight to his heart, and his heart governed his head for a brief space.

"Theo!" his arm went round her as he spoke and her head rested upon his breast, and there was such passionate love in the way his hand clasped hers. All the misery and uncertainty of the last hour fled from her mind,

most judicious and reverential care. To her, as to his shrine and fittest monument, year after year, an almost daily stream of pilgrims pay an affectionate homage, which is very rarely drawn away by the most striking novelty, or the most attractive object of fresh interest. But the present moment is one in which she is temporarily superseded in the public curiosity, and the vessel which is the observed of all observers is indebted for the attention which she excites, not to her gracefulness of outline or beauty of proportion, for even her architect and her captain, in spite of the professional pride they naturally take in her,

confess her to be the very ugliest craft that has ever yet floated on the waters, nor to any excellence as a sea-boat which she is expected to exhibit, for she is neither supposed nor intended to be able to go out of sight of our own shores; but to the circumstance that, while all other ships are only developments or modifications of ancient systems, she exhibits the result of the exertions of a perfectly original genius. We do not, in saying this, propose here to prejudge the question, which indeed is as yet hardly ripe for decision, whether her constructor is over-sanguine or not in thinking that the armament which he has given her must ultimately supersede every other for purposes of war; but that for many kinds of service she will be pre-eminently useful there can be no doubt whatever, and still less question can there be of the credit due to a boldness of invention which has thus struck out for itself an entirely new path, while every one else employed on similar tasks has been contented with adhering to established models, and has sought to attain his objects by the mere enlargement of old plans, or the application of them to new materials.

The ship of which we are speaking is the Royal Sovereign, a wooden three-decker, cut down, and, in the place of her original armament of 130 guns, equipped with one of five under the direction of Captain C. P. Coles, R. N. The circumstances which led to the conception of so singular and unprecedented a conversion have been fully explained by Captain Coles himself on more than one occasion, and it may enable our readers better to comprehend its objects, if we briefly recapitulate the most striking points of his explanation.

Captain Coles is a nephew of the late distinguished admiral, Lord Lyons; and at the first breaking out of the Russian war in 1854 was that officer's flag-lieutenant in the Agamemnon. He was soon afterwards promoted, and received the command of the Stromboli gunboat. In one ship or the other he had the good fortune to be present at the most important operations undertaken by our fleets in the Black Sea. Of all the ships in the fleet the Agamemnon got closest to the Russian batteries on the 17th October, 1854; and the next year the Stromboli made one of the gallant squadron of gunboats with which the lamented Lyons of the Miranda, and, after his death, Osborn of the Vesuvius (the same officer who is now captain of the Royal Sovereign), swept the Sea of Azov, and with ceaseless vigilance and energy destroyed the greater part of the stores on which the garrison of Sebastopol depended, and so contributed their full share to the fall of that all-important

fortress. In the Stromboli, too, Captain Coles bore a part in the reduction of Kinburn; and from his judicious reflections on what happened under his own eyes during the attack on that place sprang, in a great degree, his conception of the new plan which the visitors to the Royal Sovereign see exhibited to them in that vessel. The performances of a raft called the Nancy with a 32-lb. gun mounted in the centre, during the campaign in the Sea of Azov, had led him to the conclusion that a gun so placed, being necessarily steadier than one at the side of a vessel, was capable of being fired with greater precision by reason of that increased steadiness. The casualties occurring among the gunners of the French floating batteries at Kinburn, several of whom were killed or wounded by shot which entered the portholes of the gun which they were serving, pointed out to him further the great need which existed of some new plan for the protection of that important portion of the crew, who, while a gun scarcely more than a foot in diameter required a porthole of at least 13 square feet for its training, were necessarily exposed to great danger. Led by these considerations, he applied his mind to devise a vessel which should combine steadiness of platform for the guns with protection to the crew, and before the end of the year he submitted to the Board of Admiralty a plan for a raft armed with one heavy gun to be worked within a hemispherical iron shield. The Board appointed a commission, composed of officers serving in the Black Sea, and presided over by Sir Houston Stewart, to examine the projector and his design; and their report was so favorable to the plan on all its most important points, that Captain Coles was ordered to repair to England, and preparations were made for constructing a number of vessels such as he had designed, which would have been sent the next year to attack Cronstadt, had not peace happily rendered them unneces sary. As far as the Admiralty was concerned the idea was, from that moment, abandoned, but it was fructifying in the fertile mind of the inventor. The raft, which, in his original plan, was to have been composed mainly of water-casks, was manifestly but a temporary expedient, of which one of the principal merits was that a whole flotilla of such vessels could be constructed with cheapness and despatch; but in the hemispherical iron shield it contained a germ which, when elaborated by patient thought and ingenuity, could not fail to produce far greater results. To work out such results, therefore, by adapting his prin ciple to large ships, Captain Coles now began to apply himself. The more he considered

the matter the more strongly did the conviction force itself upon his mind that the system of portholes, which was inseparable from a broadside armament, was not only fraught with needless danger to the gunners, but was, at all events from the moment that we began to cover ships with iron plates, a source of weakness to the ship; and consequently the more was he led to adhere to his principle of the shield. But, if the gun had to be trained within the shield, it was clear that it would still require a porthole. To obviate this he presently hit upon the idea of making the shield itself revolve upon a turntable, so that what should be trained should be not the gun by itself, but the shield containing the gun, and thus mounted the gun would require an opening only very little larger than its muzzle. There were still many points to be considered, especially with respect to rigging, steam-power,

&c., before a design, framed for a coasting raft could be made available for a large ship fitted to contend with an Atlantic gale, or to take its place in a line of battle. But all difficulties yielded before a resolution to surmount them, and at last, in June, 1860, he produced a design for two classes of ships, one suited for home service only, the other capable of long and distant voyages; and in a lecture which he delivered at the United Service Institution, he fully explained the details of his plan, and all the advantages which he expected to derive from it, especially in action; he pointed out that a ship armed on his principle, with her guns placed, as he proposed, along her centre, would be free from that roll, so disconcerting to the gunner's aim, which, independently of any smoothness or roughness of the sea itself, is caused by the mere working of the guns when placed at the

side of the ship; while the character of the shields, revolving round the entire circle, would enable the fire of all the guns to be concentrated on any point on either side except one exactly fore or aft, the end turrets being able to command those points also. He explained also his plans for ventilation, and for getting rid of the smoke, so that the captain of each gun would always be able to see his object: while his vessel, though having her guns higher out of the water than could be the case in any ship armed on the broadside principle, would yet have her gunwale nearer the water, and so would offer a far smaller target to the enemy; and finally, he proved that a vessel so armed would require a much smaller crew; would be, in fact, not only cheaper in her first construction, but infinitely cheaper in her maintenance in an effective state, and in her whole subsequent working. His scheme, as proposed on this occasion, embraced a row of nine

turrets, each containing two guns of 100 lbs. each; and as the Warrior, our first ironplated ship, which had been commenced in May, 1859, was to have a broadside of something over 1600 lbs., of which only 13 68pounders were to be protected by armour, he contrasted with that force the 1800 pounds of shot which the revolving power of his shields or turrets would enable his vessel to throw on either side at pleasure, pointing out with selfevident truth that the effect of a ship's fire would depend, not so much on the mere weight of her collected broadside, as on the smallness of the number of the shot which made up that weight. The originality, boldness, and undeniable plausibility of the plan, while it startled some, who thought, as indeed they still think, that Captain Coles, like other men proud of, and confident in, their inventions, was disposed to underrate the objections to it, and to overrate the evils attendant on

the broadside system, and the difficulty of removing or diminishing those evils, yet made a great impression on his hearers, and on the public in general; but apparently it was not regarded with equal favour by the Admiralty, who, while ordering ships to be laid down on the old models with different trifling variations, steadily resisted every proposal to give Captain Coles's novel designs a trial. However, as time wore on, the new plan was discussed and favorably estimated in Parliament; the Prince Consort, who, from a careful examination of its details, had conceived a high opinion of its probable success, and, at all events, of the genius and merit of the inventor, pressed it on the notice of those in authority at Whitehall; and at last, after a year had elapsed, a trial was so far given to it that a turret was constructed on an old vessel called the Trusty, from which a gun was worked in competition with another gun mounted in the old fashion at the side of the ship; and the strength and working of the turret was further tested by a heavy cannonade from 68 and 110-pounders being directed at it from a distance of only 200 yards. Whether for offence or defence the turret proved a complete success.

It was

hit by 44 shot, which not only failed to penetrate it at any point, but utterly failed also to destroy, or even in the least to diminish the ease and rapidity with which it worked round. So utterly, indeed, that the men employed at it declared (we should think with some slight exaggeration) that the pounding it had received had made it work, "if anything, rather better." As a weapon of offence the gun which it contained, though only 7 men were required by it, while 12 were wanted for the gun at the ship's side, never fired fewer than three shots for every two that could be discharged from the other; and on one occasion, when the smoke (from which its position on deck relieved those in the turret) enveloped those at the broadside gun between decks, she actually fired seven shots, bringing each to bear with true aim at a gunboat passing at full speed, while her rival could only deliver one.

Yet even after this apparent verification of all that the inventor had promised, no steps were taken to give the invention such further trial as to build a ship in accordance with it, till, in the spring of the next year, the increasing pressure of public opinion, fortified by the knowledge that the Americans had borrowed the idea, and had proved its value in real warfare, became irresistible, and at last the Admiralty yielded, and orders were issued to apply it to two ships, one of which, the Prince Albert, was to be built on purpose ;

the other, the Royal Sovereign, a splendid three-decker, which had never been to sea, was to be altered to receive the turrets, as other vessels, such as the Royal Oak, the Prince Consort, &c., had been reduced to receive their armour-plates. The Prince Albert is not yet ready for sea; the Royal Sovereign was completed in the spring of the present year, and of her we will now attempt to present some description to our readers.

We must premise however that she is not built or equipped exactly in accordance with Captain Coles's original plan. Some alterations have been made by himself; others, strange to say, in spite of his most earnest protest. The vast increase in the size of ordnance which had been made since his lecture in 1860, led him to reduce the number of his turrets, though making them, from the superior calibre of the guns which he now placed in them, very far more powerful than those which he had originally designed. In fact, the effect of shot is now so clearly ascertained to increase in almost geometrical progression according to its calibre, that a single 300-pounder will probably disable a hostile ship more than twenty guns of a third of that size, just as one lion would be more formidable to a herd of oxen than a score of cats.

The alterations, however, which have been made by others, in disregard of his wishes, affecting as they do her masts, her tonnage, and her whole general character to a degree which disqualifies her from being used as a sea-going ship, may almost be looked upon as neutralising the advantage gained by the increase of her gun-power. A little while before the commencement of her conversion into a turret-ship the Admiralty had appointed a Mr. Reed Chief Constructor of the Navy, though he had previously had scarcely any experience as a ship builder; and, though he was chiefly known as the champion of a plan diametrically opposed to that of Captain Coles, gave him authority to decide on and alter the details of that officer's design-authority which he certainly exercised with no very great forbearance. It would seem to have been a singular policy of the Board so to tamper with a new invention as to leave the inventor the credit of any success which his ship might achieve, while thus dividing the discredit of any defect which she might develop between themselves and their new constructor.

We must however look at her as she is; and a very singular vessel she certainly appears to eyes accustomed to the tapering masts and lofty sides gaping with portholes and bristling with cannon of the honoured old Victory or the modern Duke of Wellington, both of which, as if to provoke the comparison, lie almost by her

side.

Instead of those graceful stately fabrics we see a long low mass, so low indeed that her figurehead, the crowned lion of England, is raised far above her deck, and looking longer than she really is, by reason of that exceeding lowness. Her sides too project no threatening muzzles from rows of great square openings, but present one solid unbroken wall, which, on inquiry, we learn is composed of 18 inches of timber, protected on the outside by solid plates of 5 inches of wrought iron, and coated on the inside also with a stout iron skin. Her deck too, which, as being originally the lower deck of a three-decker, is of an unusual width, not less than 63 feet, and also unusually arched, so as to give a rise in the centre of 18 inches, has an underclothing of inch iron; and, rising out of it along the centre, are four circular turrets, which contain the ship's offensive power. They too are as solid as the sides of the ship; but in them we perceive small oval openings, one in each of the three sternmost, and two in the foremost, each of which is almost filled up with the muzzle of a huge 300-pounder Armstrong gun; the only vacant space being one of 3 inches below, and 4 inches above the gun, to give room for its occasional depression or elevation. And lest this small opening should prove a source of weakness, an extra 4 inch iron plate is added for a space of 4 feet on each side of the port; giving a thickness there of no less than 10 inches of solid iron. The largest or 2-gun turret in the bow rises 5 feet above the deck, measures 23 feet in diameter, and weighs, including its guns, 144 tons; the three smaller turrets rise 4 feet 6 inches, measure 20 feet 6 inches in diameter, and, with their gun, weigh 103 tons cach, the weight of a gun and carriage being 16 tons.

Each gun is but just clear of the deck, and, except in action, is nearly concealed from the sight of anyone outside the vessel by an iron bulwark about 3 feet high, made in compartments resting on hinges and secured by pins, the withdrawal of which--an operation that can be performed in a few seconds-leaves the gun a clear space in front for its fire. The position of the gun in the centre, coupled with that raising of the deck which has already been mentioned, enables it to be depressed so low as to strike the water at a distance of only 23 yards from the ship. The perpendicular depression of the gun, or its elevation, which by the arrangement of the carriage can be carried as high as 35 degrees, is of course effected by moving the gun itself, but the lateral training, which in the central turrets amounts to about 60 degrees each way, making an arc of 120 degrees, and which in those at the bow and stern, from their having nothing

on one side of them, is much greater, is effected by revolutions given to the turrets themselves. And of them we will now speak, pausing only to remind or inform our readers that the greatest degree of lateral training of which a broadside gun is susceptible is 28 degrees, making an arc of 56 degrees, and to effect this her ports are forced to be not less than 13 square feet in size.

The entrance to the turrets is below the deck, and there also it is that they and the guns which they contain are worked, the whole crew being below, with the exception of the captain, whose place in action is in a little watch-tower, as it may be called, slightly raised above the deck, and plated as strongly as the turrets, in which, while fully protected and concealed from the sight of the enemy, he has a full view of all that is going on, and from which, by means of a set of voice pipes ingeniously placed around him, he can convey his orders to every part of the ship. Each turret is supported on a turntable, the idea of which Captain Coles borrowed from that in ordinary use on our railways; and each turntable revolves on a gigantic pivot, two feet in diameter, made of wrought iron, hollow, with sides four inches thick, and fitted with bearings like the shaft of a paddle-wheel. The men who fight the gun have ample standing room in the turret, which, when it is desired to train it in any direction, is moved by a double set of winches, outside and inside, which, in the case of the smaller turrets, can be worked by as few as four men, though there is room for double that number if required. They can turn it with extreme rapidity or with the most deliberate slowness, and stop its revolution at a word, thus bringing the gun to bear on its object with the most perfect nicety. And this was tested and proved in the most satisfactory manner at the end of July, when the ship closed her first series of experimental firing in the open sea by destroying, with the concentrated fire of all her guns at a single discharge, a target only a foot square at a distance of 1000 yards. The trial she had then just completed of repeated and rapid firing of all her guns with full charges proving also, as Captain Coles had predicted, that very little smoke entered the turrets, and also, what was least expected, at least by the adversaries of the plan, that the concussion was less felt in them than in other parts of the ship. gun carriages run on a kind of rail, the recoil after fire bringing the gun back within the turret sufficiently to allow of its being reloaded without any exposure of the gunners, and at the same time (from the admirable arrangement of all the gear which holds the gun) being under the most complete control, as may be

The