seeming devotion. Alone on the steps of the
altar stood that venerable old man, his hands
clasped over the elements, his eyes turned to
heaven. While he communicated, the silence
was positively awful. Then, stealing around,
came the soft sounds of the silver trumpets,
low and plaintive, at first, as wailing spirits,
then swelling forth in a Hosanna of joy and
praise. The Pope, holding in his hand the host,
turned to the four quarters of the globe. Then
the Agnus Dei was chanted, the Pope resumed
his robes and retired as he came, bestowing
blessings around. Then the crowd, ebbing and
flowing like a human sea, cast its vast waves
through every open door into the piazza beyond,
where the burning sunshine caught and absorbed
them all alike. We too, with these thousands
of living victims, were ruthlessly clutched by the
monster waiting to devour us the instant we left
the kindly shelter of the cool sanctuary.

But the celebrations of Rome's great festa to
her patron saint were not yet over. Magnificent
pleasures were yet awaiting us in the Piazza del
Popolo at the first hour of night. The piazza was
densely filled. The fountains and obelisks rose
out of acres of pleasure-loving Romans; galleries
were erected in the porticos of the twin churches
opposite the Flaminian Gate; every window was
filled, and every eye turned in expectant eagerness
towards the Pincian Hill, where, amid lofty
terraces and sculptured trophies, gigantic statues
and dark ilex woods, the girandola (fireworks)
was to be exhibited. Meanwhile, the usual
fanning and consuming of ices and of sweet
drinks went on among the Roman princesses,
seated on a raised estrade, looking as haughty
and unpleasant as any classical Cornelias or
Volumnias, history could furnish.

The herald cannon sounded, and up flew
millions of rockets, descending in blue, red,
purple, and yellow stars. When these brilliant
comets allowed us to look round, the summit of
the Pincian was transformed into a great temple
of fire, enclosed by walls of quivering crystal,
broken by niches filled with fiery statues; a
temple such as Vulcan might have reared to
Venus in the infernal shades wherein to recast
the armour of Mars.

Then volleys of deafening cannon rattled till
one's ears ached. Behold, overlapping streams
of liquid fire rush down the steep sides of the
Pincian into the piazza, and mysteriously
disappear in showers of golden sparks, which
the crowd struggled to catch; but lo! they
were gone! Then we had an intermezzo of
rockets and catherine-wheels, the cannons
outdoing one another; and now a vast architectural
design appears, representing a burning palace,
great halls and galleries, and endless arcades and
colonnades in fiery perspective, red with
palpitating flames. Such a palace might have suited
the ghosts in Vathek, which wander hither and
thither for ever through boundless vaults of fire,
clasping with their hands a burning heart hid
under the folds of shadowy draperies.

I could not tell all the wonderful tricks and
changes of these marvellous fireworks; the
enchanter Merlin never terrified his enemies with
more surprising samples of his transforming art.
As a final triumph, the whole Pincian became
the crater of a horrible volcano, casting forth
fire and flames, while the roar of the cannon
mimicked the thunders of the labouring
mountains. Red lava-streams rushed down in every
direction, and millions of rockets shot up into
the heavens, to fall back bright and beaming like
planets fallen from their spheres.

A moment more and all was over. The moon
shone down serenely in a soft twilight, casting
pale lights on the statues and terraced galleries,
as if all else had been a disordered dream.

                       ANOTHER GUN.

NOT long ago was noticed in this journal the
idea of the ingenious inventor who, in the wild
competition of all the iron and steel guns—iron
which was homogeneous and malleable; and
steel which was " Krupp's"—modestly proposed
a new material, which took the world a little by
surprise, namely, leather and papier-mâché.*
There is a great deal to be said for the leather
and paper guns; certainly something on the
score of economy. The parliamentary bills for
the artillery furnished by Whitworth and
Armstrong are swelling every year, and making
the ratepayer scowl. More beautiful tools in
finish, design, and workmanship, could not be
conceived. A small Armstrong would not
discredit a drawing-room or a boudoir; and the
enthusiasm of the French officer, who exclaimed,
with military rapture, that they exhibited a
"luxe et un puissance d'outillage merveilleux,"
can be almost comprehended on looking
at them. But the ratepayer's admiration is
damped when he thinks of the frightful cost of
the experiments, the workshops, the failures, the
inventors, the metals, the tools. A cost that, in
the words of the famous "power of the Crown"
resolution, is increasing, hath increased, and
very decidedly ought to be diminished. When
a reformer, therefore, comes forward with a
simple practical plan which has economy written
in mammoth characters on its outside, he
deserves to be listened to with respect. MAJOR,
PALLISER, a young cavalry officer, who,
unlike most of his military companions, made a
brilliant university career—has for some years
been experimenting, and has now secured the
great dull flabby government ear, and, better
still, is "getting" the honest, open, friendly ear
of the public.

The recommendation of the whole is its
welcome simplicity and economy. It is not known,
perhaps, that a gun, like a bank-note, has its fixed
length of days. It is allowed to live through so
many discharges, a register of which is kept.
When the number is filled up, say, in many cases,
from eighty to a hundred (this was under the
old pre-Armstrong dispensation), government
steps in. The "arm" is assumed to be unsafe.

               * Volume xii., page 162