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like a toad , in the middle is a mortar . Others are armed with huge long guns . Unsophisticated readers should be told that our contemporary ' s supremely nautical eye has confounded the bluff mortar-boats , sloop-rigged and never intended for speed , with the gunboftts , mostly rigged as threemasted schooners ; and which , however unyachtlike in look , and built all for mischief , are fast , handy , and serviceable . Of the line-of-battle ships our contemporary says : — The truth must be spoken . These big ships with their chequered sides are not handsome . They are all hull . Their masts seem stumpy and disproportioned to
the body to be moved . This descrip tion has at least the merit of being original . " We venture to say that few will be found to share this impression , or to pronounce those towering sea-fortresses not handsome . "We do not say that " handsome '' is the word for them . Out of any but a Cockney dictionary we think another and juster epithet might be found to describe the Duke of Wellington , the Nile , the Orion , the Csesar , the Colossus . To say that they are all hull , " is to be ignorant that the spars
are just as nicely proportioned to their length and burden as a cutter-yacht's . " Who would say that the Conqueror or the Cressy was " all hull ? " Their very perfection of lines consists in that exquisite proportion of strength and grace which makes the enormous size of the ship appear more and more startling as you approach her from a distance . Our contemporary is good enough to assure us that the grandest naval review
" you may see any day for a shilling , taking boat at Grravesend and proceeding on the river through the Pool to Iiondon Bridge . " " We are very far from denying the grandeur of that forest of shipping which of all sights is certainly the one most calculated to fill the mind of the intelligent foreigner with a sense of the strength of England . But to compare the spectacle of the shipping in the Pool to the spectacle at Spithead last week , is to tell us that when we have once seen a
horse-market , there is nothing new to be Been in a review of the Light and Heavy Cavalry Brigades . Our contemporary deploreB the monotony of the ships ( steaming to the pivot-ships and back , and he feelingly exclaims : — But what would it have been if the fleet , having rounded the pivot-ships , had loosed canvas , set sail , and Bailed back to their stations—what a sight that would have been ! " We can tell our contemporary what it would have been . It would have been about
as sensible for all practical purposes as it might be to open some grand lino of railway by fastening teams of horses to the carriages iind engines , and dragging them along at the rate of two miles an hour , by way of a triumph of the beautiful over the useful . The Very object , as wo understood it , of tho demonstration at Spithoad , was to show the world the last results of science applied to the purposes of naval warfare on a gigantic Bcale , and not to reproduce the picturesque
but almost obsolete manoeuvres or rorty years ago , when steam-ships were not . We regarded this Naval Koview as a practical and business-like display of available forces in their highest perfection , and not as a regatta for aquatic Cockneys to criticize . And in that very mechanical monotony of those leviathan sea-fortresses moving to their doatination by some invisible propulsion was that victory of science over brute f'oreo which ia the proudest and happiest augury of our tinio , for lfc is the suicide ot war .
"When our contemporary suggests that " porhapa , if tho truth wore told , they would have sailed if they could , " wo must bo permitted to protest against an equally unworthy Ijtnd willy sneer . Never were any Britiah
out , and in the afternoon there was something like a calm . No jdoubt the fleet might have set sail and might have bewildered the nautical eyes of Government clerks with such manoeuvres as they are in . the habit of performing daily between 8 a . m . and sunset : but in spite . of all sneers , Ave are disposed to concur , on this occasion , with " Xiords , " in thinking that where a drifting match was the only alternative , steam movements ( for steam-ships ) were preferable- As it is , the Houses of Parliament and the Government
ships , we are fully persuaded , better officered , better manned , better handled than those of the Baltic fleet . They have failed in nothing but opportunity . We may add that there would have been another slight objection to the sailing regatta which our contemporary sighed for . As a man will die for want of breath , so , for want of breath , it is difficult to imagine how those two hundred and forty ships could have " set sail and sailed back to their stations . " There was scarcely breeze enough in the morning to blow the bunting
clerks only saw half the show . If the fleet had " sailed , " it would certainly not have got to the pivot-ships before dark , and even all our contemporary ' ^ admitted nautical skill could scarcely have prevented disastrous consequencs , for which " Lords" would have been held responsible . For to " sail in line , " to " keep the intervals with precision , is far from an easy operation , " in a narrow sea , and in a dead . calm . " The moral of all this , " as our contemporary observes , is that so grand a spectacle as the Naval Review of last week , is not to
be fairly described by a man who was on board a steamer that broke down , or put her fires out , or by one of a " genteel" London mob , whose idea of a day ' s enjoyment is a scramble , a feed , and a fight . A parting word of advice to our contemporary : Let him look to his nautical reputation ; or instead of singing The Bay of Biscay O ! " as he has been wont to sing with so much applause , in the character of an old salt , we shall call upon him for the favourite ballad of " Farewell , my trim-built wherry 1 " in the character and costume of Tom Tug , waterman , of Putney .
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THE FIRST BLOW IN PARLIAMENT . It seems impossible for Mr . Disraeli and his friends to succeed , even in the affectation of public spirit . The selfishness and narrowness of faction are betrayed in their manner of treating all questions , however remote from the ordinary grounds of party warfare . Their ponderous recapitulations in the Kars debate were seasoned only by oblique personal allusions , and malevolent satire . Pretending to outbid all parties in their sympathy with
the army , their deference to public opinion , their political foresight , and their state oi strategic preparation , the truth was at once exposed that their patriotic lamentations over tho Armenian disaster were simply the tricks of a famished Opposition . The great body of Liberals , who were prepared to question the Government policy in Asia , refused to divide in behalf of this mean and spiritless faction . Mr . Latarb performed » signal service by his elaborate proof of tho indifference
oxhibited , on the Tory aide of the House , to the interests involved in tho Asiatic campaign when those interests might have been protected . Tho Tories would not interfere to urge tho relief of Kars when Kara was still held by General Williams and the Turkiah army . They know that thoir party would not be tolerated in office while tho nation was engaged in war . Mr . LAYArti ) moved , tho Ho use again and ngain to conaider tho dangcru of tho garrison in Asia . lie had no support from tho Conservatives . They wore , at loawt , aa indilibront aa the
Ministers . But , upon the return of peace , the fell of Kara constituted a specious ground for an attack on the Cabinet . The attack has failed , practically and morally . The remarkable division of Thursday night was not merely a ministerial success . It was the declaration of Parliament that it distrusts the patriotism and the capacity of the Conservatives , and it demonstrates the reality of their decline in numerical support , and in the virtual sympathies of the nation . Some conscientious men there are in Parliament to whom ,
whatever may be thought of their public policy the country may look for pure statements oi opinion . These men were not heard , during the three nights' debate , giving the aid of their character and eloquence to the suspected Tory party . Only Mr . Whitesidjs , Lord John Mannebs , Sir John Pakington —that honest and docile philanthropist—Sir Btjxweb Lytton , Colonel Dunne , and Mr . DiSRAEiii were the orators of the assaulting party . Not one of the Liberals , not one of the Duke of Newcastle ' s followers , supported them . Some remarks of Lord John Rtjssexl ' s
had a bearing upon the moral results of the Russian war in England . He had noticed the retreat of many cowardly and inconstant minds upon the idea of centralization and prerogative . But he suggested a parallel , which we shall next week develop , between the state of a constitutional nation after a war , and that of a nation governed " by one strong man . "
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DEATH OF J . B . BLACKETT . The death of John Blackett , the late member for Newcastle , has taken from us one of the truest men of our day . Blackett was a cultivated man , of a high spirit , and a graceful heart ; and he could not have lent himself to any delusions or excesses of the many . As little could he accept the sophisms by which the few justify the cliqueries of place , or the injustice of one-sided legislation . No man of our time so completely inherited the independent yet generous patriotism of tho gentleman of the Commonwealth ; a type of the Englishman rarer than it haa been , or , we trust , than it will be . The country could ill spare John Blaokett , but only his personal friends know what the loss really is .
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Ma . y 3 , 1856 . ] THE LEABEB , 423
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Thk Fleet at Spithead . —It is expected that the Queen will review the fleet at Spithead again in about ten days from the present time . The Emperor of the French is expected to bo present . One motive for the repetition is said to be in order to make up for the disappointment of the faithful Lords and Commons on the recent occasion . Death of Mr , Guthrxe , F . R . S . - —> , This eminent medical practitioner died on Thursday morning , at hi » residence , Berkeley-street , Berkeley-square , at disease of the heart . He was born in 1785 , and commenced his professional career at an early age in the army . The Opthalmic Hospital in King William-street , Strand , was founded by Mr . Guthrie .
Attemvt to Biikak out ov Prison . —A desperate attempt on the part of thirteen convicts , now in tho Glasgow prison , to break out of that building , haa just been made . Tho men armed themselves , wounded a turnkey , mid were only checked by the arrival of a strong body of police . 1 ' almbii ' h Tkiai ,. —Tho Central Criminal Court will undergo Home considerable alterations preparatory to the trial of the Kugely poisoning case . The Old Court , where the trial will come on , in not capable of giving accommocation to more than ti vo hundred persons—a number totally inadequate to tho requirements of this occasion . It iH said that Mr . Serjeant Shoe , Mr . Groves , Q-C , Mr . John Groy , and Mr . Kiiealy , and not Sir Fitzroy Kelly and Mr . Ballantinc , will defend Palmer at the ensuing trial .
Tiik Health ok Mit . Bicioirr , M . P . —Tho hopes lately held out of Mr . Bright ' a speedy restoration to health wore not , wo are sorry to hear , well founded . It in now certain that a lengthened period of repose and iibHtinonco from bimineaa of ony kind wfll bo necosBary before tho member for Manchester will bo ablo to reauin « his parliamentary dutlcB .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), May 3, 1856, page 423, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2139/page/15/
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