sausage, potatoes and salad, with sweet in each hand, they cannot supply the eager things if you like, and good beer, at a very customers quickly enough, and you see a moderate cost. The counter from which crowd round the cask holding out their the chief delivers his supplies is so well ar- tankards to the tapster. In some rooms a ranged and fitted with pots and pans that fountain of iced-water is provided, in which the various dishes are kept hot and ready the tankards and glasses can be rinsed and for serving out at a moment's notice. And cooled. Pains are taken to keep the beer cool in the cellars; hence, as will be understood, the Bavarians are highly favoured in their national beverage. They can drink it in perfection. let it be remarked, a table-napkin is supplied to each person who dines. This is a touch of consideration for third-class passengers which I can hardly hope to see adopted in England, live as long as I may. At nearly all the stations the third-class is, this particular v will be important, because waiting-room is also the restauration. To those who know what Bavarian beer even a good thing may be spoilt by bad "Will any of you dine at the table-d'-hôte serving. An Englishman who cannot drink at Linz?" asked the guard of the train, beer at home without undergoing a severe looking into our second-class carriage, as bilious attack, finds that he can drink beer we were nearing that city. Whether he at Munich with impunity. He feels resent a message on by telegraph or other- freshed and comforted thereby, but not stuwise I know not, but on our arrival at Linz, pefied. But should he travel on to Vienna with twenty minutes to wait, we found forty plates of soup, smoking hot, all ready for us; these were followed by two courses of meat, and a Mehlspeise, which resembled a baked apple-pudding. No one complained of not having enough. The charge, including beer, was equivalent to 2s. Draught beer can be had on board the Danube steamers, at ten or twelve kreutzers the tankard. How the steward of a Thames steamer would stare if you asked for a pint of draught ale while on a trip to Gravesend or the Nore! when all the while the majority of passengers prefer draught beer to the frothy, bottled stuff which is supposed to be good because it contains fixed air. England is commonly spoken of as a beerdrinking country; but what are the facilities afforded to drinkers? In London and the large towns the bar where you stand at the counter, or the bar-parlour, or the big room upstairs, where one long table nearly fills the space; and in any case you are served in pewter. In Germany, even at very modest houses, the drinking-cups and tankards are of glass, or in some instances stone with a pewter lid, and the room is furnished with rows of small tables, which facilitate companionship. At the Hof Brauhaus, in Munich, I have seen from four hundred to five hundred persons taking their evening draught-brown beer on one side of the house, white beer, with a slice of lemon in each tankard, on the other. he will find that the Austrian capital has beaten the Bavarian in the article of beer. Munich has lost her supremacy, for the beer of the Dreher Brewery at Vienna is incontestably the best in Europe. And there are many places in the Kaiserstadt on the Danube, as the natives delight to call it, where you may drink with ease, comfort and elegance. w. w. From Belgravia. THE JOHNSON CLUB. Our critics have been seriously complaining that we had nothing new to tell them about Selwyn; what will they say when we append this heading to the present article, and avow our purpose of repeating, as agreeably as we can, some of the good old stories about Dr. Johnson? This venerable and highly-to-be-respected club was founded in the February of 1764 by Dr. Johnson, immediately after his visit to Bennet Langton, at the seat of his family in Lincolnshire. That amiable man, Sir Joshua Reynolds, had the merit of first proposing the club, which for some years met at the Turk's Head, Gerardstreet, Soho, on Monday evenings at seven. It was founded on the plan of Johnson's old club in Ivy-lane, and the members were at first limited to nine. The Doctor and Reynolds headed the list, with Topham Beau At the Ober-Pollinger, a twenty-gallon cask clerk and Bennet Langton. Then Burke of beer stands on a pedestal in the middle was warmly welcomed, and he begged adof the room, and is emptied in about fifteen mission for his father-in-law, Dr. Nugent, minutes. Down goes the pedestal, speedily an accomplished Roman Catholic physician to re-appear with another full cask which in who lived with him. Beauclerk suggested turn is soon drawn off; and so it goes on his friend Chamier, then Under-Secretary all the evening. So rapid is the demand, of War; and Oliver Goldsmith, who "wrote that although the waiters carry five tankards like an angel and talked like poor Poll," completed the first batch. Samuel Dyer, Goldsmith, whom he considered a mere another member of the original Ivy-lane Grub-street drudge, capable of compiling club, was the next year finally admitted by and translating, but unqualified for origiacclamation. nal, and especially poetical, composition. In 1785, the Turk's Head closing soon He also refused to pay his share of the after the landlord's death, the club removed club-supper, as he never took supper at to Prince's, in Sackville-street, and from home. thence to Baxter's, afterwards Thomas's, in Dover-street. In 1792 the members Burney of Johnson. removed to Parsloe's, in St. James'sstreet, and in 1799 to the Thatched-House Tavern. The club is, we believe, now located at the Clarendon Hotel, in Bond street. "Was the man excused?" inquired Dr. Why yes, sir," said the doctor, "for no man is angry at another for being inferior to himself. We all scorned him, but admitted his plea. Yet I really believe hinı to be an honest man at bottom, though to be sure he is penurious, and he is mean; and it must be owned that he has a tenden Between 1764 and 1792, Bishop Percy, Mr. Sheridan, Sir William Jones, Malone, Gibbon, Colman, Dr. Joseph Warton, Dr. cy to savageness." Burney, and Lord Spencer, among other Hawkins ended by treating Burke with celebrities, were members of this great extreme rudeness, and was, on his next conversational club. It was a long time visit to the club, so coldly received, that before poor Garrick, to whom Johnson was always cruelly intolerant, was admitted. The doctor said of the great player, "He will disturb us with his buffoonery." To Mrs. Piozzi he remarked: "If Garrick does apply, I'll blackball him. Surely one ought to sit in a society like ours Garrick had originally provoked him by saying, in an off-hand way to Reynolds, of the new club, "I like it much, and I think I shall be of you." "He'll be of us, sir?" growled Johnson; "how does he know we will permit him? The first duke in England has no right to hold such language." Yet, after all, the offence was not a great one; and Garrick would not have worded his sentence so patronisingly as he did had he thought his appearance at the club-door he never returned; and no one much regretted it. Burke was impetuous, vehement, and intolerant; but he delighted Johnson by never being unwilling to begin talking, and never being in haste to leave off. He was always ready to charge on an adversary; but he was not a good listener, and, as Johnson admitted, if anyone was talking well at one end of the table, Burke would begin at the other. Yet Burke often gave way when Johnson was inclined to act the Jove, and thunder. Burke said once to Langton on leaving the club, "O no, I wouldn't talk much tonight; it was enough for me to have rung the bell to Johnson." One night some one wished Dr. Johnson to write to them for a man who had once sent the club a present of a hogshead of would have been unwelcome. Johnson, claret, which was just out. The letter was the son of a poor second-hand bookseller to be so carefully worded as to induce the at Lichfield, always despised Garrick be- benefactor to repeat his gift. "Dr. Johncause he exhibited himself on a public son shall be our dictator," cried one of the stage. The contempt was not just; it cer- company. "Were I your dictator," said tainly was unworthy of such a mind as Johnson, "you should have no wine; it Johnson's. This foolish contempt for one would be my business cavere ne quid detriof the forms which genius selects for its de-menti respublica carperet. Wine is dangervelopment, however, kept Garrick out of the club till 1773. ous: Rome was ruined by luxury." Burke replied: "If you allow no wine as dictator, you shall not have me for master of the horse." "In this club only," says Mr. Forster, "Burke could pour forth his stores of argument and eloquence, his exhaustless imagery, his overflowing illustration, and his overpowering copiousness of words." Mr. Hawkins (afterwards Sir John) was soon expelled from the new society, having disgusted everyone by his sour manners and bad temper. He revenged himself in those malicious insinuations scattered throughout his wandering life of Dr. Johnson. He was a pompous, parsimonious man, who took a dislike to Burke because he monopolised the conversation, and tyrannised sed intellect. ually over the less-gifted members. Hawkins had moreover a contempt for poor His vanity, his blunders, were laughed at Goldsmith, though often cowed by Johnson, and made a butt of by his brother members, was a great favourite at the club. good-humouredly; and here he could sing his believe in second sight. Colman smiled song of "The old woman tossed in a blan- dissent. Boswell's enthusiasm was ludi ket." Langton and Beauclerk, those young men whom the genius of Johnson had magnetized, were highly clubbable. Langton was a very tall thin man, like the stork on one leg in Raphael's cartoon, his friend Beauclerk used to say. He was a mild, contemplative, scholarly person, and an excellent listener. Miss Hawkins sketches him" with his mild countenance, elegant features, and sweet smile, sitting with one leg twisted round the other as if fearing to occupy more space than was equitable; his person inclining forward as if wanting strength to support his weight, and his arms crossed over his bosom, or his hands locked together on his knee." Fascinated by the Rambler, Langton had come to town when a mere stripling and obtained an introduction to the great writer. He afterwards had been very attentive to Johnson when the great man visited Oxford, and so an affectionate friendship had sprung up. Langton was, moreover, a descendant of Cardinal Langton, -the King John's Cardinal, - and that was a great title and respect with a superstitiously-high Tory like Johnson, who hardly knew the name of his own grandfather. Beauclerk, the careless, well-bred, rakish man of fashion, was the only son of Lord Sidney Beauclerk, grandson of the Duke of St. Albans; and a descendant of Charles II. soon won Johnson by his graceful manners and well-bred wit. He at last ceased to attend the club, went more into the fashionable world, and lost his right of membership. On his marriage, however, with Lady Di Spencer, daughter of the Duke of Marlborough, Beauclerk claimed his seat at the club aga again, and once more attended the meetings. Garrick came in when the club augmented its numbers. Goldsmith had proposed the augmentation. "It will give," he said, "an agreeable variety to our meetings, for there can be nothing new amongst us; we have travelled over each other's minds." Johnson was violent at this. "No, sir," said he; "you have never travelled over my mind, I promise you." crous and frothy as usual. "Dr. Johnson," he said earnestly, "is only willing to believe, but I do believe; the evidence is enough for me, though it may not be for his great mind. What would not fill a quart bottle will fill a pint bottle. Sir, I am filled with belief." "Are you?" said Colman quietly; "then cork it up." The club became now very powerful; it was a conversational centre, and the headquarters of the leading men of letters. When the society was only fifteen years old, the Bishop of St. Asaph, then newlyelected, said to Fox: "I believe Mr. Fox will allow me to say that the honour of being elected into the Turk's Head Club is not inferior to that of being the representative of Westminster or Surrey." The Bishop might well chuckle, for the night he was elected, Lord Camden and the Bishop of Ulster had both been blackballed. Five years after the death of Garrick, Dr. Johnson dined at the club where he had spent a third of his intellectual life for the last time. It was Tuesday, June 22, 1784. Boswell was there, and the Bishop of St. Asaph, Lord Eliot, Lord Palmerston (father of the Premier), Dr. Fordyce, and Mr. Malone. The Doctor looked ill; but he showed a manly fortitude, and did not trouble the company with melancholy complaints. Boswell says: "They all showed evident marks of kind concern about him, with which he was much pleased; and he exerted himself to be as entertaining as his indisposition allowed him." "The Macaulay has sketched Johnson as he alone could sketch a great man. gigantic body, the huge massy face seamed with the scars of disease, the brown coat, the black-worsted stockings, the gray wig with the scorched fore-top, the dirty hands, the nails bitten and pared to the quick, are familiar to us as the features of Wellington or Napoleon." We learn still more minutely from his incessant observer, Boswell, all the Doctor's strange habits at the club; how he shook his head, rocked his body, and rubbed his left knee; how he whistled, how he chuckled, and how, at last, when exhausted by violence and vociferation, he used to blow out his breath contemptuously like a whale. It was thus he sat and rocked Among these new members was Hogarth's friend, that amiable Irish nobleman, Lord Charlemont, the accomplished Mr. (afterwards Sir William) Jones the linguist, and and puffed, while Langton bent his long George Colman the dramatist. One eve- body approvingly and blandly towards him, lessness, and Garrick's face gleamed with | Dean of St. Paul's, was in the chair. There intellect, and bland Dr. Percy smiled, and were present M. van de Weyer, Earls ClarBurke waited keenly for an opening, and endon and Stanhope, Bishops of London Goldsmith looked at himself in a wine-glass, and Oxford, Lords Brougham, Stanley, ning, Boswell, sometimes tedious with his incessant worship of Dr. Johnson, was telling Colman of their journey to the Western Islands, and of the Doctor's willingness to and Reynolds eagerly turned to him the aperture of his ear-trumpet, and globular Gibbon tapped his snuff-box approvingly, and Beauclerk sneered with a cynical care and Dr. Burney beat time on the table. After Garrick's lamented death the club was known as the Literary Club. It now confined its honours chiefly to titled authors and dilettanti of rank; yet still it has brave names on its records, and the real working authors were only swamped from the popularity and fashion which naturally attracted Cranworth, Kingsdown, and Harry Vane; to the club men of high social and political Duke of Argyle, the Earl of Carlisle, Earl position. In 1857 such men as the Marquis of Landsdowne, and Lords Brougham, Carlisle, Aberdeen, and Glenelg, could not be impugned. Hallam and Macaulay were constant attendants at the club dinner, which takes place twice a month during the parliamentary season. The muster-roll of the Johnson Club is emblazoned with the greatest names in every art and profession. Among statesmen we have Sheridan, Canning, Brougham, Macaulay, Fox, Windham, Grenville, Lords Liverpool, Landsdowne, Aberdeen, and Russell, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, From The Times, Oct. 18. CAPTAIN MONCRIEFF'S IMPORTANT ARTILLERY INVENTION. WE published yesterday the account of a second series of experiments on what, to all appearance, is the most important artillery Clarendon. It is that accomplished writer invention of modern times. It may be Mr. Tom Taylor who has so ably epitomised briefly described as a device for rendering the glory of the venerable club. In natural the heaviest guns absolutely invisible and science they boast of Sir Joseph Banks unapproachable, except at the actual in(whom Peter Pindar ridiculed) and Pro- stant of firing; and even then nothing is to fessor Owen. In social science they have be seen but the gun itself, the men who Adam Smith, the great patriarch of politi- work it and the whole machinery remaining cal economy - though poor Boswell did completely protected. Like all great inthink the club lost caste by electing that ventions, it is supremely simple in princigreat champion of common sense. In phi- ple, though the highest mechanical skill losophy they boast of Whewell, in art of must have been called into play in developReynolds, in medicine of Nugent, Blagden, ing it. To take a homely illustration, let Fordyce, Warren, Vaughan, and Halford. the reader imagine a child's rocking-horse Among scholarly soldiers, of Rennel, Leake, with a toy rifleman mounted on the tail; and Mure; among great church dignitaries, let him suppose that the rockers are of Shipley, Barnard, Marley, Hinchcliffe, weighted in front, so that the natural posiDouglas, Blomfield, Wilberforce, Vincent, tion of the horse is with its head down and Burney, and Hawtrey; in the law, of Lords its heels in the air. The rifleman on its tail Ashburton and Stowell, and Grant, Austin, and Pemberton Leigh. Sir George Cornwall Lewis, at once Chancellor of the Exchequer and an eminent scholar, was a very good example of the modern ideal of the Johnson Club. This august body, which began with nine members, soon widened to twenty. In 1777 it increased to twenty-six, in 1778 to thirty, in 1780 to thirty-five, and it was then re will then be raised above the body of the horse, and may be supposed to be peering above a parapet or hillock in order to fire his rifle. Let it be supposed that the force of the recoil is communicated to the horse; it rolls back on its rockers into a level position, the seat of the rifleman is lowered, and he again becomes concealed behind the ground in front of him. In this position he is fixed by a catch until his rifle is again solved never to extend the privileged body loaded. The catch is then set free, and he to more than forty members. In 1810 Malone gave the number of members of the club since the foundation at seventy-six, of whom fifty-five have been authors. A centenary of the club was celebrated at the Clarendon Hotel in September, 1864. The secretary, Dr. Milman, the venerable rolls up again to fire another shot, and again to recoil into safety. The rifleman in this illustration corresponds to the 7-inch or 12-inch Woolwich gun; the rockers of the rocking-horse are the "elevators" mentioned in the descriptions we have published. In this simple conception lies the substance of the invention, and the reader, we think, will have no difficulty in following us in the deductions we proceed to draw. be The first effect of this discovery is that any gun may be placed anywhere, so as to absolutely impregnable to horizontal firing. Hitherto, if a gun was to be brought into action it has been necessary to fired from a mortar might be dropped vertically into the pit, and of course would inflict terrible destruction. Now, in the first place, even admitting this danger, Captain Moncrieff will still have effected an enormous advance on the present system. In order to guard against shells in our existing fortifications we not only build up a wall in front, but construct a strong worst, Captain Moncrieff absolutely annihilates one. He removes all danger in front, and leaves us with only the roof to protect. provide for it a platform at least on a level roof overhead, and the gun-chamber thus with the surface of the ground. The gun protected becomes a casemate. We have, and gunners must, therefore, either be therefore, two weak points, the front and wholly unprotected, in which case the gun the roof; but of these two, even at the is said to be mounted en barbette, or a wall of some sort must be built up in front to protect them, and a hole pierced in the wall for the gun to fire through. In practice it has been found excessively difficult to provide a wall of sufficient strength to afford complete protection. The hole in the wall, or the embrasure, is always a weak point. At the best, it affords a convenient mark for the enemy's aim, and being of necessity funnel-shaped, it not only admits his projectiles, but actually assists their entry. But by Captain Moncrieff's invention the gun and gunners are placed below ground. The gun rolls up above the mouth of a pit to deliver its charge, and then sinks again. One look-out man, whose head it would always be easy to conceal, is sufficient to give information to the men in the pit, and to direct the whole movement of the gun. There is, therefore, no need of a wall, for there remains nothing to protect, nothing for the enemy to fire at, nothing even for him to see. His projectiles will either fly safe over the head of the pit, or pitch harmlessly into the ground around it. The reader must next Let us next glance at a few of the tactical results which may be expected from this invention. It will be obvious how momentous must be the effect on the movements of an army of the circumstance that all the enemy's guns and batteries may be completely hidden from view. A regiment may be marching over a slightly undulating ground, or even over a level plain, unsuspicious of anything but a perfectly unbroken surface, when suddenly a hundred heavy pieces of artillery may start from the earth as if by magic, and deliver the most accurate and the most deadly fire. We have heard of masked batteries, but under this system every gun in position may be masked. In fact, every undulation and every hillock in a defended position may become a battery, at once more secure and more powerful than the Plymouth forts. Moreover, two or three guns under this system may be made to do the work of sev be reminded that we are at present spending eral. The effect of an embrasure is, of incalculable sums in providing the protec- necessity, to confine the range of a gun, tive walls to which we refer and in render- but under this system a gun will range ing our embrasures as safe as possible. round all the points of the compass. ConThe various iron shields which have been so sequently the whole fire of a dozen guns ingeniously constructed and so successfully may be successively concentrated upon any destroyed are simply devices for this pur- single point within their range, and great pose, and be it understood that the Mill- economy may thus be effected in the numwall shield, which has beaten the Gibraltar, ber of guns required. It was conclusively is offered by the contractor at the modest shown at Shoeburyness the other day that cost of a thousand pounds for every gun protected. Now, Captain Moncrieff has, in all probability, rendered us absolutely independent of these elaborate and costly be as easy to direct ten or twenty guns at constructions so far as regards land fortifi- once as to direct one, and the fire of a cations. whole battery, therefore, would be under the movements of the gun may be effectually directed by a single word of command from an officer outside the pit. It would There is, in fact, but one material defect the instant control of a single officer. alleged against Captain Moncrieff's system. It affords, it is said, no protection against "vertical firing." As the Moncrieff gunpits are at present constructed, the top, from which the gun rises, is wholly uncovered. A shell, therefore, accurately Again, there is every reason to believe that the gun could be fired with perfect safety from a moveable kind of railway truck. We cannot, however, enumerate all the advantages which follow from this revolutionizing invention. We shall content our |