From The Critic. "He was attired in a white dressingWaifs and Strays, chiefly from the Chess- gown, and had a red handkerchief tied round board. By Captain H. A. KENNEDY. L. Booth. pp. 246. his head, the ends of which, fastened in front, were disposed so as to give them a fanciful resemblance to a laurel crown I had seen on one of his busts. . . . The two players appeared to be intently occupied with their game, and after they had exchanged some moves, Napoleon exclaimed, in a tone of triumph "Bertrand, mon ami, enfin vous voila attrapé!' 66 6 Vraiment, Sire?' replied the Grand Maréchal. ""Oui, échec !' "C'est juste,' remarked the count, regarding the board with an air of some dissatisfaction; and then he added THIS pleasant little addition to the literature of chess is made up of fugitive essays and sketches which have already made their appearance in the chess periodicals, such as the Chess-player's Chronicle, the British Chess Review, the American Chess Monthly, and Mr. Tomlinson's Chess Annual. The name of Captain Kennedy is doubtless well known to all lovers of the game as a strong player and pleasant writer about the game. He is a vice-president of the British Chess Association and president of the Bristol Athenæum Chess Club-offices which are guarantees of his position as a chess-player. His book is not a dry treatise on the game. That branch of chess literature seems to have been pretty exhaustively treated by Messrs. Staunton and Walker, Major Jaënisch, and other great experts in the game. The "Waifs and Strays" are pleasant, readable, and often instructive; little sketches turning upon chess and chess incidents, anecdotes of celebrated players, descriptions of some of the best-known public temples of Caissa. Some of the anecdotes are evidently intended to point a useful moral, and well do they serve the purpose. Temper and the avoid-move on the part of Count Bertrand." One ance of bragging are cardinal virtues in curious omission in this volume strikes us at chess according to Captain Kennedy, and not too common ones either. Some "Chess Wrinkles," in the style of Dean Swift's "Advice to Servants," will show what ought to be avoided. "Ah, Sire, vous êtes tonjours vainqueur.' "A pleased smile broke over Napoleon's face; he took a violent pinch of snuff, and leaning over, gently squeezed his follower's ear with his right hand." Captain Kennedy appears to think that the "toujours vainqueur " may not have been invariably the result of Napoleon's skill; for to the report of one of the emperor's games, which he gives at page 43, he appends a note to a most palpable blunder on Bertrand's part: "This seems a courtier-like once; there is no mention made throughout its pages of Mr. Paul Morphy. That the appearance of that extraordinary meteor upon the chess horizon should have disturbed the recognized luminaries in their more regular orbits is not surprising; but, in common justice, the fact should not be ignored that this marvellous youth, a boy in years and in appearance, fairly vanquished by main force all the first-class European chessplayers who were pitted against him. The heroes of the St. George's Chess Club and of the Divan were scattered like chaff before "III. If of a musical turn, you are not forbidden-of course involuntarily and in mere cheerfulness of heart to hum or sing during a game, snatches of your familiar and favorite airs, accompanying the same by a staccato digital tattoo on the table. When it is your adversary's turn to move, you may at pleasure yawn, sneeze, groan, stretch yourself, use your pocket-handkerchief vig- his lance. Mr. Staunton would not meet orously, get up from your chair and sit down again, and make frequent inspection of your him. The brilliant Harrwitz retired from watch. These unsophisticated little arts the contest ignominiously beaten. Even the will, in all probability, by distracting the attention of your opponent, confuse and cause him to hurry his move, and thus you may cleverly effect a diversion in your own favor." Captain Kennedy speaks of Napoleon as a chessplayer. He once saw him playing with Marshal Bertrand, through a window at Longwood. great Anderssen himself had to suffer a defeat, which he submitted to with admirable temper. However galling it might be to the veterans to have been so entreated by " lad from the States," the fact ought not to be ignored. a plains that he did refer to Mr. Morphy, but that [Captain Kennedy in a letter to the editor exthis book was made up before Mr. M.'s advent.] From Once Week, 12 April. THE MERRIMAC AND THE MONITOR. So bad are many of these rails, that it will not do to throw them down from a wagon on unloading, for they break like cast iron. Yet these rails stand the pounding of heavier shot than have been used in our Admiralty experiments, with scarcely a fracture. The only reason for their withstanding the blows of the shot was their slanting position, that prevented the shot striking at a right angle. Had these rails been applied wall-sided like the Warrior, they would have dropped off in fragments with every shot, like cast iron. Wales at about £4 to £5 10s. per ton. Armor plates for English ships cost £40 and THE Board of Admiralty assuredly ought upwards per ton. I once heard an Amerito send a handsome testimonial to the Amer- can engineer talking with a Welsh ironican Governments-North and South-for master, and complaining that it was tarnathe experimental fight they have been mak- tion poor iron that he had supplied to the ing with iron-clad ships. By the descrip-"Big squirrel and Buffalo link lines," which tion, the Monitor appears to be a flat-bot- the iron-master did not deny, but alleged, tomed wooden tank, roofed over with an in defence, that it was paid for in a "tarnairon shell like a tortoise, some five inches in tion poor lot of bonds." thickness, for the purpose of defence, and provided with a revolving tower mounting two guns, each carrying a wrought-iron shot of 170 lbs. weight for the purpose of offence. If we bear in mind what sort of a lump of iron a half hundred-weight is, as used for weighing, and imagine three of them formed into one shot, we get a good idea of it. The Monitor is a structure made by workmen after an engineering fashion more or less skilful; but the "Merry Mack," as the sailors call her, is a far different affair, and pregnant with instruction. She is described as looking like the roof of a house on the water -a very puzzling description—and I was as much puzzled as other people, till an American gave me the cue. The Merrimac, as all the world knows, was a steam-frigate burnt to the water's edge at the commencement of the civil war, and sunk. When raised by the rebels, or seceders, as the case may be, she was redecked and improved into an armored ship. In one of our old pantomimes of the days of the elder Drury, there is a distich how Harlequin, in rescue of Columbine "Turned the table to a boat, And down the river they did float." "Turned the railway to a ship, The Monitor had wrought-iron shot, and would therefore have destroyed the rails at a right angle. It was said that there was some damage done, but this was at the ports where an opening existed. The Monitor was not damaged at all; but it is said she had five inches of iron on her in inch plates; and, moreover, the Merrimac had only cast shot. There is a method yet untried of producing armor plates at a cost not exceeding that of the best rails-less than a fourth of the present cost per ton, and there is also an effective mode of fastening them without cracking them in bolting. It is quite clear also that wall sides will have to be dispensed with in favor of the "tumbling in," or houseroof system. The angular system, which was first promulgated in these pages, and which has now been verified by the Merrimac, will have to be resorted to—a slope of twenty-five degrees above and below the water line, to elude shot that may not be resisted, and this best form for eluding shot gives also the best angle for stability in the water. And down the river they did slip." The railroads, torn up to stop transit, furnished the iron to make the Merrimac impregnable, with an iron roof slanting either way from the central line of the vessel to below the water, the rails being interlocked together like the bricks in a wall. American But the problem of guns has yet to be rails are flat-footed, and, packed together solved-whether an available gun can be with heads and feet alternating, they form a reedy surface analogous to thatch. Thus the vessel was thatched and not plated with iron. American railroad iron is produced in made that will pierce the heaviest armor capable of floating on a vessel moving at the greatest possible speed. The angulated vessel of great breadth of beam and little depth will be suitable to carry a tower whereon to place guns that can shoot downwards on to impossible. Our American cousins will the roofed decks of her antagonist. When scheme hard at this, if only their purses this can be done with heavy guns, it will shall hold out. And we will scheme, too; probably be found that armor is as useless and it shall go hard with our schemes, but for ships as it was found to be for human we will better all instructors than our own. bodies. And so to your guns all ye who believe it practicable to drive an unrifled shot in at one side of the Warrior and out at the other, making a yawning breach for the green tide of ocean to pour in, and perforce driving us to a more perfect structure. Only do not let us build more than one novelty at a time, lest the next should prove a waste like the last. As regards running down, the Merrimac had no difficulty in cracking up her wooden antagonists; but being a wooden ship, she was useless on the iron sides of her opponent, and only broke her own beaks and damaged her own bows. With iron vessels strength enough can be obtained for this. But if two vessels equally angulated be in opposition in running down, it is difficult to see how they can inflict damage. Rightly constructed, they should be unsinkable. But there are other considerations. First, the effectual ventilation of a close iron box; and, next, the power of locomotion. If guns can do no damage, then it is only a question of speed and time. The vessel with the largest supply of fuel will be the victor, for the other will be a log upon the water. And here the Americans have an advantage, though they have not yet applied it. The petroleum, or rock-oil, which is so dangerous in casks or warehouses, would not be dangerons in close iron tanks, and a larger amount of high steam-producing power could thus be stowed away than in any other known fuel. The facility of taking it on board a close iron vessel would be far greater than with coal. The mode of using it in the boilers would be with a small fire of coke to serve as a wick, and then dropping the oil on the surface, to flash up into burning gas, coming in contact with all the water surface. It is evident that a steamer without fuel is more helpless than a sailing vessel without wind. The wind may be supplied in the next hour by nature, but the fuel must be supplied by a consort vessel. For, formidable as those heavily-gunned armored steamers are, we are still far from having worked out the problem in its entirety. If no other means be left, we shall have to capture and chain them, and asphyxiate them even, or pump water into them till they sink. It is quite evident that the Warrior is not to be the final specimen of marine architecture on our ocean empire. Well, it is a victory worth fighting for, laboring with heavy purse and intense mechanical skill and industry to achieve the final end of war by rendering it The gain so far is in favor of nations threatened with invasion by sea. With wooden ships and iron rails, it is quite clear that any amount of impregnable shore batteries might be improvised at a low cost, and at a week's notice; but not so with Channel transports. W. BRIDGES ADAMS. Letter to The Spectator, 5 April. THE TIMES ON HAYTL SIR,-An article in the Times of to-day, referring to a petition of the mayor and some three thousand inhabitants of Kingston, Jamaica, that England may interpose her good offices in behalf of the Dominican Republic, lately annexed by Spain, goes on to say that should Spain give the necessary assurances against the re-establishment of slavery, "we can have no objection to her accepting the cession of St. Domingo, or even extending her sway over Hayti.... For sixty years the black dominion in Hayti has been a scandal, a mockery. . . . For the last twenty years the fabric has been rapidly falling into ruins, and the authority of a civilized nation must be a blessing after the rule of a Soulouque. Whether Spain be changed, as we believe, or as cruel and bigoted as the fancies of her former subjects paint her, she can do no harm to the world by supplantiny any government she may find in the Queen of the Antilles, as long as she does not restore the curse of slavery." The first thought that the passage suggests is, that this public instructor is unaware that "St. Domingo" includes both "Hayti" and the late "Dominican Republic." The next, that he is equally unaware that Soulouque is not still Emperor of Hayti. | obtain an introduction to a sugar estate, but It is now upwards of three years since the failed, chiefly through the jealousy felt of 22d December, 1858, when that grotesque every Englishman, who is regarded as the monster fell from power by a bloodless rev- Cuban slaveholder's natural foe." In Hayti olution, and the "leading journal" speaks he left schools everywhere springing up, and of the Spanish domination as if it would suc- Protestant missions at work. In Cuba it is ceed without transition "the rule of a Sou- well known that no attempt is made to give louque." But if our public instructor wrote any instruction, not even in religion, to the otherwise than in sheer gross ignorance it slaves. And what is the result? would be still more discreditable to him than if he did. For all who have paid common however, I did meet in Havannah, working "A few of the laboring class of slaves, attention to what is passing in the quarter on the wharves or in the docks, and a more spoken of are aware that the chief govern- wretched and miserable set of human beings ment of Hayti is now in the hands of one I have never seen. I could hardly believe who, from all that is stated of him, stands that the stolid, round-headed, brutish-lookout simply as the most admirable and mag-ing animals which were mechanically pernanimous man at this moment bearing rule forming the tasks allotted to them, were of in any country that I am aware of, entirely manly people I had left in the islands where the same race as the sharp, quick-witted, and devoted to the good of his country-zealous freedom is enjoyed.... During the last few in promoting education-thoroughly liberal-years large numbers of Chinamen have been minded in respect of religion, favorable to introduced into Cuba as immigrants. Though the settlement of foreigners, anxious to heal promised the advantages of free men they all internal divisions, and so unspeakably are really slaves, and oppression has so madmerciful that not only has he forgiven at- dened them that a large number is always in tempt after attempt against his own life, but committed suicide. ... Several gangs that prison for insubordination. Many more have that the signing the death-warrant of the as- I saw working in the streets bore on their sassins of his own favorite daughter, mur- faces an expression of the most hopeless dedered in cold blood simply as a stepping-spair. It was heartrending to witness the stone towards his own assassination, could silent anguish and tearless agony which every scarcely be wrung from him by the Cabinet. feature and every motion of the frame proI speak of President Geffrard. Let any one who chooses to read Mr. Underhill's "West Indies," lately reviewed in your columns, say whether the dominion of Geffrard in Hayti be a "scandal and a mockery," or a credit to humanity. Let him compare the condition of the people of Hayti as there described, even after her nearly three-quarters of a century of revolution and civil war, with that of Cuba, and say whether indeed Spain can do no harm to the world by supplant-most solemn treaties in reference to the slave ing the government" of this noble mulatto. Mr. Underhill visited Cuba after Hayti, and what does he say of it? In Hayti he travelled freely everywhere, and saw all the nakedness of the land. In Cuba he "tried to 66 claimed." By these Chinese may we judge what would be the condition of those to whom Spain might, as the benevolent writer in the Times suggests, promise freedom under her colonial rule. For my own part, I believe that every extension of that rule is an absolute curse to the world. I deem it shame enough for Englishmen to be involved in a Mexican intervention with an ally whose violation of the trade has been notorious for years, without OUR country towns are rapidly doing honor | putting up a statue of that eminent ornitholo to their illustrious townsmen by erecting monuments to them. The other day we recorded that a statue of Sir H. Davy is to be erected at Penzance, and now Paisley purposes perpetuating the memory of her townsman, Wilson, by gist in his native town. It will be in bronze, a little larger than life, and will represent him examining a bird that he has just shot. The statue, which is designed by Mr. Mossman, of Glasgow, will rest on a pedestal of Aberdeen granite, nine feet in height.—Athenæum. MASSACRE IN BALTIMORE. From The Boston Recorder, 24 April. the thrill of mingled horror, indignation, GOD'S HAND AGAINST THE REBELLION. and alarm, which came back with the report of that tragedy! We then took a sense of the work before us that was altogether new, when we saw our right to enter our own capital, for its defence, disputed in a large city, holding the keys to its entrance-and a city hitherto not declared for the rebellion. We found the rebellion nearer home than we had dreamed, and Baltimore to be one of its most dangerous seats. The treachery of assassins aroused the common indignation, and awoke the resolve that cost what it might, through Baltimore, or over Baltimore, a way should be made for the march of our armies, and for the defence of our capital. No event contributed so much to make each and all feel that the cause was their own. Every man, woman, and child, not in sympathy with the South, felt it as more than a personal insult, outrage, and danger. And the common national heart swelled with the firm resolve to vindicate the national honor, first upon Baltimore, and then upon all the rebel hordes. WE have seen how in one event at Fort Sumter, God secured for us the prime requisite to our success-the extinction of party spirit, and of sympathy with the South, and therein a union of the Northern people, in the purpose of resisting the rebellion, and restoring the Union by an appeal to arms. But immediately upon this another necessity was revealed. The loyal States hailed with joy the uniting force exerted upon their people by the first practical declaration of war. Then opened what may be called the era of banners and manifestations of loyalty. A feeling seemed to go through the North that the victory of the Union and of the Constitution had been already gained, in the simple demonstration of the fact that the masses of the Northern people were loyal, and ready to unite to put down the rebellion by force. Little was it then realized what our loyalty would cost; and what sacrifice of blood and treasure would be required. The feeling seemed to spread afar, that the rebels, when they came to see a united North arrayed against them, would be discouraged and quit the field. Hence, the zeal in displaying the stars and stripes, and banners floated over almost every house, and till the stores of bunting were so exhausted that new importations had to be made. So that Providence, ever watchful of our occasions, had a severer lesson to teach us, and let us know that something more than bunting would be required to quell the rebellion. That purpose was met by the tragedy in Baltimore. Until then, we little realized, that not only traitors swarmed in our capital city, but that our passage to it was to be disputed by treason lying in wait in Baltimore. This was just what the occasion required, to transform in a day the spirits of our young men bred to peaceful pursuits, and averse to scenes of strife, and to kindle in them a martial ardor and a readiness to expose life in avenging their country's wrongs. Before, we had attained to a united purpose to annihilate the rebellion, and felt fully conscious of our ability to do it. And we thought that ability would be as manifest to the rebels as to us. And so we half contented ourselves with manifesting our loyalty to let the rebels see that our whole force was pledged against them, and, therefore, there was no hope for them. But on the blood-stained pavement of Baltimore, this illusion was broken. By this turn of events, Massachusetts sent on her hastily gathered God's Providence taught us that there must volunteers to take the van of the new born be risks of life, and all the sacrifices involved host, mustered for the defence of the threat- in thousands of our peaceful citizens, adened seat of Government, little suspecting dicting themselves to the hardships and danresistance in States or cities professing loy-gers of the field of battle. What was now alty. But in Baltimore, a conspiracy of as- wanted was something that should so move sassins, concealed in the crowded streets, the nation's heart, as to create a broad and and firing from the windows, began the mas- spontaneous rush of men to the field. Forced Massachusetts signalized the anni- levies at that point would have been both versary of Lexington battle, by pouring out an absurdity and an impossibility. The the blood of her sons-the first blood spilt power to enforce the nation's call and the in this war—in the streets of the Monumen- nation's authority, was the very thing that tal City. And who of us does not remember had been brought into question by the rebel sacre. |