The _Formidable_ is no less efficiently fitted for standing up to the enemy and taking her share of hard knocks. On her sides amidships, shielding from injury the engines and boilers, the 'vitals' of the ship as they are called, a wide belt of Harveyed steel armour extends. It is 9 inches thick, and 217 feet long by 15 feet deep, and is built up of some seventy odd plates or slabs of solid steel fitted together, each one of just the surface area of a billiard-table with an extra yard added to its length, and weighing each upwards of 12 tons. Each plate separately takes from a fortnight to three weeks to make. Where the 9-inch armour leaves off, towards the ends of the ship, a thinner steel belt, 3 inches thick, with an armoured deck, also of 3-inch steel, carries forward the protection. At the bows it joins on to the ship's enormous ram--a ponderous forging of 35 tons of steel. Such, roughly indicated, are some of the main features in regard to offence and defence of this Titanic 'bruiser of the sea,' His Majesty's battleship the _Formidable_. Below, the ship has twenty Belleville boilers, capable of raising steam at a pressure of 300 lbs. to the square inch; engines of 15,000 horse-power, capable of driving the ship's immense hull, a length of 430 feet over all from stem to rudder, through the water, full speed ahead, at 18 knots an hour (nearly twenty land miles), each of the great 17-foot twin-screws thrashing round at the rate of 108 revolutions a minute. She can stow coal enough to carry her without re-coaling, at an average cruising speed of 10 knots, from Spithead to Buenos Ayres or through the Suez Canal as far as the Bay of Bengal. A million sterling of the nation's money, with a trifle of forty odd thousand pounds added, is what the _Formidable_ represents--L1,040,000 literally cast on the waters. Of that sum the guns by themselves cost L74,500--more, in fact, than it cost to build and rig and fit the _Victory_ for sea. And her upkeep in commission--interest on first cost, wear and tear, crew, victualling, coal, stores, and ordnance stores--costs L163,000 a year. In action every shot from the _Formidable's_ big guns would cost L80--a sum equivalent to the annual pay of two midshipmen _plus_ a naval cadet. These features of the _Formidable_ are enough to show that in the case of this particular modern battleship, at any rate, the name is not misapplied, not unsuitable, nor without justification: that it is something more than a 'futility,' something more than a 'merely blustering adjective.' We may trust the honour of the flag to the _Formidable's_ keeping, assured that should the hour of trial come in her time she has the means of taking her own part with power and advantage. Grant her, when that time comes, 'good sea-room and a willing enemy,' as the war toast of the Old Navy used to go, and the British Empire may rest assured that, as far as this particular ship is concerned,