On the other hand, French and German engineers--familiar with the new inventions in war, and knowing that they can use dynamite and nitro-glycerine, instead of gunpowder, to give tremendous force to the new projectiles--would probably say that there is no fortress which cannot be battered down. To me, who am but a layman in such matters, as I walk about Gibraltar, it seems that, if all the armies of Europe should come up against it, they could make no impression on its rock-ribbed sides; that only some convulsion of nature could shake its "everlasting foundations." And yet such is the power of modern explosives to rend the rocks and hills, with a new invention every year of something still more terrible, that we know not but they may at last almost tear the solid globe asunder. What wreck and ruin of the works of man may be wrought by such engines of destruction, it is not given us to foresee. Meanwhile to the Spaniards the English possession of Gibraltar is a constant irritation. It is of no use to remind them that they had it once, and might have kept it; that is no comfort; it only makes the matter worse; for they are like spoiled children, who grieve the most for that which they have thrown away. Again it was offered to them by England, with only the condition that they should not sell Florida to Napoleon; but as he was then in the height of his career, they thought it safer to trust to his protection; albeit a few years later they found out his treachery, and had to depend on an English army, led by Wellington, to drive the French out of Spain. And still these spoiled children of the South will not recognize the English sovereignty. To this day the King of Spain claims Gibraltar as a part of his dominions, though he recognizes it as "temporarily in the possession of the English," and all who are born on the Rock are entitled to the rights of Spanish subjects! But whether Gibraltar can be "taken" or not by siege or storm, in the course of human events there may be a turn of fortune which shall compel England to surrender it. If there should come a general European war, in which there should be (what the first Napoleon endeavored to effect) a combination of all the Continental powers against England, she might, standing alone, be reduced to such extremity as to be obliged to sue for peace, and one of the hard conditions forced upon her might be the surrender of Gibraltar!