Now, those Deutschers are confoundedly clever fellows; particularly at chemistry. Gun-cotton, which was discovered by one of them, is a substance they are at work on perfecting. No doubt they will soon make it available, so as to supersede powder, for naval gunnery. Gun-cotton goes off without smoke. In the happily almost impossible event of a war with them, our ships, enveloped in smoke of our own clumsy making, would blaze away at theirs in the dark, at random, with useless guns of precision, whilst they would fire with unerring aim at the flashes of our guns, and the end of our first sea-fight with them would be, that the British would be sent to the bottom by the German Fleet. [Sidenote: _Death of Lord Derby_] The same month witnessed the passing away of Lord Derby, "the Rupert of Debate," a statesman somewhat out of his element in a period of non-intervention; a great country-gentleman, sportsman, and scholar. _Punch_, whose memorial verses in these years did not err as a rule on the side of brevity, compressed his tribute within the compass of a sonnet, in which there is a happy reference to Lord Derby's love of Homer and of children, for he was the patron of Edward Lear, the laureate of the best, because the most unalloyed, nonsense:-- LORD DERBY BORN, 1799. DIED, 1869. Withdrawing slow from those he loved so well, Autumn's pale morning saw him pass away: Leave them beside their sacred dead to pray, Unmarked of strangers. Calmer memories tell How nobly Stanley lived. No braver name Glows in the golden roll of all his sires, Or all their peers. His was the heart that fires The eloquent tongue, and his the eye whose aim Alone half quelled his foe. He struck for Power, (And power in England is a hero's prize) Yet he could throw it from him. Those whose eyes See not for tears, remember in this hour That he was oft from Homer's page beguiled To frame some "wonder for a happy child." The resignation by Lord Malmesbury, formerly Foreign Secretary, of the Conservative leadership of the House of Lords about the same time met with no such consideration. Lord Malmesbury had never been a favourite of _Punch_, who insinuated that the Tory leader had gone because he was obliged to, and quoted Artemus Ward's saying: "He told me to get out of the office--I pitied him and went."