“This contrast, so favourable to England, has been constantly maintained, and can only be attributable to her superior artillery. Her seamen not only aimed with greater precision, and fired more steadily than those of the French and of other nations, but they had the reputation of loading with far greater rapidity. It was remarked, in 1805, that the English could fire a round with ball every minute, whereas it took the French gunners three minutes to perform the same operation. Then, again, the English tactics were superior. It was the universal practice of the French to seek to dismast an adversary; they consequently aimed high, while the English invariably concentrated their fire upon the hulls of their adversaries; and clearly the broadside of a vessel presents a much better mark to aim at than the mere masts and rigging. British guns were also usually of higher calibre, for though they bore the same denomination, they were in reality much heavier. Thus, the English _Lavinia_, though nominally a frigate of forty guns, actually carried fifty; and thirty-six and 38-gun frigates nearly always carried forty-four and forty-six. The English ship _Belleisle_, at Trafalgar, though said to be a seventy-four, carried ninety pieces of ordnance, while the Spanish ship she engaged, though called eighty-four had, in fact, only seventy-eight guns. From this disparity in the number and calibre of their guns, as well as in the mode in which they were served, it resulted that France and her allies lost eighty-five ships of the line and 180 frigates, while her antagonist only suffered to the extent of thirteen ships of the line and eighty-three frigates. “It was not until the close of the war that France became fully aware to what an extent her inferiority in the above respects had contributed to her reverses; otherwise the unfortunate Admiral Villeneuve would not invariably have ascribed his mishaps to the inexperience of his officers and men, and to the incomplete and inferior equipment of his vessels. The truth was, that not only was the artillery, as we have shown, inferior, but the whole system in vogue at that period on board French ships was antiquated, having continued without reform or improvement for two hundred years; it was deficient, too, in enforcing subordination, that most essential condition of the power and efficiency of a ship of war.” The French _inscription maritime_ is then dealt with at great length, after which occur the following passages, even more interesting perhaps to-day than when they were written:--