optimist, for man has gone right along in perfecting the arts of war and raising the execution of firearms to such a deadly efficacy, that the Nineteenth Century in a paramount degree has been conspicuously notable for its advances in this art. Invention after invention has followed in such rapid succession, even to the last years of the Nineteenth Century, until war now assumes the conditions of suicide and annihilation. No coherent history of firearms and explosives is possible in any short review. The cannon, bombard or mortar, musket, pistol and petard, all belong to former centuries, and in one form or another extend back to the most ancient times, but they have grown in the Nineteenth Century into such accuracy and distance of range, into such rapidity of action, into such multiplied efficiency in repeating systems, into such energy of explosives, and such convenient embodiment and penetration of projectile, that these subjects must needs be considered in separate divisions. [Illustration: FIG. 265.--MUZZLE LOADING CANNON OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.] _The Cannon_ is the most ancient of all firearms, and, like gunpowder, is believed to have had its origin with the Chinese. In the Eleventh Century the vessels of the King of Tunis, in the attack on Seville, are said to have had on board iron pipes from which a thundering fire was discharged. Condé, in his history of the Moors in Spain, speaks of them as used in that country as early as 1118. Ferdinand, in 1309, took Gibraltar from the Moors by cannon, and in 1346 the English used them at the battle of Crécy, and from that time on they became a common weapon of warfare. In the first cannon used the balls were of stone, and some of them were of enormous size. The bronze cannon of Mohammed II., A. D., 1464, had a bore of 25 inches, and threw a stone ball of 800 pounds. The _Tsar-Pooschka_, the great bronze gun of Moscow, cast in 1586, was even larger, and had a bore 36 inches in diameter. Early in the history of the cannon the breech-loading feature was introduced. In Figs. 265 and 266 are shown illustrations from the Sixteenth Century, Fig. 265 representing a muzzle loader, and Fig. 266 a breech-loader. [Illustration: FIG. 266.--BREECH LOADING CANNON OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.]