Of as early date probably as the dockyard, was the 'Warren,' the name by which the Arsenal was formerly called. This establishment seems to have begun as a cannon-foundry, and such, indeed, it chiefly continues to be. Moreover, in other days when the dockyard flourished, stores of ships' cannon were kept here, ready to be placed on ships as soon as commissioned. But now that the dockyard is a thing of the past, and now that the large building-slips, workshops, and ropewalk are empty, the cannon at the Arsenal are chiefly those for the royal artillery and for forts. The dockyard has been closed since 1869; its broad roads are deserted, its workshops are silent, and its large sheds are only used for stores; but the Arsenal has increased in magnitude; and the 'Warren,' in which, before the establishment of the Plumstead magazines, powder was proved ('before the principal engineers and officers of the Board of Ordnance, to which many of the nobility and gentry were often invited, and afterwards sumptuously entertained by them'), has now become an enormous establishment, covering acres of ground, and containing workshops provided with the most complicated machinery, and foundries of enormous size. It is round this Arsenal that we propose to take the reader. Having gained admittance, the visitor is put in charge of a guide. The tapping of the great furnace is a remarkable sight. A stream of molten steel runs into a huge tank which can contain four or five tons of metal, and this tank is dragged off by some score of men to fill the various moulds. It is remarkable, also, to see a huge steam-hammer of some forty tons' force welding a mass of metal at white-heat. The Arsenal is divided into four departments--the Laboratory, the Gun Factory, the Gun-carriage Department, and the Stores; and of these four divisions, the first two contain the chief things not to be found in very many other places.