but recent legislators have evidently not been so thoroughly satisfied of the fact, or they would not have authorised the construction of the great fortifications at Portland, which make it almost the Gibraltar of the Channel. The splendid breakwater there did not need protection. All the battering it is ever likely to get could not injure it seriously, and whatever ruins Macaulay’s New Zealander may stand upon, they are not likely to be those of a great breakwater, each year of the existence of which renders it generally more compact. But it was for good reasons that the extensive works of Portland were undertaken. “We,” said the _Times_, “of all people in the world, who so toiled and suffered, lavishing blood and treasure under the walls of Sebastopol, should be the last to underrate the importance of a good fortification as a check to an invading army.” The reader will hardly require any defence of such policy, for naval arsenals contain the very germ of our power, as the iron safe of the prudent man contains his valuables. The Bill of Portland greatly resembles the situation of Gibraltar. There are the same bold, steep, rocky headlands; the breakwater stands in place of the Mole, and Chesil Bank connects it with the mainland, as the neutral ground does our great Mediterranean citadel with Spanish soil. “Its height, its isolation, and the harbour it commands, all pointed it out as a place for an impregnable—we had almost said an inaccessible—fortress. To the late Prince Consort is due the credit of having seen its vast importance in this respect, as it was also owing to his enlightened judgment that the breakwater was begun at last, and he himself laid the foundation-stone. Portland is rising, as we have said, into a first-class fortress, of which the Verne is the great key or citadel.” So spoke the _Times_, in 1863; and now Portland is the best fortified port and naval station in the kingdom.