of the musket he so be-praised, it was officially declared, in 1846, that “fire should never be opened beyond 150 yards, and certainly not exceeding 200 yards,” for “at this distance half the number of shots missed the target, measuring 11 feet 6 inches, and at 150 yards a very large proportion also missed!” It is but forty years since these ideas were held, and rightly; but it is curious, none the less, to note the extraordinary advance the art of killing men has made since then. In 1822 it is deliberately stated in a French report that “thus infantry is only formidable at about 100 yards.” In 1852, and thereabout, there were marked improvements in firearms, and this, notwithstanding the continuance of the reign of peace the “Great Exhibition” was supposed to inaugurate, and the ominous distant growl of the war-thunder that was arising in the East. With nations of different national characteristics, and in different stages of national development, the quietude of a peaceful power is looked on as but a synonym for weakness. National decadence and a peace-at-any-price policy run, as all history proves, on very much the same rails; the latter spirit is called up to cover or excuse the former. So it was that the long peace was broken. If Russia had really thought she would have to fight four powers and a “benevolent neutral,” she might have held her hand, but the “Manchester School” talked much, and foreign powers are disposed always to take the outcry of the hysterical few in England for the solid opinion of the silent many. Some people, less influenced by the hysteria of those who, like the Pharisee in the parable, air their opinions in the streets, or, like Rudyard Kipling’s monkey-folk,--the “Bander-log,”--imagine, because _they proclaim_, their proclamations must be true, were uneasy. The best of the House of Commons were uneasy, and voted the Militia Bill, which aimed at creating 80,000 permanent militiamen as a second line of defence; a force that proved the justice of the view taken, by the enormous help they gave the army when the new war began. It is saying very little to assert that, without the militia from 1854 to 1856, we could not have recruited the army at Sebastopol, any more than we could have held our Mediterranean garrisons. Then there was a certain Colonel Kinloch who was uneasy. And he found relief for uneasiness by starting the second Volunteer Movement. The first was when Napoleon threatened to invade us. He wrote a very valuable, because impressive, pamphlet, which attracted attention, and actually led to the formation of volunteer corps, which, of course, had little support from the Government; all the more because they were anxious about their own pet child, the new “Militia Bill.”