The Sun.
London, England, 1865-01-17 00:00:00

Naval and Military Intelligence.

The Field-Marshal commanding the forces yes-
terday rode down to Woolwich unattended, and was
met in the Royal Arsenal by Major-Gen. Warde,
C. 8., Commandant of the garrison ; Major Hay,
Brigade Major, Royal Artillery ; Major-General
St. George, C.B„ Director of Ordnance ; Colo-
nel Gambier,
C. 8., Deputy-Adjutant-General,
of the Royal Artillery, and the heads of de-
partments. The Duke commenced his inspection
of the various branches of the establishment by
visiting, first, the Select Committee-office, where he
held a conference with Capt. Hayman, secretary,
and the members present, in order to ascertain the
cause of the delay in bringing out the new experi-
mental guns made in the Royal gun factories, and
which are awaiting their decision as to the system
of rifling with which they are to be supplied before
being submitted to proof. On leaving the Select
Committee-office the Duke and attendant officers
passed through the machinery room of the Royal
Laboratory, in which a number of the new shrapnel
shells were exposed for his inspection. They thence

proceeded to the smitheries of the Royal carriage
department, and examined the new species• of
wrought-iron gun carriages and platforms in course

of construction for " Big Will," and the powerful
armaments now ready for sea service. Passing down
the wharf, they inspected the four 300-pounder guns
intended for her Majesty's ship Scorpion, fitting out
at Birkenhead, and examined carefully the piles of
perforated slabs of iron targets which have been re-

turned from Shoeburyness, after the various experi-
ments, and which have since been objects of much
• •" ' •

curiosity to visitors. Some of these slabs, 9in. in

thickness, are cut through like pieces of cardboard.
The Duke and party next visited the gun stores and
reserve sheds in the Marsh, in which a number of

40-pounder and other batteries are stored in perfect
readiness for immediate issue. His Royal Highness,
whose object in visiting the arsenal appears to be to
acquaint himself fully with details previous to the

meeting of Parliament in February next, spent some
time in the Royal gun factories, and at 2 o'clock,
taking leave of the officers present, he again mounted
and rode back to London. The inspection occupied
upwards of three hours.

Major Palliser's gun, fitted under his improved
system of strengthening the old ordnance by the
insertion of an inner tube, yesterday fired 100
proof charges at the Woolwich butt, and has
now got through 800 rounds most successfully.
The], test ,will be resumed on Wednesday and
Friday, -awhen.itj is; intended to fire the remaining
- 200 rounds, and complete the severe proof to which
the gun was ordered to be subjected for the satis-

faction of the Select Committee namely 1,000
rounds, with charges of 161 b. of powder and shot
weighing 100 lb. each. The gun was fired in one of
the cells built up for that. purpose, and was sus-

pended on a principle introduced by Mr. M'Kinlay,
the proof-master, which affords many advantages.

The gun was slung pendulum fashion on two iron
bars. At the back of the cell, which is bomb-proof,

was a stride rope stretched across, having two
weights weighing lf tons each attached, in order to
restrain the recoil of the gun. The gun in its for-
ward motion is also held back by two check-ropes
or back-gyes attached to the weights before men-
tioned, and which operate in bringing it back
speedily to a position for being reloaded. Another
advantage of the system is that in the event of the!
gun bursting no carriages are destroyed nor mate-

rial of any kind injured beyond the gun itself.
We understand that Major-Gen. Lord William
Paulet, C. 8., will retain the Lieutenant-Governor-
ship of Portsmouth, and the command of the South-
West Military District, until July next, when he
will succeed Sir James Yorke Scarlett, C. 8., in the
duties of the Adjutant-General's-office at the Horse
Guards.

The construction of the two proposed inner Spit-
head Marine Forts, in support of the two ad-
vanced forts on the Noman and Horse shoals,
has been definitely decided on. They are to be im-
mediately erected in accordance with the recom-
mendations contained in the report of the special
committee appointed to consider and report on the
subject by the Secretary of State for War in July of
last year, and Mr. Ilawkshaw, the eminent engineer,
is now engaged in preparing the plans for the con-
struction of their foundations. This Commission
was appointed in consequence of the preli-
minary borings in the Sturbridge Bank, off Ryde,
having satisfied the authorities that no foundations
for a fort on that shoal could be constructed except
at an enormous cost. The works recommended by

the Commission will be erected, one on the edge of
the Ryde Sand, about 1,200 yards to the southward
of the Sturbridge Shoal, and the other on the Spit
Bank, about 600 yards to the south-west of the point
on which it was originally proposed by the Defence
Commission to erect a fort., and about midway be-
tween the powerful batteries now constructing at
Southsea Castle point and a central line drawn
through Spithead anchorage. The committee in their
report stated that a work thus placed on-the Spit
Bank would, in conjunction with the batteries at
Fort Monckton, bear immediately upon the anchor-
age at Spithead, and would also co-operate with the
forts on the Horse Sand and Noman's Land shoals,
and with the Blockhouse Point and Southsea batte-
ries, in the defence respectively of the outer channel
to Spithead, and of the inner channel to Portsmouth
harbour. Thefort on the Ryde Sand the Commission
recommended should be erected to meet the contin-
gency of an enemy's ships having succeeded in pass-
ing the advanced forts on the Horse and Noman,
and entering Spithead, hugging the island shore out
of effective range of the gung on the Spitbank or the
mainland. With this arrangement it was considered
there would be three advanced works to the north-
ward and two to the southward of the anchorage at
Spithead—viz., Fort Monckton, with its auxiliary
batteries on the point of land forming the eastern
extremity of Stokes Bay, the marine forts on the
Spit, and Horsebanks to the northward ; those on
the Noman Shoal and the Ryde Sand to the south-
ward. The work to be erected on the Spit-bank will
be circular, like the forts on the Horse and Noman,
but it will not be quite so extensive as those
works. The work on the Ryde Sand will most pro-
bably be semicircular and open to the rear. The
distances between these works, to which will be con-
signed the main defence of Spithead, will be as fol-
lows :—Horse Sand and Noman—the two outer
forts, and between which lies the entrance channel
to Spithead from the sea, round the east end of the
Isle of Wight, 2,000 yards ; Noman and Spitbank,
3,200 yards ; Spitbank and Ryde Sand, 4,200 yds. ;
Ryde Sand and Fort Monckton, 3,800 yards. The
distances between these defensive works and the
centre of Portsmouth dockyard will be, as nearly as
Possible, as follows :—To the Noman, 8,000 yards ;
to the Horse, 7,000 yards ; to the Ryde Sand, 7,500
Yards ; to the Spitbank, 3,700 yards ; and to the
Monckton fort and batteries, 4,500 yards. Eminent
military and naval officers, who have been through-
out advocates for the construction of marine forts
for the protection
u
of
Spithead
and Portsmouth har-
bour, havepersistently
the necessity of con-
structing a third outer
fort on the Warner Shoal,
which, they say, would
door of entrance to trebly lock the front
Spithead
a triangle of fire, throughe from the sea, and give
Which no enemy's ship
could pass and swim.
sarncheme for
is not,
however, included in the present for the de-
fence of Spithead and Portsmout
harbour, and is
perhaps left over for future consideration. A glance
at one of the Admiralty charts of Spithead and its
approaches from the sea will show the importance
of
crowning the Warner rock with a work which would
then become the apex of a triangle and which would
most probably form the strongest of existing marine
defensive works.
The Aurora screw frigate, Capt. Sir L.M'Clintock,
steamed out of Portsmouth harbour yesterday on
the completion of her refit for foreign service, and
anchored at Spithead to take in her powder and
shell and await sailing orders.
The Edgar, screw line-of-of-battle ship, Capt. G.
P. Hornby, flagship of Rear-Admiral J. C. Dacres,
C. 8., remains quietly ather moorings in Portsmouth
harbour. Rumour says that she is not likely to leave
Portsmouth harbour again as flag-ship of the Chan-
nel squadron, if ever she again goes out on active
service of any kind during her present term of com-
mission. It is stated that Rear-Admiral Dacres
will shortly join the Board of Admiralty.

The Hand and Hands.

On Saturday evening the introductory lecture to
he students attending the evening cl tss s lately

established in the East end of London wis delivered

by the Rev. Lord S. G. Osborne, at ihe School-

house, Byron-street, St. Leonard's-roaq, Bromley.
The subject of the lecture was " The Hand and
Hands." There was a large attendance of students

and others, and the class-room was tastefully deco-
rated. The Rev. C. R. Holmes, M.A., incumbent
of the district, having introduced the lecturer to
the audience,
The Rev. Lord S. G. OSBORNE began by saying
that there had been a good deal of discussion
lately as to how those who spoke at mechanics'
institutes should designate their hearers. If they

called them working men, the question was put—
who was not a working man ? He hardly knew who
was not ; for even the idlest man had to work very
hard indeed to get through his day. (A laugh.)

He might address them by a name used a great deal

in the north, viz. " the hands."' That he thought an

honourable as applied to working men, and when
the large millowner who employed a great number
of people talked of his " hands," he might fairly be
asked what he could possibly do without them. Now
he wished to show to those who knew so much not

only about the use of particular tools and implements,
but about the wonderful machinery which they were

employed in constructing, that of all the Wonderful
machines, taken either as a whole or in the admir-
able adjustment of its various parts, there was no-
thing equal to one of themselves. If they rightly
studied the human frame, they would find that, in
its marvellous construction and adaptation to the
ends for which it was designed, it infinitely trans-
cended every creation of human ingenuity. They
heard a great deal of tools being supplanted by ma-
chinery, and of machinery, in fact, taking the place
of the hands of the workman ; and certainly when
they watched the operation of, for instance, Mr. Whit-
worth's tool-making machine, it seemed, from the re-
gularity and precision of its movements, almost as if
inspired by some rational power of action. Still, who
made that machine, who conceived it, who planned it,

who executed it ? Was it not, in its every part,

after all simply the creation of man's brain wrought
out by the skill of man's hand ? The lecturer then
proceeded, by the aid of diagrams and a skeleton
arm, to explain in detail the structure, adaptation,
and functions of the various joints, muscles, ten-

dons, and ligaments of that human limb, pointing
out that every joint displayed as much contrivance,
and was as directly fashioned for the purpose of

performing the movements requisite for earning
the workman's bread, as though a scientific engineer
had constructed it. Mr. Whitworth's tool-mak-

ing machine required to be constantly supplied
with oil from an external source in order to avoid
friction in its working ; but the great Mechanic who
made man had placed within His machine itself the
means of keeping every joint not merely free from
friction, but in a state which enabled it to execute
every movement with thq most marvellous ease. For
every joint there were certain glands which secreted
a proper supply of lubricating fluid, so that no joint
should ever stop from the want of that indispensable
material ; and for one human limb, arm, or finger
that was ever out of order and prevented from ful-
filling its work, he believed there must be many
hundred machines of man's creation laid by, because
all our science and skill could not enable us to make
them both answer their object and keepthem in pro-
per repair and efficiency. The human body was so
planned by Divine Providence that out of the food
we ate the blood was formed, which worked, as it
were, a constant miracle, running its daily and
nightly course through every part of the frame, fur-

nishing nourishment wherever nourishment was re

quired, repairing waste where waste had occurred,
not leaving cartilage where flesh was wanted, nor
flesh where cartilage was wanted, but depositing the
right thing in right the place at the right moment,
and maintaining the whole machine in its proper
balance and harmonious working, without our

scarcely being aware of the marvellous operations
going on within us. Reverting to the structure and
functions of the hand and arm, the lecturer said he
,had no doubt there were many mechanics pre-
sent who could out of brass, guttapercha, and
other materials, make a machine which could
act like that limb ; but the question came—what
put the arm in motion ? They were told it was
nervous power, and so it was. The muscles were
acted upon by certain nerves ; those nerves passed
to particular portions of the spine; the spine, being

connected with the brain, took its orders from it

issued them, and the work was done. By our voli-
tion we could bend the arm or turn the hand ; but
whence came that wonderful power of command ?
He wished with all his heart that he could tell them.
He could tell them where it might be traced ; but
beyond that all his reading and study did not en-
able him to go. He knew that if they divided a
nerve as it passed from the spine they might render
the arm powerless, and that from a string of nerves
there went no end of small nerves embracing every
part of the hand and arm, some giving us pain when
touched, some giving us pleasure, and all intended
to act according to our will or for our wellbeing.
But of what material the brain was made, or how it.
did its work, he was not philosopher enough to be
able to say. Many and wonderful were the uses to
which the human hand could be applied. It was
said that the Nasmyth hammer could not only crush
a solid body beneath its pressure, but its force could
be so exquisitely regulated as to crack the shell of a
nut without injuring the kernel. And so, too, the
anchor forger's brawny arm, whose blows would
carry death to any person, was often employed,
after the hard's day's toil, in lifting the tender babe
from its cradle to fondle and caress it with all the
gentleness of a mother. He was told there was no
nation among whom the action of fear did not almost
involuntarily cause the hands to be clasped. The
little child clasped its hands together when first
taught to pray, and man and woman in their hour
of sorrow and agony instinctively clasped theirs and
raised their eyes to Heaven when imploring Divine
aid. Let their hands, then, be used day by day, not
only in gaining for them the bread that perisheth,
but in asking from their Heavenly Father the sus-
tenance of the immortal soul. Thus, go where they,
would, they carried with them, in their own persons,
a lesson teaching them that nature, after all, was
but the great workshop of the great Constructor of
all, the world's Engineer, He whose diploma dated
from eternity, He who created the mechanism of the
heavens as well as of the smallest creature that
breathed. Science was said in our day to be
piercing the very
secrets of nature. The astronomer
with his telescope scanned the heavens and learnt
the earth to be but a speck in the universe ; while the
microscopist, with his instrument, found a world in
an atom. But who constructed the telescope and
the microscope ? Who worked out the philosophy
of the problems that gave us the marvellous instru-
ments by which we achieved so much ? Trace the
matter to its sourcerand they would find that after
all it was the hands. Whether they liked to be
called the hands of their fellowmen or not, they
were all in one sense the hands of the great Master
of the world's workshop, who gave them the mate-
rial with which they worked and the intelligence they
and who had framed their bodies
feoxrertchiseed
masteryun it, and
the tools which their brains in-
vented. In the great system of the division of
labour, every honest share worked out with industry
and to the best of one's powers dignified the man.
The miner who, sweating beneath the deepest coalf
pit, with his pickaxe struck fromits vaulted
coal used to smelt the iron wrought by his fellow-
workman, bore as honourable a part as he who, with
the most complete machine before him,
accomplished
the most wonderful ends for which human science
was ever striving. Taking the case of one of our
noblest iron ships,
and tracing it from its first be-
ginning in the
110-Meer's or draughtsman's office
down to the lo
west artificer's contribution to her
construction, he said
living soul
who had lent a hand, ina honour to every
her completion. Speaking
to those whose bread
w
hands, directed by the ,_nas, earner by the skill of their
uelligence of their reason,
he entreated them not to hold that reason so lightly
as to use it as mere machines, set in motion for a
certain • time, and then to cease for ever. They
must have seen instances in -which, after the-
physi-
cal
organs had one by one lost their powth
faculties of intelligence still !survived. Where,-
then

was the spot in the human frame to which we could
point and say that when death laid its hand on it
reason died too ? If there was one thing more pain-
ful than another it was to see the intellect which
they, as a class, so clearly possessed, so often and so
fearfully abused. But if there was one thing more
cheering than another, it was the fact that a far better
and wiser spirit was now working its way through-
out the whole class—that they were, in fact, becom-
ing a thinking as well as an acting class ; that their
minds were no longer bound within the walls of the
shop in which they laboured, or of the home perhaps
to which they returned so tired, seeming to care for
little else but rest and refreshment. They who
understood the many niceties of the remarkable
things they made, and knew so well what acted to
their injury and what to your success, should look
around them, and wherever they saw a fellow-
workman abusing the faculties with which his Maker
had endowed him, treading the drunkard's path, and
becoming, as all drunkards did, a blasphemer, let
them not .wait for parson, preacher, or missionary,
but bring their own homely common sense to bear
upon that man's life, proving to him what they
themselves had gained by their industry, sobriety,
honesty, and respectability, contrusting with that
his own miserable career of slavish indulgence ;
showing them how he was degrading them as a
member of their class ; pointing out what a curse
his vices were to himself and his family ; what foul
language he spoke in the presence of his own
daughters, what a terrible example he set to his
own sons. The beastly passion for drink was, he
believed, the greatest curse which Satan, with all
his ingenuity, had laid upon the working class.
Had they but the good sense to revolutionise them-
selves as a class in that respect, casting down the
tyrant Drink, and freeing themselves from its
debasing power, he had often said to himself, not
simply what capital, would these men accumu-
late, what a powerful body would they become, but
with the cool sober honest intellects that knew how
to use that power without abusing it, the men who
had thus raised for themselves a stake in the country
would become more loyal as they learnt the value of
our free constitution, and saw how it protected their
property, as well as that of the richest in the land.
If he had one hope in his heart it was that the work-
ing men should themselves act with the Church and
for the Church, with God and for God, by example,
by precept, by perseverance, by urgency, to rescue
their fellows from aught that could debase them as
individuals or bring the slightest slur upon their
order. They were, under God, the very hands of
the nation. The nation's intellect might be said per-
haps to be chiefly represented by those who had
power to obtain that learning which they were de-
nied. But what would all that learning, all that in-
telligence, all that science be without the working
class to work out their plans and conceptions ? The
skilful designer or inventor. might be the brain of
the social system, but helpless would he be without
the hands. This he said without meaning in any de-
gree to flatter them. It was one of the greatest evils
of a day which he hoped was quickly passing from
us that lecturers were too much in the habit of flatter-
ing and speaking only the things they knew would
please those whom they addressed. That never had
been and never would be his practice. He was one of
those who had spoken strongly for the workman's
rights, but he had spoken with equal strength, as
far as his power went, of the workman's duty.
As a Christian and a gentleman he could not be the
advocate of any particular class. No land could be
so blessed as that in which each class, knowing its
duty towards the others, endeavoured to do it firmly
and faithfully in the presence of God, the All-just.
And if they would but remember who that God was
he thought they would act in a kinder spirit towards
each other—the master with honesty and firmness
to his men, the men with equal honesty and firm-
ness to the master ; but both bearing in mind that
each was but human, and subject to the like infir-
mities, would, be slow to think that either
would seek to oppress the other. Each would
rather strive, knowing their value in combina-
tion, to find the means of so adjusting their
mutual interests that, working in harmony, the mas-
ter might respect the independence of his workman,
and the workman love and respect the justice and
kindness of his employer,
The address was listened to with marked atten-
ion throughout, and warmly applauded.