Nor shall we pick our perilous way among the Sniders, Chassepots, Zuendnadelgewehre, and Zuendnadelbuechsen whose various charms absorb the military mind at this day.  The debate among them is but as to the best utilization of the old arrow-theory.  The oblong projectile, that goes singing on its winding way, is common to them all.  Slipped in at the back door or rammed home at the front, delicately stirred up by the insinuating needle and its titbit of fulminate or bluntly ordered off by the snappish percussion-cap, it is the same obedient and faithful messenger, and goes on its appointed errand in much the same style.

Under the ancient regime of the musket it required the soldier’s weight in lead to kill him.  Its point-blank range was about sixty yards, but precision even at that short distance it by no means possessed.  At the battle of Fontenoy the English and French Guards, drawn up in opposite lines, conversed with each other prior to firing, like two groups of friends across the street.  “Gentlemen of the French Guards, fire!” was the courteous invitation of the British commander.  “The French Guards never fire first,” was the reply.  And not till then did punctilio come to an end.  Such a colloquy in our day would need to be carried on with forty-horse power speaking-trumpets, or with the thunderous articulation of that between the bellowing Alps and echoing Jura.  Even smooth-bore field-pieces, with point-blank of three hundred and twenty yards and service range of one thousand, have to keep their distance.  It is a rare thing now for cannon to be captured by a charge of cavalry or the bayonet.  The rifle destroys quantum suff. of their horses, and, their support overpowered, they remain a helpless prey.

For this default of the blustering cannon in the trying of conclusions with its quiet little cousin, the natural remedy is to improve its interior in the same manner.  This has been done, and with marvelous effect in some respects.  But the rifled cannon, though extensively used both on sea and land, throwing shot and shell five miles, and at close range through iron plates a foot thick, cannot be yet styled a perfected weapon.  It may be in a very few years, thanks to the ardent anxiety, on the part of the several peoples composing “the parliament of man, the federation of the world,” to excel each other in the “brain-spattering, windpipe-slitting art.”  At present it is maintained by very good American authority that for use under some conditions, at short or moderate range, the smooth gun of large calibre is more effective than a rifled gun throwing a missile of the same weight.  Our monitors continue to be armed with the fifteen-inch Rodman, very recent experiments being cited to prove its penetrating effect on iron plates greater than that of the European rifled guns.  This, of course, at very close range.