Page:Repository of Arts, Series 1, Volume 01, 1809, January-June.djvu/16

4 brass was more generally used. Menestheus, who commanded fifty Athenian vessels upon that occasion, is said to be the first who marshalled an army. The earliest fortifications were trees interlaced with boughs; to which succeeded the wall, with holes left for missile weapons. The battering-ram was opposed to the wall by Pericles, the Athenian, and brought to perfection at the siege of Gades by the Carthaginians. To oppose this invention, parapets were introduced, which were counteracted by covers pushed close to the wall, to secure in its turn the assailants. This again was rendered ineffectual by deep and broad ditches, which creating the necessity for, led to the invention of machines to throw weapons from a distance, to employ the defenders of a fortified place so as to afford an opportunity of filling up the ditches: the use of these engines led also to other modes of fortification, which enabled one part to flank another, and to the construction of round, after- wards improved to square towers, erected upon the salient angles of the walls. But the invention of cannon created a great revolution in military architecture. They were first made of iron bars, united by rings of copper; and their size was afterwards reduced by the employment of iron instead of stone for the balls: these destructive engines were at length completed by making them of cast metal. To resist their force, ingenuity was employed in the construction of bastions, horn-works, crown-works, half-moons, &c.; but the arts of attack having at least kept pace with those of defence, have rendered these boasted inventions of little use.

In modern times, the experiment has been tried, of associating with military tactics the science of politics, and the moral nature of man has been successfully employed to convert the members of the same society into instruments of mutual destruction. Indeed, the vicissitudes of public opinion, or the public spirit arising out of public opinion, have had more effect in the revolutions at a late period, than even the collisions of armies; and the lightening which blasts, has not been more powerful in effect, or more rapid in communication, than the solar rays which sustain the universe.

Naval architecture (a subject upon which no Englishman can be uninterested) has had its gradual progress to a state of improvement. The first vessels were constructed with beams, joined together, and covered with planks. To these succeeded trees hollowed out by fire and manual labour, called monoxyles; and the Greeks formed other vessels, which were made of planks fastened together so as to imitate them. A prow for the head, and a movable helm for the tail, with oars for the tins, which was the next improvement, seem to have been suggested by the idea of imitating a fish. Sails were afterwards added; an invention of so remote antiquity, that the author is unknown. Before the middle of the sixteenth century, English ships of war were built without port-holes, and had only a few guns placed upon deck: even in the sixteenth century, a voyage to the East Indies on this side the Granges, allowing the time necessarily spent in the country for unlading and relading, was three years; but such is the