the British navy and the termination of hostilities with France, in 1783, that few if any of the published accounts require, on that account, to be recanvassed or disturbed. How the case became altered in the succeeding war will be discovered, as the events of that war pass in order of detail.

There is another point in the armament of ships, requiring at present to be briefly noticed. Few persons but must know, that the destruction caused by discharges of cannon is, in a great degree, proportionate to the diameter and weight of the shot. Were it not for this, no ship's deck would be encumbered with guns, weighing each 56 hundred weight, when a tier that weighed one hundred weight each would answer as well. "Il est certain," says M. Duhamel, "que ce sont toujours les gros canons qui sont les plus avantageux dans un combat, et ainsi il est préferable de mettre sur un vaisseau un petit nombre de gros canons qu'un plus grand nombre de petits."* Nor, would the expense of fitting the Rainbow with 68-pounders have been incurred, when the same end could have been attained by arming her with 12-pounders. Carronades of the latter caliber were already in the arsenal at Woolwich, with their slides and carriages, ready to be placed on board: while those of the former caliber had to be cast at the foundry in Scotland; thence transmitted to Woolwich to be proved ; thence to the port at which the ship was fitting ; and, when there, were to be (an arduous task it was) properly and securely mounted. A 3 and a 32 pounder are equally guns; but he that would match them, because they are guns, might with the same propriety, pit a man of three, � against a man of six feet in height, simply because they are men. From this difficulty, attendant more or less, upon all sea-fights, land-fights are wholly exempt. Every foot-soldier, in either army, enters the field with a musket on his soldier; every cavalry-man wields either a pike or a broadsword, and is mounted on an animal of the same species and comparative strength, and every piece of artillery employed is within a trifle of the same caliber. Fix the number of each army, and mark the nature of the ground; and what more is generally required for coming to a conclusion on the relative strength of the combatants ?

On the other hand, compare the account of the opposed forces in the case of the Rainbow and Hébé as extracted from the work of an English naval chronologist, with the true state of the case, as exhibited in a preceding page. " On the 4th of September," says Schomberg, "Captain Trollope, in the Rainbow of 44 guns, fell in with, and captured off the isle of Bas, la Hébé French frigate, of 40 guns, and 360 men, commanded by

* Elemens de l'Architecture Navale ; par M. Duhamel du Monceau, p.17.

� The only man three feet high was John Hauptman, who was exhibited in London in 1815.- Ed.