to record, may be accounted for by sufficiently well understood. The same some trifling indiscretion in handling period, too, had witnessed the successsuch a powerful element, without in- ful use of gunpowder in a blow-up of voking any supernatural machinery. private character.

In the course of their experiments it At two o'clock one winter's morning, is probable that the alchemists arrived the ninth of February, 1567, a loud at the knowledge of sundry powerful explosion shook the narrow closes and explosive compositions, such as are wynds of old Edinburgh, and alarmed shadowed forth in the treatises of the the whole city. Daylight showed that famous Roger Bacon, whose descrip- the solitary house called Kirk of Field tions, even allowing for natural "brag," had been blown up by gunpowder, and seem to indicate an explosive tech- the body of the king consort, with that nically of a higher nature than gunpow-of his servant, was found lying in an der. The explosive character of that adjacent garden. The son of this same villainous saltpetre, when combined Darnley, it will be remembered, our with charcoal, was probably first discov- James the First, had a rather narrow ered by accident and turned to account escape of a similar fate, in the detecby practical military engineers, who nat- tion of the famous Gunpowder Plot of urally preserved in profound secrecy the 1605. processes of its manufacture. A diffiIndeed, as long as gunpowder conculty in the way of the extensive use of tinued to be the only available explogunpowder was the scanty supply of sive, criminal conspiracies for its use saltpetre, few natural deposits of which rarely attained even the negative suc.were then known. In England the cess of a blow-up. The latest instance saltpetre men enjoyed many powers of its employment, however, is of conand immunities. They were author-siderable interest. It was about four ized to search and dig for saltpetre on o'clock in the afternoon of the thiranybody's premises, and especially to teenth of December, 1867, that some dig up the floors of stables, cattle- unknown man drove a wheelbarrow sheds, and such like premises, which containing a barrel of gunpowder up then were rarely either paved or to the great dead wall enclosing the drained. House of Detention at Clerkenwell. He lighted a fuse and calmly left it burning. Presently half London was alarmed by the shock of the explosion. Six persons were killed, a hundred and twenty wounded, and many in delicate health were endangered by the shock and terror. A plot more primitive and simple in its savagery was perhaps never hatched, for if the design was to aid in the escape of certain prisoners confined within the jail, they were the most likely to be killed or wounded by the explosion, which destroyed part of the wall of their exercise ground.

.

The use of powder for artillery long preceded its adoption for exploding mines in sieges. The first instance of the latter use is in 1487, when the results of the explosion were so trifling that there is no other instance of the .practice till 1503, when the Spaniards employed gunpowder to blow up a fort held by the French in Naples. Thus Shakespeare perpetrates a trifling anachronism when he brings in Fluellen at the siege of Harfleur, complaining: "For look you, the mines is not according to the discipline of the war. I think a' will blow up all if there is not better directions;" while his friend the Scotch captain is equally in advance of the times when he cries: "I would have blowed up the town, so Christ save me la, in an hour." But Shakespeare's evidence is conclusive on the point that, when he wrote, the use of explosives in military engineering was

The era of dynamite was yet to come, for that substance was still something of a novelty, and the mode of its employment not generally understood. To the average mind it might seem that chemists were ill employed in inventing such dangerous mixtures, but science is great and must prevail. The first step towards dynamite was the chemical

treatment of fats which resulted in the Dynamite, it must be owned, has in
well-known product glycerine. A little its way done good service for civiliza-
later in 1846- a chemist discovered tion. The great works of modern
that by treating glycerine with nitric engineering would hardly have been
acid a highly explosive substance re- possible without the aid of high explo-
sulted, little differing in appearance, sives, of which dynamite is the pro-
which became known as nitro-glyce- totype. Tunnelling, rock cuttings,
rine.
blastings of all kinds were greatly facil-
The new product was, without doubt, itated by the new explosive, in which
of high explosive power, but was ren- power is stored with so much greater
dered useless for practical purposes by compactness than in gunpowder. In
its instability and uncertainty. Not mines and quarries all over the world
only was it a source of constant danger dynamite in some of its forms has prac-
to its possessor from its habits of spon- tically superseded gunpowder. The
taneous explosion, but it was often ex- industrial demand has brought into
tremely difficult to make it go off when the market many modifications of the
it was wanted to. To apply a lighted original type. The earth basis of true
coal to it would perhaps only result in dynamite has been replaced by sawdust,
extinguishing the coal, while at another sugar, starch, charcoal, and dozens of
time the rumbling of a loaded wagon more or less effective mixtures; in fact,
might cause a violent explosion. The almost any absorbent substance will
Swedish chemist Nobel, however, dis- form a vehicle for nitro-glycerine.
covered that it might be detonated with As might be expected, the military
fulminate of mercury, not only with administrations of the different Euro-
certainty, but with higher explosive pean powers kept an eye upon the de-
results; and as a careful process of velopment of the new explosive. The
manufacture and certain chemical pre-State laboratories of France, after many
cautions greatly diminished its danger- years of trials and experiments, have
ous sensitiveness, Nobel began to make evolved the powerful substance known
nitro-glycerine, as a useful explosive, as mélinite, the composition of which
for mining and engineering works gen- is an open secret, while its merits as
erally. But from a very natural dis-
trust of the deadly jelly, no carrier by
road or rail, by steam or sail, by river
or sea, would undertake its conveyance,
and Nobel had almost abandoned the
manufacture when an accident showed
him a way through his difficulties.

compared with dynamite consist in the
superior stability of its base, which it is
claimed will stand the shock and heat
of being fired from heavy guns as a
charge for shells. The Austrians, too,
have a new explosive called écrasite,
warranted to "écraser" any number of
the "enemy." Probably the authori
ties at Woolwich have something "up
their sleeve" of a like nature.

Sundry pots of jelly were being forwarded to some public works by Nobel's own cart and horses. To secure the jars from fracture they were carefully packed in sand, but on the way one of the jars broke, and its contents were found to have been completely absorbed by the sand about it. Struck with this result, Nobel conceived the idea that the sand itself, thus charged with nitrate, might be found the ideal explosive. And thus it proved, and to the new substance Nobel gave the name of dynamite, a name henceforth to be of world-wide fame, and for good or ill to make for itself a place in the history of the century.

But the successes of our own military chemists have been chiefly in the direction of gun-cotton, of which there is a considerable government factory at Waltham Abbey. The invention of cotton powder preceded that of nitro-glycerine, but it was so uncertain in character as to be practically useless, till Professor Abel, the chemical adviser of our War Department, invented and patented a new process of manufacture which has made the substance available as a military explosive, especially as a charge for torpedoes and submarine mines of

every description. Many other cellular | danger seemed past when, as the czar substances as well as cotton can be was enquiring into the condition of charged with nitrates and made to do the wounded, of whom many were duty as explosives, and it is in this direction that we must look for the "smokeless powder" which is to be one of the features of the next great

war.

It was evident from an early period in the history of these new explosives, that they were destined to become a formidable weapon in the hands of those who, for whatever reason, were at war with society and enemies of existing institutions. But the first serious dynamite explosion was planned for purposes of sordid gain. A person engaged in the foreign trade of Bremerhaven conceived the idea of shipping a number of cases of worthless goods, and insuring them for a large amount, while a case of dynamite, concealed within one of the bales, should be detonated by a clockwork arrangement at the end of a certain number of days, and thus send the unfortunate ship with its crew and all it contained to the bottom of the sea. The plan was spoilt by the premature explosion of the case of dynamite on the quay at Bremerhaven, with loss of life and great damage to property. The author of the plot committed suicide on the failure of his scheme. The affair caused much alarm at the time, and led to many precautions being taken in shipping goods from unknown consignees.

stretched helpless around, another young man threw something at his feet which exploded, and left the czar mangled and bleeding on the ground.

The feeling that a new and terrible power was abroad in the hands of political or social fanatics spread itself throughout Europe, and was intensified, as far as England was concerned, by the catastrophe that befell the Dottrel, sloop of war, which was blown up off Sandy Point in the Straits of Magellan on the twenty-sixth of April, 1881, only eleven men being saved out of the whole crew. The cause of the explosion has never been fully ascertained, but it is due to the dynamiters, who boasted of the achievement, to state that appearances pointed to an accidental explosion.

In Russia the Nihilists kept up the terror of their name, and even in Germany, where the Emperor William was personally popular, dynamite conspiracies were on foot. The Emperor William had a narrow escape at the opening of the Niederwald Monument in 1883. A drain beneath the road along which he passed was packed with dynamite, but the conspirators failed to ignite it, and the emperor passed over it in safety.

In the same year, 1883, began what we may call the epidemic of explosions The next striking example of the ter- in England. The opening scene was at rible power of the new explosives was the government offices at Whitehall on the assassination of the czar, Alexander the night of the fifteenth of March, of Russia, on the thirteenth of March, when an explosion occurred which 1881. The czar was being driven about spread consternation in Westminster, one P.M. from the Winter Palace at St. and gave the Houses of Parliament a Petersburg, and had reached the Cath- shaking. The morning light showed a erine Canal, when an explosion took great smash at the corner of the local place just behind the carriage, wound-government offices, all the windows ing the horses, and killing one of the smashed, and official dockets peeping czar's escort. The emperor alighted out of bare openings in the walls. King from the shattered carriage. "Thank Heaven I am untouched," he replied to those about him. The youth who had thrown the bomb, who carried a revolver and dagger in either hand, was in the grasp of a soldier, and surrounded by an excited crowd. The

Street, the entrance of which is opposite the scene of the explosion, bore a shattered, wrecked appearance, with windows smashed and frames starting out of the surrounding brickwork. Happily no human being was touched, and the same good fortune attended an

explosion at the Times office on the things were getting warm. Towards

to the public. A lady saw the bag with | surprise for Dublin in the shape of a smoke issuing from it. Constable Cole dynamite explosion in the lower Castle bravely seized it, carried it into the hall Yard, resulting unhappily in the death at the imminent risk of destruction, of a detective officer. A previous exand threw it from him to the floor of plosion, also in Dublin Castle, on the the hall, where it exploded, wounding last day of December, 1891, wrecked the brave constable and damaging the the office of the treasury solicitor, but hall, but occasioning no further casual- damaged no human creature. Indeed, ties. At the same time another charge the dynamiters with whom we have to of dynamite exploded in the House of deal seem to avoid, as far as is possible Commons itself, again happily with no in their dreadful trade, the sacrifice of fatal results. On the same day the human life, and have none of the unTower of London was open free to the compromising courage and atrocity of public, and also to the dynamiter who the dynamiters of Paris. left his bag in the middle story of the White Tower and ran away. Another explosion, with minor casualties and major panic, followed. As other public buildings, the Post-Office, the British Museum, the Inland Revenue Office, were threatened with like attempts, there was a kind of state of siege among the government departments. Detachments of Guards, with their formidable bearskins, marched up and down, the lobbies of the various offices were lined with police, detectives flitted to and fro, and everybody with a black bag was subject to detention and rigorous examination.

One result, indeed, which followed from this natural scare was to discredit the carrying of black leather bags. Before that date the custom was almost universal; the lawyer carried his papers, the civil servant his luncheon, the commercial man his correspondence, in these convenient little receptacles. You might almost gauge a man's progress in the world by his bag. A step towards success involved a new black bag with patent lock, etc.; when his bag became worn and shabby, as surely his fortunes were on the declining scale. But now the black bag fell into disgrace. He who carried one was avoided, especially in railway carriages. If there was anything in his bag that clicked he would be pointed out to the police as a dangerous character.

Happily the dynamite troubles seem, although it does not do to boast, fairly laid to rest so far, at least, as England is concerned. It is not quite the case in Ireland, where Christmas day had a

From Sunday at Home. AMERICAN GRAVEYARD CURIOSITIES.

Like

GRAVEYARDS, like cities, like nations, like races, have their seasons. them they rise, flourish, increase, grow old, and decay. All over New England are decayed ones. Their inscriptions are quaint and curious. They bring us face to face with ghostly manners and men, with a phase of civilization from which our own has sprung, yet as different from ours as if of foreign birth. Nowhere is the roughness, the crudity, the stupidity and arrogance of rustic populations, the pretentious vulgarity of small local "big-wigs " more conspicuous. Coarse wit, pomposity, and self-complacency are fixed indelibly upon stone, so that often the visitor cannot help but scoff where most imperiously bidden to pray. Not a few bumpkins seize greedily upon this, their sole opportunity to immortalize themselves in verse, and flourish bombast, bad spelling, and worse rhyme upon retentive marble like utterances of the wise. Among them are words of simple piety and sobs of anguish that wring one's heart across the chasm of years, but such are not "curiosities," and this collection will pass them reverently by.

In old Marblehead, in a desolate, weedy place, we found this pre-revolutionary inscription:

Now I am dedd my work is done;
Id have you attend to my little son;
To shun the paths of vice and ill,
Attend to him and love him still.