walking up and down at either end, and they must have been seen by the garrison at the forts, which towered above them at the short distance of 150 yards upon the right and left, neither party molested the other. Satisfied of the solid nature of the obstacle, and that a mere gunboat pressing against it would never force away all the anchors or cables with which it was secured, Captain Willes returned to the second barrier, and exploded his charges, occasioning a breach apparently wide enough for a vessel to pass; but a carefullydirected fire from a gun or two in the forts warned him to desist, There was, however, no general alarm on shore, and the works did not, as might have been expected, open a general fire, or develop their formidable character.

It was evident that Admiral Hope had now but one resource left, namely, an attack upon the enemy's front; a flank attack was impossible; for it would have been simple folly to have landed seven hundred marines and sailors outside the bar, either to the northward or southward of Taku; the force was far too small to risk such a manœuvre. The Commanderin Chief's plan was simple and judicious. He had eleven gun-vessels; nine of them were to anchor close to the first barrier, as nearly abreast as possible without masking each other's guns. Captain Willes in the Opossum was to secure tackles to one of the iron piles, ready to pull it up when ordered, and then, under cover of the anchored gun-vessels, the Admiral and Flag-Captain in the Plover and Opossum were to pass on to the destruction of the second and third barriers, Whilst the Admiral thus carefully made his plans to meet a strong resistance, few in the squadron thought of anything but the fun and excitement of the coming day: many a witty anticipation was expressed as to promotion for another bloodless Chinese victory, mingled with jokes at the foolish obstinacy of John Chinaman. Daylight came; the forts were deceitfully calm; some thought an embrasure or two had been added during the night, but it was only certain that the second barrier, where it had been broken during

the night by Captain Willes, was again thoroughly repaired. Everything had the appearance of simple obstinacy. With cock-crow all was activity in the squadron; at half-past three in the morning, a chorus of boatswains' mates' whistles had sent all hands to their breakfasts, and by four o'clock the vessels commenced to drop up into their assigned positions. The flood-tide was running strong, a muddy turbid stream flowing up a tortuous gutter; gradually that gutter filled, and the waters, ruffled by a fresh breeze, spread on either hand over the mud banks, and eventually washed the border of the reed-covered plain, and touched the basements of the huge masses of earth which constituted the forts of Taku. These lay silent and lifeless, except where at the flag-staff of one waved two black banners, ominously emblematic of the bloody day they were about to witness.

The Admiral commenced to move his squadron into action thus early, anticipating that by the time the flood-tide had ceased running, every vessel would have reached her position, the distance in no case being more than a mile; but the narrowness of the channel, the strength of the breeze, and force of current, occasioned great delay by forcing first one gunboat and then another ashore on the mud banks; added to which, the great length of the Nimrod and Cormorant caused them, when canting or swinging across the channel, almost to block it up. The consequence was, that the squadron was not ready for action at 11.30 A.M., or high water. Prior to high water it would have been folly to have commenced action. No judicious naval officer would engage an enemy's works whilst a flood-tide was sweeping in towards them. Had Admiral Hope done so, every disabled vessel and boat, as well as every wounded man, would have fallen into the hands of the Chinese; and, moreover, the difficulty of anchoring by the stern in gunboats, in so strong a tideway, can only be appreciated by seamen, and would have probably resulted in the whole force falling aboard of one another, and being swept by the tide, in one mass, under the concentrated fire of all the batteries. By one

signal, "Engage the enemy," with the red pendant under, indicating as “close as possible," the cheers of the delighted ships' companies mingled with the roar of that first hearty broadside. All day long, through that stern fight, that signal, simple yet significative, flew from the masthead of the heroic Admiral. Never was the need greater that every man should do his duty, and nobly they responded to the appeal. So well concentrated was the enemy's fire upon the space between the first and second barriers, that the Plover and Opossum appeared to be struck by every shot directed at them. The flag-ship was especially aimed at. Within twenty minutes both these vessels had so many men killed and wounded, and were so shattered, as to be almost silenced. LieutenantCommander Rason, of the Plover, was cut in two by a round shot. Captain M'Kenna, of the 1st Royals, on the Admiral's staff, was killed early, and the Admiral himself was grievously injured by a gun-shot in the thigh. The Lee and Haughty, under Lieutenant-Commanders W. H. Jones and G. Broad, now weighed, by signal, and advanced to the support of the Admiral.

The shattered Plover almost drifted out of her honourable position, having only nine men left efficient out of her original crew of forty. The Admiral, in spite of wounds and loss of blood, transferred his flag to the Opossum, and the battle raged furiously on either hand. A little after three o'clock, the Admiral received a second wound, a round-shot knocking away some chainwork by which he was supported in a conspicuous position, and the fall breaking several of his ribs. The Opossum had by this time become so disabled, that it was necessary to drop her outside the iron piles of the first barrier, where both she and the Plover received fresh crews from the reserve force, and again took their share in the fight.

There was now no false impression upon the mind of any one, as to the work they had in hand, or the novel amount of resistance they had to overcome. Retreat was disgrace, and in all probability total destruction; for the bar would be impassable long be

fore the vessels could reach it-and who was going to think of retreat thus early? who wanted to be hooted at by all the world as men who fled before a Chinaman? No, strip and fight it out, was the general feeling from Captain to boy, and in a frenzy of delight with their chief, they went into their work like men, who, if they could not command success, would at any rate show that they deserved it. A pall of smoke hung over the British flotilla and the forts of Taku; under it flashed sharp and vividly the red fire of the combatants; the roar of great guns, the shriek of rockets, and rattle of rifles, was constant. No missile could fail to reach its mark; the dull thung of the enemy's shot as it passed through a gunboat's side, the crash of wood-work, the whistle of heavy splinters of wood or iron, the screams of the wounded, and the moans of the dying, mingled with the shouts of the combatants and the sharp decisive orders of the officers-all were "fighting their best!" And it was a close hug indeed, for the advanced vessels were firing at 150 yards' range, and the maximum distance was only 800 yards. Every officer and man rejoiced in this fact; for, forgetful of the enormous thickness of the parapets opposed to them, our gallant sailors fancied that all was in favour of a race who had never been excelled in a stanch fight at close quarters. The Lee and Hanghty were now suffering much; the fire of the forts had been most deadly, and was in every respect as accurate as ours. The Admiral in his barge, although fainting from loss of blood, pulled to these vessels, to show the crews how cheerfully he shared the full dangers of their position; and they who advocate a British commander-in-chief being in the rear, instead of, as Nelson and Collingwood ever placed themselves, in the van of battle, ought to have witnessed the effect of Hope's heroic example upon the men under him that day; even the wounded were more patient and enduring owing to such an example.

By four o'clock the Lee had a hole knocked into her side below the bowgun, out of which a man could have crawled: both she and the Haughty had all their boats and topworks knocked to pieces, and many shot

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had passed through below the waterline, owing to the plunging fire of the forts; their crews were going down fast; and the space between the first and second barriers was little better than a slaughter-house from the storm of the enemy's missiles, which in front and on both flanks swept over it. The Admiral had fainted, and was being taken to the rear for medical aid by his gallant secretary, Mr. Ashby, when he recovered sufficiently to order the barge to conduct him to the most advanced vessel in the line. That post was now held by the Cormorant, Commander Wodehouse; for the Lee and Haughty had been obliged to retire for reinforcement and support. On board the Cormorant the flag of the Commander-in-Chief was hoisted; and he, though constantly fainting from loss of blood, was laid in his cot upon the deck to witness the battle, which still raged with unremitting ardour upon both sides, fresh guns' crews being brought up from the rear to replace the killed and wounded on board the vessels. First excitement had been succeeded by cool determination, and the men fought deliberately, with set teeth and compressed lips: there was no flinching the fight, there were no skulkers; and had there been any, there was no safety anywhere inside the bar of the Peiho: blood was up, and all fought to win or fall: even the poor little powder-boys did not drop their powder-boxes and try to seek shelter, but wept as they thought of their mothers, or of their playmates Dick or Bob who had just been killed beside them, and, with tears pouring down their powder-begrimed countenances, rushed to and from the magazines with nervous energy. "You never see'd any fighting like this at Greenwich School, eh, Bobby?" remarked a kind-hearted marine to a boy who was crying, and still exert ing himself to the utmost. "No! Bombardier," said the lad, "but don't let them Chinamen thrash us!" Schoolboy pluck shone through the novel horrors of a sea-fight.

The enemy, whoever they were,

Manchous or Mongols, men from the Amour, or, what is far more likely, renegades, deserters, and convicts, swept up from the frontier of Russian Siberia, fought admirably, and most cleverly. We have every goodwill towards the Mongolian Prince Sungolosin: we are quite ready to allow that, though at the head of the ultra-conservatism of China, and representative of that formidable section who prefer fighting England to submitting to her demands, he yet may be a progressionist in the art of attack and defence. Nevertheless, it does startle us to find that, between July 1858 and June 1859, Prince Sungolosin should have learnt to construct forts and block up a river upon the most approved principles of European art; that, for the first time, the embrasures were so arranged as to concentrate a fire of guns upon particular points; that mantlets, hereafter to be described, improvements upon those used at the great siege of Sebastopol, were fitted to every casemated gun; that guns in the bastions swept the face of the curtains; that the "cheeks" and "soles" of the embrasures were most scientifically constructed with a view to direction of fire; that reserve supplies of guns and carriages had been, provided to replace those dismounted or disabled by our fire; and lastly, that the reinforcements were so cleverly masked, that our gunboats could only see that, as fast as they swept away a gun and crew in the fort with a well-directed shell, a fresh gun and fresh men were soon found to have replaced them; and we must distinctly express our firm belief, that upon all these points the Chinese received counsel and instruction, subsequent to the signing of the Treaty of Tientsin, from Russians, whether priests or officers matters little; and that, during that fight of the 25th June, it was evident to all who had ever fought Asiatics, that no ordinary tactician was behind those earthworks.

As the tide fell, so the fire of the forts became more plunging and de