The “review” was, indeed, a spirit-stirring sight. The eyes of half London and the hearts of all England were there; and a wonderful thing it was to look upon a fleet such as England never had before, and the thick black cloud of coal-smoke resting upon the horizon, or ascending to the skies in volumes, shewed the result of the innumerable applications of the giant power of steam to the purposes of navigation. Here stood arrayed the mighty force of fourteen-thousand-four-hundred-and-twenty horse-power, concentrated in the holds of the royal ships, impelling these mountain masses with as much ease as some of my young readers would drag their little boat across a puny pond.
The most remarkable fact, bearing on this point, was the celerity and ease with which the Duke of Wellington, the greatest of all the ships, the Agamemnon, and the Impèrieuse—each of them steam impelled—performed their evolutions. The chase, when each ship put forth all her powers, was just continued long enough to establish the superiority of these ships. They are moved by screw-propellers, and all the steam machinery in such large ships is placed beneath the water-line, and below the reach of shot. The ships can steam at pleasure against wind and tide, and thus, really and not metaphorically “rule the waves,” and a steam fleet of eleven hundred guns, such as that we witnessed at Portsmouth, would go far to rule the world.
The Queen, the Prince, and the Royal Family arrived in the “Victoria and Albert” yacht, and a grand salute from all the ships was fired in succession, and so quickly was it given, that from the firing of the first gun to the booming of the last, not more than three minutes elapsed. As Her Majesty approached the fleet, the Queen and Prince Albert mounted the bridge of the yacht over the paddle-boxes, and with the Prince of Wales, and Prince Alfred—both attired as sailors, in white duck trowsers and jackets—surveyed the scene before them with much interest. Her Majesty then entered the royal barge, and with the Prince, and the Royal Children, all went on board the “Duke of Wellington,” as you see them represented in the engraving. The fleet now steamed out to sea in double column. They formed into single line. They then made a feigned attack upon the enemy. After firing a gun or two of defiance, the three foremost ships resolutely advanced, upon which the two divisions closed into one grand line, and upon the signal gun of the “Duke of Wellington,” followed by the tremendous roar of her whole broadside, rapidly discharged from stem to stern, the rattling thunder ran along the line, traversing it as it were in a minute, and again beginning at the other end; main and deck guns, eighteens, thirty-twos, and sixty-fours, banging and thundering for nearly a quarter of an hour without intermission. From the moment of the first discharge, the clouds of white, choking smoke hid everything. The mimic battle was kept up for some time, at last the enemy was supposed to have been repulsed, so the heads of the vessels were put round, and the whole squadron started off homewards at the best of each ship’s speed, and the same thundering followed.
A boat attack was next made, which was fully equal in interest to the “sham fight of the ships,” and the whole day’s proceedings exhibited “Old England” in her proudest glory; and thus terminated a spectacle, which no other country in the world could produce but England, and which well accords with English spirit and English sympathy.
Something about the Chinese.
The Chinese are, my young friends, a very wonderful people—quite unlike the people in any other part of the world. They are very different in their religion, laws, manners and customs; and were you to go and live in China, you would be puzzled to know what to do, and how to act. My friend, Mr. Welton, however, who has just sent over to his native place a beautiful collection of Chinese curiosities, seems to know how to get on very well; and from his letters, and the specimens of Chinese literature, art, and manufactures, it will not be a very difficult thing to obtain some slight knowledge of the Chinese.