were the first in the field with
the new style of war-ships. _La Gloire_ was built, and was quickly
followed by our own _Warrior_. The frame of _La Gloire_ was constructed
of wood, but covered with an iron plating four and a half inches in
thickness. The _Warrior_ was built on an iron frame, and her
armour-plating is of the same thickness as that of _La Gloire_; the
lining is of solid teak eighteen inches thick, which is again backed by
an inner coating of iron. The length of the _Warrior_ is three hundred
and eighty feet, but only about two-thirds of this is iron-plated.

At this time--the early days of ironclads--the heaviest shot that could
be thrown by any gun was a sixty-eight pounder. Guns of this calibre
the _Warrior_ and her class were proof against. But the guns increased
rapidly in size and power, and the thickness of the armour with which
the ships were protected had to be increased in proportion. The class
of war-vessels which succeeded the _Warrior_ were entirely cased with
iron plates, whose thickness has from time to time been increased.
Since the first ironclad was built, then, a contest--for only such it
can be called--has been going on between the cannon-maker and the
ship-builder, the one striving to construct a gun which shall pierce the
thickest armour which the ship can carry, the other adding inch upon
inch to his armour plates, to the end that they may be shot-proof; and
this contest may be said to be going on at this hour.

Will there ever be the same romance about the warships of the present
day,--what those of the future will be like we do not care to
speculate,--and the old "wooden walls" whose prowess on the high seas
founded England's maritime glory? Will a Dibdin ever arise to sing a
_Devastation_ or a _Glatton_? Can a _Devastation_ or a _Glatton_ ever
inspire poetic thoughts and images? One would say that the singer must
be endowed in no ordinary degree with the sacred fire whom such a theme
as a modern ironclad turret-ship should move to lyric utterance. It has
been said that all the romance of the road died out with the old
coaching days; and certainly a locomotive engine, with its long black
train of practical-looking cars, makes hardly so picturesque a feature
in the landscape as one of the old stage-coaches with its red-coated
driver, horn-blowing guard, and team of mettled greys; but a railway
train is an embodiment of poetry compared with a turret-ship. But if it
be t