inoffensive pedestrians to pieces. All these inventions left the timid
instruments of European artillery far behind them. This may be estimated
by the following figures:--

Formerly, "in the good old times," a thirty-six pounder, at a distance
of three hundred feet, would cut up thirty-six horses, attacked in
flank, and sixty-eight men. The art was then in its infancy.
Projectiles have since made their way. The Rodman gun that sent a
projectile weighing half a ton a distance of seven miles could easily
have cut up a hundred and fifty horses and three hundred men. There was
some talk at the Gun Club of making a solemn experiment with it. But if
the horses consented to play their part, the men unfortunately were
wanting.

However that may be, the effect of these cannon was very deadly, and at
each discharge the combatants fell like ears before a scythe. After such
projectiles what signified the famous ball which, at Coutras, in 1587,
disabled twenty-five men; and the one which, at Zorndorff, in 1758,
killed forty fantassins; and in 1742, Kesseldorf's Austrian cannon, of
which every shot levelled seventy enemies with the ground? What was the
astonishing firing at Jena or Austerlitz, which decided the fate of the
battle? During the Federal war much more wonderful things had been seen.
At the battle of Gettysburg, a conical projectile thrown by a
rifle-barrel cut up a hundred and seventy-three Confederates, and at the
passage of the Potomac a Rodman ball sent two hundred and fifteen
Southerners into an evidently better world. A formidable mortar must
also be mentioned, invented by J.T. Maston, a distinguished member and
perpetual secretary of the Gun Club, the result of which was far more
deadly, seeing that, at its trial shot, it killed three hundred and
thirty-seven persons--by bursting, it is true.