Bowline.-I have already denied that it can be called an invention. It is merely an imitation of the bulbous rotundity which renders a Dutchman so impervious to a kick, that no attack on the rear was ever known to disturb the pipe in his mouth.

Gasket." Nil sub sole novum." It matters little what circular sterns are like, since it is proved that they afford so much additional strength. Bowline. That I deny. At least it seems to me that much good timber is wasted where it is not wanted. The transoms and their triangularly-placed fashion pieces, securely bolted to the dead wood, was a more ingenious construction, and the timbers agreed with the keelson and floors. In the curvilinear frame, the timbering seems only a continuation of the futtocks, and being butted together exactly as the bows are, require internal security to connect the two sides of the ship. You do away with transom timbers, but compensate the loss with expensive and heavy hooks, or crutches and bolting. Thus, what you gain on one tack, you lose on t'other; and by adding so much above the transom wing, you increase the weight where the heaviest duty that ships can undergo has proved it was not required.

Gasket. You don't consider the material defect of the old sterns, which indeed have nothing but age to recommend them. We all know the difficulty there was of procuring compass-timber for the former transoms, and that the whole stern-frame used only to be stepped on them, so that when the counter took the water, they were often shaken to pieces; and if pooped, the flimsy dead-lights were always stove in.

Bowline. Then why not put more fastenings to the stern if required, and make the dead-lights as strong as the side-ports? Large vessels may be annoyed at pooping, but who ever heard of its being fatal to them? And as to the counter taking the water, it is a beautiful property intended to counteract the descending motion of the after-pitch, and moderate the strain upon the stays, which are then the only support of the spars, as well as to check the stern-way when taken a-back.

Gasket. You will allow that in case of a sea pooping the new stern the effect will at least be less disagreeable?

Bowline. So it ought to be, since the increased weight above the plane of floatation, without increased displacement of water by the immersed part of the hull, will invite the accident.

Gasket. But you say nothing as to the saving to the public, by using straight instead of valuable compass timber, in the new sterns.

Bowline.-Because I don't believe the statement. If the circular stern is to be built like the bows, crooked timber must still be consumed. Could Jack have made his waistcoat stem and stern alike but from one piece of silk?

Gasket.-D-n Jack! Speak to the point.

Bowline.-Well, I will. It is hardly half a century ago that most of the merchantmen of the Baltic, and many of large burthen, belonging to Hamburgh, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam, were built with round sterns. Latterly few of these vessels have been constructed of more than 150 tons. Now, I contend, this circumstance demonstrates that square sterns must have proved more convenient, as well as less expensive, or Mynheer would never have abandoned his full, plump, round stern.

Gasket.-Why, that is a bit of a pauler; but is not altogether an answer to the economy of using straight timber as an abstract question.

Bowline.-Because our present business is with sterns; yet I foresee a great saving in the dock-yards, if our mateys can put the small and the straight timber into frame with efficiency.

Gasket.-Seppings has taught 'em how to fasten a ship together; instead of beams representing arcs of a very large radius, incessantly striving to thrust out the sides of a ship, didn't he show 'em how to brace diagonally?

Bowline. But yet there is no improvement in the knee fastenings, which are still the most bungling contrivance imaginable for their purpose.

Gasket. It is better than Sir Robert found it; and he has proved himself a public benefactor by his suggestions.

Bowline.-Then why did they dismiss such a man?

Gasket. Why, indeed! Why have the same party undermined the best institutions of the country? Why have they allowed their beggarman colleague to spread his filth about the country, and call even Wellington "a stunted corporal?"

Bowline.-Bad luck to those mischievous fellows! They now talk of "doing" for another dock-yard, though our coasts are as scantily provided as need be, for such fleets. Poor Deptford, once the nursery of the British fleet, is already burked. When I fitted out there, all was noise and bustle and business; the busy hum of men,-ay, and of women also, struck upon the ear, in harmony with the adze and the caulking mallet. But the other day, when I went thither, it had the silence and solitude of the tomb. My heart was smote with the difference.

Gasket. I don't think so much of that. Indolence or ignorance had allowed the mud of the river to accumulate to such a degree, that the yard had become nearly useless for naval purposes. Besides, there's Woolwich just below; and there can be no great reason for having two arsenals close together.

Bowline. Why not? Would you give up Chatham because Sheerness is also on the Medway?

Gasket. Decidedly; Chatham will soon be just as useless for a fitting port as Deptford, for it has now barely 17 feet water on low springs. Could Sheerness-which has been built on a quicksand and lee shore, by the force of millions of money-and Chatham both be destroyed, and a dock-yard established at Blackstakes on the opposite shore, the nation would be a gainer indeed.

Bowline.-Well, I have nothing to say in favour of dirty Sheerness, or Sheernasty, and its swampy vicinity.

Gasket. But to return to the circular sterns, which you seem to undervalue, though Seppings has given unanswerable reports of their excellence

Bowline. I rather wish to have their value proved, and the principle tried in times and under circumstances on which its confutation or confirmation must eventually depend. Suspicion, though the bane of general society, is a virtue in matters of public import. As to Sir Robert's favourable notions, it is the fault of many a man, as well as a spur to his talent, to see nothing but swans in his duck-yard. All you have advanced has not proved to me that any beneficial strength to the ship, as a machine, has been as yet conferred.

Gasket. You will admit that curvilinear sterns add to the means of defence?

Bowline.-Indeed, I'll not. No action has yet been fought to prove

the fact.

Gasket. But both experiment and abstract reasoning unite in concluding on this property.

Bowline. A fig for mere hypothetic opinions; where are the results of your experiments?

Gasket.-Every comparison that has been made in our ports proves the old stern to be capable of a very feeble resistance as compared with

the new.

Bowline. The rounder may be a protection against musketry, and present a smaller surface to be struck in being raked; but every shot that does strike will be more destructive than to an open stern, on account of splinters. In cases of necessity, old ships could bring guns enough to bear, and train them to a sharper angle before they wooded. In the action between the Victorious and Rivoli, Talbot brought eight guns upon the enemy directly under his stern. Could your rounders do more than this?

Gasket. But firing stern-guns with their muzzles inboard, as must be the case in the squarers, hazards setting the ship on fire.

Bowline. And if you clap gingerbread-work upon the rounders, as they have been doing lately, there will be nothing to crow about in that respect. Let them, if they must study the "shove-off" system so much, let them cast the stern guns as long as the bow-chasers, so as to carry the muzzles well out.

Gasket. But the common guns will do for the curvilinears, which are therefore better qualified for retreating.

Bowline.-Deuce take that word! How familiar has round-sternificating made it! It is not a little singular that after a series of arduous wars, in which we have driven all the enemies of Britain from the face of the ocean, we should now all at once, in peace, be studying more how to retreat than to advance. Why must we contemplate what may excite ideas injurious to the spirit of the seamen? Far better teach them that their best defence is the power of offence.

Gasket. The duty of the naval architect is to provide against all contingencies. As to depressing the men's spirit-it is to be hoped British sailors will ever consider the interests of their country above the form of their ships, and, like the yarns of a patent cable, every one do his duty.

Bowline. The run-away system may again bring a foreign fleet with a broom at their mast-heads into the Channel.

Gasket. Then it will be our duty to force them to make a brush of it. Would you leave the stern undefended?

Bowline.-Have I not said that the square stern may be as well animated as the round one? And if alteration were at all necessary, we need only pinch in the quarters, after the Danish fashion, to give the guns in that part more range, as in the Christian VII. The old construction was founded upon the principle of having as large a platform for the battery as the proportion of keel would allow, to execute the evolutions with the greatest celerity. A ship has to be considered both above and below the water-line.

Gasket. Do you suppose all that has not been taken into account?

Bowline. Not always, or how would it happen that, with a full knowledge that all bodies immersed in water meet with resistance in proportion to the quantity of water which is displaced; how happens it, I ask, that, in the face of this simple truth, we have had so many ships with narrow upper works and deep holds ?

Gasket. Sacrifice has been made of the main-deck by tumble-home sides, to give additional force to the lower-deck. If accurate knowledge had not been employed, is it likely that such fine round-sterners would have been produced?

Bowline.-Fine ships! Do you mean handsome ones? Just look what a pretty figure they cut,—a sort of cross atwixt a Dutch beggalug and a Norway cat!

Gasket. Why, to be sure they boast no great beauty abaft, but that signifies nothing, for the eye soon gets reconciled to what it becomes accustomed to. However, they have been fitting false counters, and double or external sterns, so as to approximate them to the old ones, which moderates the harshness of their former appearance, and in some degree protects the rudder.

Bowline.-Yes; but what a pretty expense will all that lumber be! And then again the trouble of taking it off and replacing it when the ship is docked! Gasket. Not half so expensive as the heavy and barbarous carved work used to be.

Bowline. But that, as well as several other things you grumble about, has long since been abolished. Not only carved sterns and quarters have disappeared, but the grinning faces from the catheads and bumkins have gone; and you have not seen the pretty group called a family-head on any of our men-of-war during the last thirty years. Even the figure-head has given way to busts and billets.

Gasket.-Do you I find fault with that?

Bowline.-Oh, no! Only the figure-head pleased Jack's fancy, and he ought to be made content where a little will do it. Ulysses, as Lucian tells us, painted his ships for the sake of appearance, and it was wise in him to do so. I had a coxswain who married a wench because she resembled the head of the Niobe.

Gasket. He would have been cured without matrimony had he seen that of the Termagant, with her uplifted patten and her monstrous black eye. I am glad that they've given us the light and elegant busts instead. But you growl at every alteration.

Bowline. Mind you, I make no objection to improvement: I only wish every encroachment upon a system of acknowledged excellence to be subjected to a rigid examination.

Gasket. But all the new introductions are highly spoken of.

Bowline.-Not nem. con. In my humble opinion the recent innovations are over-praised, which in itself is always a suspicious circumstance, as it smacks a little of the leaven of quackery. And as to the apologetic anxiety to meet remark-" Qui s'excuse, s'accuse."

Gasket-But puffing often proceeds from over-zealous friends. Bowline.-Zeal without discretion resembles controversy without inquiry. However, few of our builders have been remarked as "moderate to excess" in lauding their own works.

Gasket. It is material that they should explain their object in new constructions.

Bowline. But not brand all as dolts and asses who differ in opinion from them. Now, I assert, that whether round or square sterns ultimately prevail, there was no ground whatever for the profligate waste of treasure incurred in altering a set of old ships, which were evidently doomed never to face an enemy again.

Gasket. It was the duty of the Administration to be prepared for war; and every improvement should be made as universal as it is useful. Bowline.-That is true; but were naval tactics so altered on a sudden that they were blindly to precipitate themselves upon round sterns, and study nothing but the theory of running away?

Gasket. There is, as Cervantes remarked, a wide distinction to be made between retiring and flying before an enemy.

Bowline.-In some instances it may amount to the difference between being tossed in a blanket or a rug. The system will teach many a waverer to look over the taffrail, till, like Falstaff's soldiers, he will be afraid of nothing but danger. When, some half-century hence, a minister might wish the Nelson of that day to chase a fleet over the Atlantic, he may reply, with Sganarelle-" Nous avons changé tout cela, my ships are all fitted for being chased."

Gasket.-You seem never to tire of harping on that string.

Bowline. Why was the string given me to harp upon? It is injurious to the service and to the country, that questions of moment respecting the rounders were not considered till many fine old liners were cut up at an enormous expense; and we have to learn whether, in extremity, any of the imputed properties are really improvements.

Gasket. Why, M. Dupin, who knows something, cries up the circular sterns as the best addition to our naval architectural knowledge!

Bowline.-Let him think so; and let the roundabouts boast his authority, if French gammon is necessary for their support. A pretty pass it has come to! The other day a fool in the House of Commons wished us to copy legislature from the French!-from people who have been fifty years trying to frame a constitution, and who hunt shadowy theories like cats chasing their own tails. And now, if we are to take seamanship from them also, the whole question reduces itself to this-▬▬▬▬▬ Gasket. Not quite so fast. In mentioning Dupin's opinion, it was rather as that of a man of science.

Bowline.-Well, I had rather that such a business had commenced among his own countrymen, the stern being the part of their ships most frequently presented to us. I'm for Blake of Portsmouth, who studies to depend upon the bow for victory; and as Dupin will no doubt teach Crapaud to fortify his afterparts, we must increase the effect of our foremost guns, and things will be as they were before.

Gasket. Where would your Blanche have been when she fought the Pique, if she hadn't blown out her stern-frame ?

Bowline. And what would she have done had she not a stern-frame that could be blown out, and lads that knew how to do it without setting the ship on fire? But how kindly you forget to recollect how long since frigates have been fitted with stern-ports. Your instance only shows that with judicious alteration the square stern can be made to answer every purpose for which the curvilinear one is intended, and without its disadvantages.

Gasket.-Creda chi vuol. To such an opinion I will oppose a fact: I well remember, in 1795, when Cornwallis retreated from the French,