and thoroughness. Originally, the wash-sult of repeated experiments and careful ing to which it is necessary to subject the inquiry has been the formal adoption of gun-cotton to remove all trace of the gun-cotton for military mining and defree acids occupied about three weeks. structive purposes, and for submarine deIt is now done in two days; and done far fensive and offensive operations. A commore effectively than under the old system, mittee of engineer officers, of which because the cotton, being broken up by Colonel Gallwey is president, has prothe pulping engine into impalpable parti- nounced decisively in favour of Abel's cles, becomes washed in the process of compressed gun-cotton for the demolition pulping through and through. Again, in of stockades, buildings, and obstacles of place of having to employ long-fibred and all sorts, for the general purposes of milicostly cotton yarn the gun-cotton may be tary mining in peace and war, for the made from cotton waste, by which means formation of breaches, and for the removal a great economy is effected. Compressed of wrecks, rocks, &c. Gun-cotton is equal gun-cotton is far safer than plaited gun- to about five or six times its weight of cotton, because although it can be burned gunpowder for most of these purposes; as tinder or any other inflammable mate- and it has the advantage of being absorial will burn, it cannot, unless strongly lutely inexplosive, except when confined confined, be exploded-except by means in a stout case, or when purposely exof detonation. The bulk of a given ploded by detonation; while it can be weight is, of course, immensely reduced, stored wet if desired, so much being dried and, weight for weight, compressed gun- from time to time as may be required for cotton occupies about the same space as use. It is also considerably cheaper to gunpowder. use than gunpowder, and lighter to trans

But perhaps the most important advan-port in the proportion of its superior tage of the pulping system is that it ad-power. Gun-cotton is not considered mits of the application of detonation to suitable for the attack and defence of the explosion of gun-cotton; and by countermined works, because the gases means of detonation not merely is the ex- which are generated are likely to be injuplosive violence of gun-cotton largely in- rious to the men working under-ground, creased, but the force can be developed and because the craters produced by gunwithout the confinement of the substance cotton in earth are inferior to those prowhich was before necessary. This discov-duced by powder. ery that compressed gun-cotton could be For torpedo purposes the value of comadvantageously exploded in the open air pressed gun-cotton has been for some by means of a detonating fuze constitutes years recognized. The torpedo committee another and a very important step in the decidedly recommended its use for all torprogress of gun-cotton. It was made a pedo operations. A committee, of which few years ago by Mr. Brown, a gentleman Colonel Nugent, R.E., is president, is now, attached to the Royal Chemical Establish- we understand, engaged in settling details ment at Woolwich. This discovery and of all questions relative to torpedoes, and Mr. Abel's system of pulping and com- in practically applying the recommendation pressing gun-cotton go hand-in-hand. The of the late torpedo committee. The reone discovery has supplemented the other. cent visits of the Secretary of State for Uncompressed gun-cotton cannot, when War to Chatham to witness torpedo and unconfined, be exploded by detonation. mining operations, and the remarkable But compressed gun-cotton, if laid upon a success which attended those experiments, block of granite or against a palisade, may gave an impetus to the whole subject; and be made by means of detonation to yield we understand that the manufacture of an explosive force sufficient to shiver the compressed gun-cotton on a very large granite into atoms or to cut the palisade scale is at once to commence at the Govin two. The same charge of gun-cotton ernment works at Waltham Abbey. It is ignited in the usual manner burns inno- with great satisfaction that we at last recently away. This is the substance cord the introduction of this valuable compressed gun-cotton pulp fired by means agent and the successful issue of the unof a detonating fuze-which for the past wearied exertions of the distinguished few years has occupied the attention of English chemist to whom we may say we the engineers at Chatham and the naval are indebted for the very existence of experimentalists at Portsmouth. The re-gun-cotton in this country.

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From The Edinburgh Review. BARON HUBNER'S SIXTUS FIFTH.*

life he undertook to write, and whose fame he claims for the honour of his community, was founded on the honest study of original diplomatic and state documents, which he has incorporated into his text. The history is a painstaking and solid performance in two quarto volumes; but the style of the narrative was not sufficiently attractive to attain popularity. It supplies, however, the chief substance of the work of M. Dumesnil, published last year, who has fused together the work of Tempesti and materials from other printed sources into a very readable volume.

Of all the Popes who have worn the tiara few merit more attention than the remarkable figure of Sixtus V., the fiery and imperious friar-pope, best known to Englishmen from his connexion with the Spanish Armada. The story of his brief pontificate is crowded with incident and is most instructive, both when regarded as characteristic of the nature of the papal power, and as suggestive of what would have been the effect upon humanity of that spiritual empire of the world which it has failed to establish. It comprises within Ranke, in his "History of the Popes in the brief compass of four years and four the Sixteenth Century," was the first to months the greatest crisis in the conflict seize in a broad and masterly way the charof the Catholic and Reformed religions acteristic lineaments of Sixtus V.; and as which then divided Europe-a period he enjoyed the opportunity of studying during which the papacy was still regarded as supreme arbitress among the Catholic powers of Europe, and when not only the spiritual but the temporal interests of nations were the matter of fierce and incessant conflict in the chambers of

romance.

On the other hand, the work published in Rome in 1754 by Tempesti, a friar of the Franciscan order, like the Pope whose

1. Sixte Quint. Par M. le BARON DE HUBNER, Ancien ambassadeur d'Autriche a Paris et a Rome, d'après des correspondances diplomatiques tirees des Archives d'etat du Vatican, de Simancas, Venise, Paris, Vienne et Florence. 3 vols. 8vo. Paris: 1870.

2. Histoire de Sexte Quint, sa Vie et son Pontificat. Par M. A. J. DUMESNIL, officier de la Légion

d'honneur, membre du Conseil géneral du Loire.

Paris: 1869.

original documents not to be found in Tempesti, his account of this pontificate was a new contribution to historic truth.

Baron de Hübner, the author of the first of the works with which we here deal, has, from his diplomatic position, had access to the archives of the chief capitals of Europe; he also obtained the assistance of the late Mr. Bergenroth in making copies of documents from the archives of Simancas, and has thus been enabled to give to the world a fresh mass of statepapers of the highest interest relating to Sixtus V., published as piéces justificatives in a supplement to his text, which is a narrative of this pontificate of extreme fairness, though from a Catholic point of view. The Baron filled the post of Austrian ambassador at the Court of France on the 1st January, 1859; and it was to him that the Emperor Napoleon III. addressed the memorable words, which announced that the Empire was about to break loose from its policy of peace, and to engage in the campaign which drove the Austrians beyond the Mincio.

Baron Hübner's narrative contains a re

view of the general condition of Italy and of Europe in a most troubled period, and of the difficult relations of the Papacy with the various European powers; it sets forth the consequent perplexities, variations, and inconsistencies of Papal policy, it depicts the hard-fought diplomatic conflicts which took place in the cabinet of the

Pope, and is diversified with antiquarian | tended his father's swine as a child; howand curious studies of the state of Roman ever, he had an uncle, Frà Salvadore, in society, and of the topography of Rome the convent of the order of Minorite Friars during the fifteenth century; all which at Montalto, beyond the reach of the resubjects are so judiciously and artistically verse of fortune which assailed the rest of handled and arranged, that the two vol- his family; this Frà Salvadore undertook umes of text form very various, instructive, the education of his nephew, and got him and agreeable reading, and are a valuable entered into his own convent at the age of addition to sound historical literature. nine. The industry, vivacity of spirit, and Far more accurate than Leti or Tempesti and less sententious than Ranke, Baron Hübner appears to us to have contributed to the literature of Europe one of the most valuable productions of an age rich in historical biography. His style is vigorous, graphic, and perspicuous; and the reader is seldom, if ever, reminded that the author is writing in a language not his own. We regret that we have not been able to avail ourselves, for the purposes of this article, of the English translation Apostoli. As his reputation had preceded of the work, from the pen of Mr. Hugh Jerningham; but our readers will shortly have an opportunity of becoming more fully acquainted with the results of Baron Hübner's labours in an English dress.

M. de Pisany, the ambassador of Henri III., who arrived in Rome while the conclave was still sitting which elected Sixtus V., announced to his master that "un cordelier nommé Montalto" was now Pope. Sixtus V. indeed began his ecclesiastical career as a friar. He was the son of poor parents. His father, Pier Gentile Peretti, was, when the future pope was born, on the 13th December, 1521, a gardener at a small village, Grottamare, near Montalto, about fifty miles south of Ancona, in a delightful neighbourhood with a fair prospect on the Adriatic. The family was of Sclavonic origin, and had escaped from Dalmatia and the terror of the Turkish invasion in the preceding century. The father of Felice Peretti, as the boy was called, had himself lost everything in the sack of Montalto in 1518, by the Duke of Urbino, after which he removed to Grottamare. Such was the straitened condition of the family, that the mother of the future Pope was obliged to enter domestic service; his aunt became a washerwoman; and it is said that his sister followed the same calling.

powers of acquirement of the boy-friar were soon remarkable. After going through courses of rhetoric, philosophy, and theology, in various convents and towns, he became already known as a preacher at nineteen, though he did not take the degree of doctor of theology till 1548. His fame as a preacher rapidly spread throughout Italy; but it was not till the year 1552 in Lent that he made his first essay in a pulpit in Rome at the church of the Santi

him, the audience was numerous and distinguished, and among them were to be seen Cardinal Carpi, his earliest benefactor, Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, and Filippo Neri, now a saint in the Roman calendar. It would appear, however, from a fragment of a sermon to be found in Baron Hübner's volumes, that his style of oratory was of the kind which the French call amplificative, and rather abundant and ornate than of real moral and religious strength; and that it was mainly his animated gestures and fiery earnest look which made his eloquence impressive with his auditory. That, indeed, is the characteristic of Italian pulpit oratory. He had, however, such success, that his ecclesiastical good fortune dates from his first appearance in Rome, when his talents and character acquired the esteem of the leading members of the Church of Rome.

A great movement of reform was then going on in the bosom of Catholicism itself. The profligate, the voluptuous, and the art-loving popes and cardinals - the Borgias and the Medicis - were disappearing before the earnest zeal of the stern race who awoke anew the sleeping genius of the Church, and evoked afresh the spirit of Hildebrand and Innocent III. The Inquisitor-Pope was in the ascendant, for Loyola and Philip II. had sworn to undo The little Felice Peretti is said to have the work of Luther and Calvin. It was