Rifles, intended solely for defence against invaders. Who the invader is to be we do not know; haply and happily we may never know; but a thought on the subject now and then is reasonable enough. Our coast-line is very extensive, and needs watching at a considerable number of unprotected spots. Besides regular troops, Volunteer infantry, and cruising war-ships, it has long been felt that a naval artillery corps would be a useful addition for serving in gunboats and mortar rafts, and operating in the new art of torpedo-defensive warfare. A small Marine Volunteer Corps was raised at Hastings about 1863; others were afterwards raised in London, Liverpool, and Bristol; and at length, in 1873, parliament passed an Act sanctioning the formation of a body to be known as the Royal Naval Artillery Volunteers. So far from being men who are paid for their services, these Volunteers have to provide their own uniform and to pay a small subscription to a corps fund; they really enter into the matter con amore, giving time, exertion, and some money for a purpose which may eventually be valuable to our common country. The government provide ships, great guns, rifles, pistols, cutlasses, and other gear for practice. Whether artisans, yachtsmen, or rowing-men would join the corps in any considerable number, could only be known by awaiting the result; but it turns out that clerks—mostly in commercial firms—come forward more readily than any other class. They like the bodily exercise and the open air after many hours of desk-plodding.

The idea is to render these Volunteers handy in the defence of rivers and estuaries, by the management of floating-batteries, armed rafts, and torpedoes. In practising with big guns at such places as London, Liverpool, and Bristol, there are of course neither real shot nor blank cartridges actually propelled from the weapon; a flash and a slight report are all; to run out, point, fire, and re-adjust are the exercises practised; and this is no small work with a sixty-pounder gun. After this big-gun drill, the Volunteers go through their rifle, cutlass, and pistol drill; and the young men are all the better for two or three hours of muscular exercise and ocular training. They wear a useful blue-and-white uniform while thus engaged. The Rainbow gunboat in the Thames off Somerset House, the President in the West India Docks, and two similar vessels at Liverpool and Bristol, are set apart by the Admiralty as drill-ships for the purpose. The total strength is somewhat under seven hundred men, with a naval instructor, petty-officer instructors, lieutenants, sub-lieutenants, shipkeepers, armourers, &c.

Even if never really wanted for river and estuary defence, these energetic young men will have no reason, bodily or mental, to regret the step they have taken—the devotion of a couple of hours occasionally after office or warehouse time to a right good exercise of muscle, nerve, brain, eyesight, attention, and intelligence. It is a national comfort to know that rifle and artillery volunteering are alike free from many of the evils of young men's recreations; they do not tempt to drinking, to betting, nor to dissolute companionship. All honour to those who promoted, and to those who carry out the movement.