sausage, potatoes and salad, with sweet in each hand, they cannot supply the eager things if you like, and good beer, at a very customers quickly enough, and you see a moderate cost. The counter from which crowd round the cask holding out their the chief delivers his supplies is so well ar- tankards to the tapster. In some rooms a ranged and fitted with pots and pans that fountain of iced-water is provided, in which the various dishes are kept hot and ready the tankards and glasses can be rinsed and for serving out at a moment's notice. And cooled. Pains are taken to keep the beer let it be remarked, a table-napkin is sup- cool in the cellars; hence, as will be underplied to each person who dines. This is a stood, the Bavarians are highly favoured in touch of consideration for third-class pas- their national beverage. They can drink it sengers which I can hardly hope to see in perfection. adopted in England, live as long as I may. At nearly all the stations the third-class waiting-room is also the restauration. To those who know what Bavarian beer is, this particular will be important, because even a good thing may be spoilt by bad serving. An Englishman who cannot drink beer at home without undergoing a severe bilious attack, finds that he can drink beer at Munich with impunity. He feels refreshed and comforted thereby, but not stupefied. But should he travel on to Vienna he will find that the Austrian capital has beaten the Bavarian in the article of beer. Munich has lost her supremacy, for the beer of the Dreher Brewery at Vienna is incontestably the best in Europe. And there "Will any of you dine at the table-d'-hôte at Linz?" asked the guard of the train, looking into our second-class carriage, as we were nearing that city. Whether he sent a message on by telegraph or otherwise I know not, but on our arrival at Linz, with twenty minutes to wait, we found forty plates of soup, smoking hot, all ready for us; these were followed by two courses of meat, and a Mehlspeise, which resembled a baked apple-pudding. No one complained of not having enough. The charge, includ-are many places in the Kaiserstadt on the ing beer, was equivalent to 28. Danube, as the natives delight to call it, where you may drink with ease, comfort and elegance. W. W. From Belgravia. THE JOHNSON CLUB. Draught beer can be had on board the Danube steamers, at ten or twelve kreutzers the tankard. How the steward of a Thames steamer would stare if you asked for a pint of draught ale while on a trip to Gravesend or the Nore! when all the while the majority of passengers prefer draught beer to the frothy, bottled stuff which is supposed to OUR critics have been seriously complainbe good because it contains fixed air. Eng-ing that we had nothing new to tell them land is commonly spoken of as a beer-about Selwyn; what will they say when we drinking country; but what are the facili-append this heading to the present article, ties afforded to drinkers? In London and and avow our purpose of repeating, as the large towns the bar where you stand at agreeably as we can, some of the good old the counter, or the bar-parlour, or the big stories about Dr. Johnson? room upstairs, where one long table nearly This venerable and highly-to-be-respectfills the space; and in any case you are ed club was founded in the February of served in pewter. In Germany, even at 1764 by Dr. Johnson, immediately after very modest houses, the drinking-cups and his visit to Bennet Langton, at the seat of tankards are of glass, or in some instances his family in Lincolnshire. That amiable stone with a pewter lid, and the room is man, Sir Joshua Reynolds, had the merit furnished with rows of small tables, which of first proposing the club, which for some facilitate companionship. At the Hof Brau-years met at the Turk's Head, Gerardhaus, in Munich, I have seen from four street, Soho, on Monday evenings at seven. hundred to five hundred persons taking their evening draught - brown beer on one side of the house, white beer, with a slice of lemon in each tankard, on the other. At the Ober-Pollinger, a twenty-gallon cask of beer stands on a pedestal in the middle of the room, and is emptied in about fifteen minutes. Down goes the pedestal, speedily to re-appear with another full cask which in turn is soon drawn off; and so it goes on all the evening. So rapid is the demand, that although the waiters carry five tankards It was founded on the plan of Johnson's old club in Ivy-lane, and the members were at first limited to nine. The Doctor and Reynolds headed the list, with Topham Beauclerk and Bennet Langton. Then Burke was warmly welcomed, and he begged admission for his father-in-law, Dr. Nugent, an accomplished Roman Catholic physician who lived with him. Beauclerk suggested his friend Chamier, then Under-Secretary of War; and Oliver Goldsmith, who "wrote like an angel and talked like poor Poll," completed the first batch. Samuel Dyer, | Goldsmith, whom he considered a mere another member of the original Ivy-lane Grub-street drudge, capable of compiling club, was the next year finally admitted by and translating, but unqualified for origiacclamation. nal, and especially poetical, composition. He also refused to pay his share of the club-supper, as he never took supper at home. In 1785, the Turk's Head closing soon after the landlord's death, the club removed to Prince's, in Sackville-street, and from thence to Baxter's, afterwards Thomas's, in Dover-street. In 1792 the members removed to Parsloe's, in St. James'sstreet, and in 1799 to the Thatched-House Tavern. The club is, we believe, now located at the Clarendon Hotel, in Bondstreet. "Was the man excused?" inquired Dr. Burney of Johnson. "Why yes, sir," said the doctor, “for no man is angry at another for being inferior to himself. We all scorned him, but admitted his plea. Yet I really believe him to be an honest man at bottom, though to be sure he is penurious, and he is mean; and it must be owned that he has a tendency to savageness." Between 1764 and 1792, Bishop Percy, Mr. Sheridan, Sir William Jones, Malone, Gibbon, Colman, Dr. Joseph Warton, Dr. Burney, and Lord Spencer, among other Hawkins ended by treating Burke with celebrities, were members of this great extreme rudeness, and was, on his next conversational club. It was a long time visit to the club, so coldly received, that before poor Garrick, to whom Johnson was he never returned; and no one much realways cruelly intolerant, was admitted. gretted it. The doctor said of the great player, "He will disturb us with his buffoonery." To Mrs. Piozzi he remarked: “If Garrick does apply, I'll blackball him. Surely one ought to sit in a society like ours Unelbowed by a gamester, pimp, or player.' Garrick had originally provoked him by saying, in an off-hand way to Reynolds, of the new club, "I like it much, and I think I shall be of you." "He'll be of us, sir?" growled Johnson; "how does he know we will permit him? The first duke in England has no right to hold such language.' Yet, after all, the offence was not a great one; and Garrick would not have worded his sentence so patronisingly as he did had he thought his appearance at the club-door would have been unwelcome. Johnson, the son of a poor second-hand bookseller at Lichfield, always despised Garrick because he exhibited himself on a public stage. The contempt was not just; it certainly was unworthy of such a mind as Johnson's. This foolish contempt for one of the forms which genius selects for its development, however, kept Garrick out of the club till 1773. Burke was impetuous, vehement, and intolerant; but he delighted Johnson by never being unwilling to begin talking, and never being in haste to leave off. He was always ready to charge on an adversary; but he was not a good listener, and, as Johnson admitted, if anyone was talking well at one end of the table, Burke would begin at the other. Yet Burke often gave way when Johnson was inclined to act the Jove, and thunder. Burke said once to Langton on leaving the club, "O no, I wouldn't talk much tonight; it was enough for me to have rung the bell to Johnson." 66 One night some one wished Dr. Johnson to write to them for a man who had once sent the club a present of a hogshead of claret, which was just out. The letter was to be so carefully worded as to induce the benefactor to repeat his gift. "Dr. Johnson shall be our dictator," cried one of the company. Were I your dictator," said Johnson, "you should have no wine; it would be my business cavere ne quid detrimenti respublica carperet. Wine is dangerous: Rome was ruined by luxury." Burke replied: "If you allow no wine as dictator, you shall not have me for master of the horse." "In this club only," says Mr. Forster, "Burke could pour forth his stores of argument and eloquence, his exhaustless imagery, his overflowing illustration, and his overpowering copiousness of words." Mr. Hawkins (afterwards Sir John) was soon expelled from the new society, having disgusted everyone by his sour manners and bad temper. He revenged himself in those malicious insinuations scattered throughout his wandering life of Dr. Johnson. He was a pompous, parsimonious man, who took a dislike to Burke because he monopolised Goldsmith, though often cowed by Johnthe conversation, and tyrannised intellect- son, and made a butt of by his brother ually over the less-gifted members. Haw- members, was a great favourite at the club. kins had moreover a contempt for poor His vanity, his blunders, were laughed at Langton and Beauclerk, those young men whom the genius of Johnson had magnetized, were highly clubbable. Langton was a very tall thin man, like the stork on one leg in Raphael's cartoon, his friend Beauclerk used to say. He was a mild, contemplative, scholarly person, and an excellent listener. Miss Hawkins sketches him "with his mild countenance, elegant features, and sweet smile, sitting with one leg twisted round the other as if fearing to occupy more space than was equitable; his person inclining forward as if wanting strength to support his weight, and his arms crossed over his bosom, or his hands locked together on his knee." Fascinated by the Rambler, Langton had come to town when a mere stripling and obtained an introduction to the great writer. He afterwards had been very attentive to Johnson when the great man visited Oxford, and so an affectionate friendship had sprung up. Langton was, moreover, a descendant of Cardinal Langton, the King John's Cardinal, — and that was a great title and respect with a superstitiously-high Tory like Johnson, who hardly knew the name of his own grand father. Beauclerk, the careless, well-bred, rakish man of fashion, was the only son of Lord Sidney Beauclerk, grandson of the Duke of St. Albans; and a descendant of Charles II. soon won Johnson by his graceful manners and well-bred wit. He at last ceased to attend the club, went more into the fashionable world, and lost his right of membership. On his marriage, however, with Lady Di Spencer, daughter of the Duke of Marlborough, Beauclerk claimed his seat at the club again, and once more attended the meetings. Garrick came in when the club augmented its numbers. Goldsmith had proposed the augmentation. "It will give," he said, "an agreeable variety to our meetings, for there can be nothing new amongst us; we have travelled over each other's minds." Johnson was violent at this. 66 No, sir," said he; "you have never travelled over my mind, I promise you." Among these new members was Hogarth's friend, that amiable Irish nobleman, Lord Charlemont, the accomplished Mr. (afterwards Sir William) Jones the linguist, and George Colman the dramatist. One evening, Boswell, sometimes tedious with his incessant worship of Dr. Johnson, was telling Colman of their journey to the Western Islands, and of the Doctor's willingness to 66 believe in second sight. Colman smiled dissent. Boswell's enthusiasm was ludicrous and frothy as usual. "Dr. Johnson," he said earnestly, "is only willing to believe, but I do believe; the evidence is enough for me, though it may not be for his great mind. What would not fill a quart bottle will fill a pint bottle. Sir, I am filled with belief." Are you?" said Colman quietly; "then cork it up.' The club became now very powerful; it was a conversational centre, and the headquarters of the leading men of letters. When the society was only fifteen years old, the Bishop of St. Asaph, then newlyelected, said to Fox: "I believe Mr. Fox will allow me to say that the honour of being elected into the Turk's Head Club is not inferior to that of being the representative of Westminster or Surrey." The Bishop might well chuckle, for the night he was elected, Lord Camden and the Bishop of Ulster had both been blackballed. Five years after the death of Garrick, Dr. Johnson dined at the club where he had spent a third of his intellectual life for the last time. It was Tuesday, June 22, 1784. Boswell was there, and the Bishop of St. Asaph, Lord Eliot, Lord Palmerston (father of the Premier), Dr. Fordyce, and Mr. Malone. The Doctor looked ill; but he showed a manly fortitude, and did not trouble the company with melancholy complaints. Boswell says: "They all showed evident marks of kind concern about him, with which he was much pleased; and he exerted himself to be as entertaining as his indisposition allowed him." Macaulay has sketched Johnson as he alone could sketch a great man. "The gigantic body, the huge massy face seamed with the scars of disease, the brown coat, the black-worsted stockings, the gray wig with the scorched fore-top, the dirty hands, the nails bitten and pared to the quick, are familiar to us as the features of Wellington or Napoleon." We learn still more minutely from his incessant observer, Boswell, all the Doctor's strange habits at the club; how he shook his head, rocked his body, and rubbed his left knee; how he whistled, how he chuckled, and how, at last, when exhausted by violence and vociferation, he used to blow out his breath contemptuously like a whale. It was thus he sat and rocked and puffed, while Langton bent his long body approvingly and blandly towards him, and Reynolds eagerly turned to him the aperture of his ear-trumpet, and globular Gibbon tapped his snuff-box approvingly, and Beauclerk sneered with a cynical care lessness, and Garrick's face gleamed with | Dean of St. Paul's, was in the chair. There intellect, and bland Dr. Percy smiled, and were present M. van de Weyer, Earls ClarBurke waited keenly for an opening, and endon and Stanhope, Bishops of London Goldsmith looked at himself in a wine-glass, and Dr. Burney beat time on the table. After Garrick's lamented death the club was known as the Literary Club. It now confined its honours chiefly to titled authors and dilettanti of rank; yet still it has brave names on its records, and the real working authors were only swamped from the popularity and fashion which naturally attracted to the club men of high social and political position. In 1857 such men as the Marquis of Landsdowne, and Lords Brougham, Carlisle, Aberdeen, and Glenelg, could not be impugned. Hallam and Macaulay were constant attendants at the club dinner, which takes place twice a month during the parliamentary season. and Oxford, Lords Brougham, Stanley, From The Times, Oct. 13. CAPTAIN MONCRIEFF'S IMPORTANT ARTILLERY INVENTION. The muster-roll of the Johnson Club is emblazoned with the greatest names in every art and profession. Among statesmen we have Sheridan, Canning, Brougham, WE published yesterday the account of a Macaulay, Fox, Windham, Grenville, Lords second series of experiments on what, to all Liverpool, Landsdowne, Aberdeen, and appearance, is the most important artillery Clarendon. It is that accomplished writer invention of modern times. It may be Mr. Tom Taylor who has so ably epitomised briefly described as a device for rendering the glory of the venerable club. In natural the heaviest guns absolutely invisible and science they boast of Sir Joseph Banks unapproachable, except at the actual in(whom Peter Pindar ridiculed) and Pro- stant of firing; and even then nothing is to fessor Owen. In social science they have be seen but the gun itself, the men who Adam Smith, the great patriarch of politi- work it and the whole machinery remaining cal economy though poor Boswell did completely protected. Like all great inthink the club lost caste by electing that ventions, it is supremely simple in princigreat champion of common sense. In phi- ple, though the highest mechanical skill losophy they boast of Whewell, in art of must have been called into play in developReynolds, in medicine of Nugent, Blagden, ing it. To take a homely illustration, let Fordyce, Warren, Vaughan, and Halford. the reader imagine a child's rocking-horse Among scholarly soldiers, of Rennel, Leake, with a toy rifleman mounted on the tail; and Mure; among great church dignitaries, let him suppose that the rockers are of Shipley, Barnard, Marley, Hinchcliffe, weighted in front, so that the natural posiDouglas, Blomfield, Wilberforce, Vincent, tion of the horse is with its head down and Burney, and Hawtrey; in the law, of Lords its heels in the air. The rifleman on its tail Ashburton and Stowell, and Grant, Austin, will then be raised above the body of the and Pemberton Leigh. Sir George Corn-horse, and may be supposed to be peering wall Lewis, at once Chancellor of the Exchequer and an eminent scholar, was a very good example of the modern ideal of the Johnson Club. This august body, which began with nine members, soon widened to twenty. In 1777 it increased to twenty-six, in 1778 to thirty, in 1780 to thirty-five, and it was then resolved never to extend the privileged body to more than forty members. In 1810 Malone gave the number of members of the club since the foundation at seventy-six, of whom fifty-five have been authors. A centenary of the club was celebrated at the Clarendon Hotel in September, 1864. The secretary, Dr. Milman, the venerable above a parapet or hillock in order to fire his rifle. Let it be supposed that the force of the recoil is communicated to the horse; it rolls back on its rockers into a level position, the seat of the rifleman is lowered, and he again becomes concealed behind the ground in front of him. In this position he is fixed by a catch until his rifle is again loaded. The catch is then set free, and he rolls up again to fire another shot, and again to recoil into safety. The rifleman in this illustration corresponds to the 7-inch or 12-inch Woolwich gun; the rockers of the rocking-horse are the "elevators" mentioned in the descriptions we have published. In this simple conception lies the substance of the invention, and the reader, | fired from a mortar might be dropped verwe think, will have no difficulty in follow- tically into the pit, and of course would ining us in the deductions we proceed to draw. The first effect of this discovery is that any gun may be placed anywhere, so as to be absolutely impregnable to horizontal firing. Hitherto, if a gun was to be brought into action it has been necessary to provide for it a platform at least on a level with the surface of the ground. The gun and gunners must, therefore, either be wholly unprotected, in which case the gun is said to be mounted en barbette, or a wall of some sort must be built up in front to protect them, and a hole pierced in the wall for the gun to fire through. In practice it has been found excessively difficult to provide a wall of sufficient strength to afford complete protection. The hole in the wall, or the embrasure, is always a weak point. At the best, it affords a convenient mark for the enemy's aim, and being of necessity funnel-shaped, it not only admits his projectiles, but actually assists their entry. But by Captain Moncrieff's invention the gun and gunners are placed below ground. The gun rolls up above the mouth of a pit to deliver its charge, and then sinks again. One look-out man, whose head it would always be easy to conceal, is sufficient to give information to the men in the pit, and to direct the whole movement of the gun. There is, therefore, no need of a wall, for there remains nothing to protect, nothing for the enemy to fire at, nothing even for him to see. His projectiles will either fly safe over the head of the pit, or pitch harmlessly into the ground around it. The reader must next be reminded that we are at present spending incalculable sums in providing the protective walls to which we refer and in rendering our embrasures as safe as possible. The various iron shields which have been so ingeniously constructed and so successfully destroyed are simply devices for this purpose, and be it understood that the Millwall shield, which has beaten the Gibraltar, is offered by the contractor at the modest cost of a thousand pounds for every gun protected. Now, Captain Moncrieff has, in all probability, rendered us absolutely independent of these elaborate and costly constructions so far as regards land fortifications. There is, in fact, but one material defect alleged against Captain Moncrieff's system. It affords, it is said, no protection against "vertical firing." As the Moncrieff gunpits are at present constructed, the top, from which the gun rises, is wholly uncovered. A shell, therefore, accurately flict terrible destruction. Now, in the first place, even admitting this danger, Captain Moncrieff will still have effected an enormous advance on the present system. In order to guard against shells in our existing fortifications we not only build up a wall in front, but construct a strong roof overhead, and the gun-chamber thus protected becomes a casemate. We have, therefore, two weak points, the front and the roof; but of these two, even at the worst, Captain Moncrieff absolutely annihilates one. He removes all danger in front, and leaves us with only the roof to protect. Let us next glance at a few of the tactical results which may be expected from this invention. It will be obvious how momentous must be the effect on the movements of an army of the circumstance that all the enemy's guns and batteries may be completely hidden from view. A regiment may be marching over a slightly undulating ground, or even over a level plain, unsuspicious of anything but a perfectly unbroken surface, when suddenly a hundred heavy pieces of artillery may start from the earth as if by magic, and deliver the most accurate and the most deadly fire. We have heard of masked batteries, but under this system every gun in position may be masked. In fact, every undulation and every hillock in a defended position may become a battery, at once more secure and more powerful than the Plymouth forts. Moreover, two or three guns under this system may be made to do the work of several. The effect of an embrasure is, of necessity, to confine the range of a gun, but under this system a gun will range round all the points of the compass. Consequently the whole fire of a dozen guns may be successively concentrated upon any single point within their range, and great economy may thus be effected in the number of guns required. It was conclusively shown at Shoeburyness the other day that the movements of the gun may be effectually directed by a single word of command from an officer outside the pit. It would be as easy to direct ten or twenty guns at once as to direct one, and the fire of a whole battery, therefore, would be under the instant control of a single officer. Again, there is every reason to believe that the gun could be fired with perfect safety from a moveable kind of railway truck. . . We cannot, however, enumerate all the advantages which follow from this revolutionizing invention. We shall content our |