very superior force has of course stimulated the desire to possess vessels like her. Another, the Smirch, has been already sent from this country to Russia, and more than one of our private yards are building similar or larger vessels on the same plan for one or other of the foreign powers which may some day use them against ourselves.
That Captain Coles’s plan did not at first find favour with the present Board of Admiralty is so notorious, and the step which has been unexpectedly taken, since this article was commenced, of removing the Royal Sovereign into the steam reserve, seems so strange, that many, and especially naval men, have inferred from it that the complete success achieved by this ship in all the trials that she has as yet had the opportunity of making, has only strengthened the disinclination of the Board to allow that success to be more fully established by a continuance of her experiments, lest they should at last be compelled to give the plan the still further trial of allowing Captain Coles to build a ship wholly in accordance with his own views, without the interference of any civil constructor. But such a course would be so shameful that, it cannot, we are convinced, be truly imputed to any part of a British Ministry. It is probable rather that, looking on the justice of Captain Coles’s views to be as completely established as it was possible for a vessel of the limited capabilities of the Royal Sovereign to establish them, and remembering that the fact of those capabilities being limited is owing not to any imperfection in Captain Coles’s plan, but to the circumstance of others having been admitted to interfere with and vary the details of that plan, the Board now considers that Captain Coles is entitled,—it would be more correct to say, that the country is entitled,—to have these views tested more completely in a sea-going vessel, and that therefore they are about to entrust him with the construction of such a ship, as the only method of finally deciding the question at issue between guns in turrets and guns in broadsides: a question which in the present critical state of Europe admits of no postponement, and of which it would be neither creditable nor safe for us to leave the solution to other nations, perhaps at our own expense.
CHARLES WOLFE.
TO THE EDITOR OF “ONCE A WEEK.”
Sir,—I have no doubt that the readers of your journal have been as much interested as I have been in perusing your recent notice[1] of the Rev. Charles Wolfe, and I have thought, therefore, that the following additional facts may not be unacceptable.
On the north-east coast of Ireland lies Newry, a sea-port of some importance, and my own native place. One of my father’s most intimate friends in that town was a Doctor Stuart, pretty generally known (in that quarter of Ireland at least) as the author of a “History of the City of Armagh,” and more widely, as the writer of “The Protestant Layman.” At the time of my father’s acquaintance with this gentleman, he (Doctor Stuart) was the editor of the Newry Commercial Telegraph, a newspaper then published three times a week, and still in existence. In this paper the beautiful “Ode on the Burial of Sir John Moore” was first published. I had this from my father’s lips; but afterwards, in looking through the Penny Cyclopædia under the name of “Charles Wolfe,” I found his words fully confirmed.
And now occurs a curious matter in connection with these celebrated verses. My father told me that once when in company with Doctor Stuart and some other gentlemen, shortly after the publication of Wolfe’s ode, the conversation naturally turned on the noble lines that had just appeared in the Telegraph. The doctor on that occasion stated that he found the verses in the street of the town. I have repeatedly heard my father say that he did not credit this statement, nor, I fancy, did any one who heard it made. It was generally felt that the doctor had some motive for concealing the source whence the lines came into his possession.
The ode appeared in the Telegraph anonymously, and was then claimed by a Scotchman. Stuart, in an article, sharply rebuked the pretender, who did not dare to reply. From this arises the presumption—perhaps not sufficiently just—that the editor knew the author’s name, or at least something of the real author; that the lines had been sent to Stuart by some friend of Wolfe after their rejection by “the periodical” to which Mr. Gibson has alluded, and that the story of the finding in the street was a way of avoiding further questioning about a writer who preferred remaining incognito.
About three or four years ago I happened to be in Dublin with some fellow-students, and among other places of interest we visited St. Patrick’s Cathedral: there my eye fell on a plain marble tablet, inscribed with these words, which I copied at the time:—
IN REMEMBRANCE OF
THE REV. CHARLES WOLFE,
LATE CURATE OF DONOUGHMORE, CO. TYRONE,
