strict silence, it
was not long ere they perceived the air to break about them like the
noise of distant thunder or of swallows in a chimney; those little
undulations of sound, though almost vanishing before they reached
them, yet still seeming to retain somewhat of their first horror which
they had between the fleets. After they had attentively listened till
such time as the sound by little and little went from them, Eugenius,
lifting up his head and taking notice of it, was the first who
congratulated to the rest that happy omen of our nation's victory."

This, the eloquent eolian music of distant and unseen battle, was
unheard by the ancient cities and their chroniclers and poets. It will
grow again less familiar as rifled ordnance is introduced, with its
thinner and sharper style of expression. Waterloo appears to have been
heard farther than Sedan or Metz, although its pieces were but popguns
compared with those that spoke the requiem of the Third Napoleon.
And perhaps, if we allow for smallness in number and calibre, those
employed by Robert the Bruce at the battle of Werewater in 1327--said
to be the first recorded occasion in Europe--were more vociferous than
their successors of to-day. Few and cumbrous they must indeed have
been, since Edward III. could only bring four into the field at Crecy;
and they did far less service than the twanging cloth-yard shaft in
deciding the event of that conflict.

It was not till centuries later that the rifle perceptibly exerted
its treble voice in the multitudinous debates of the _ultima ratio_.
Shrill as John Randolph's, its pipe, once set up, was very attentively
and respectfully listened to. Like his, it spoke from the woods
of America. "Stand your ground, my brave fellows," shouted Colonel
Washington under the sycamores of the Monongahela on the 9th of
July, 1755, "and draw your sights for the honor of old Virginia!"
The colonial rifle covered the retreat of the British queen's-arm, if
retreat such a rout as Braddock's could be called.

It is about the same time that we find a British writer, who had
witnessed the efficiency of the rifle as a companion implement to
the axe in pushing European settlement on this continent, saying,
"Whatever state shall thoroughly comprehend the nature and advantages
of rifle-pieces, and, having facilitated and completed their
construction, shall introduce into its armies their general use, with
a dexterity in the management of them, wi