Our Second Line of Defences

This is an invaluable history describing military technology, written in the 1860s. It was published in Once a Week magazine in two parts.
Excerpt
"So sang Thomas Campbell, just at the close of the last century, when men's minds were full of the achievements of Howe, and Jervis, and Duncan, and Nelson, and so singing he merely embodied the national sentiment and expounded the national faith. Nor has the sentiment been altered or the faith been shaken from his days down to ours. The descendants of the old Sea Kings show still—as ever—the quality of the blood which runs in their veins, as clearly and unmistakeably as their nearest continental neighbours exhibit in their strange admixture of fierceness and levity their mixed derivation from the Frank and the Gaul."