The following from the Journal of Commerce gives a good idea of the terrible destructiveness of modern firearms. And when we remember that the Russians are even better armed than the Turks, what destruction of human life may we not expect, when the fast-turning tide of war shall give them the advantage in the matter of position —an advantage which, in the early stages of the war, told so powerfully in favor of the Turks—unless the speedy overthrow of the Ottoman power shall stop the flow of blood? The Journal says:— The correspondents of the London papers with the Russian armies all speak of the deadly effect of the Turkish fire. It is sickening to read of the slaughter committed on the brave Muscovites in their hopeless assaults on Plevna and the other strongholds of the Turks. No mortal courage, it would seem, could face the pitiless storm of bullets that sweep the slopes up which the assailants press with an ardor carrying the survivors almost over the ramparts and among the unseen foes, until the bugle sounds their recall. The line of these attacks, say the correspondents, is strewn with dead and dying by the hundreds, from the edge of the glacis back to the point where the troops first ventured upon the open. The Turkish aim is almost sure for 200 or 300 yards. It adds to the interest with which Americans regard the Russo-Turkish war to know that the whole Ottoman army is or will be furnished with these terrible weapons of our own manufacture. The rifle used in that army is a breechloader, made by the Providence Tool Company, and called the Peabody-Martini. It is a combination of two inventions, one American and the other Italian, uniting the best points of both. It can be fired by an expert hand nearly at the rate of once a second, and the soldier’s capacity for killing is therefore only limited by his dexterity and supply of cartridges. The Peabody-Martini rifle may or may not be superior in some respects to other arms of precision. There is no occasion for comparing its excellence with that of the Chassepot or the needle gun, or the Gorloff or Berdan rifle (used by most of the Russian troops). It suffices to know that, in the crucial test of war on the large scale, the American weapon does its appointed work; and that American arms, and the American style of earthworks, which the Turks have copied, will give the Russians even more trouble than that fanaticism and valor which make the Turks foemen worthy of any nation’s steel.