renowned in France, had, for a reason as weighty as Joanna’s, viz., expressly to shield her modesty amongst men, wore a male military harness.  That reason and that example authorized La Pucelle; but our English girls, as a body, have seldom any such reason, and certainly no such saintly example, to plead.  This excuses them.  Yet, still, if it is indispensable to the national character that our young women should now and then trespass over the frontier of decorum, it then becomes a patriotic duty in me to assure M. Michelet that we have such ardent females amongst us, and in a long series—­some detected in naval hospitals, when too sick to remember their disguise; some on fields of battle; multitudes never detected at all; some only suspected; and others discharged without noise by war offices and other absurd people.  In our navy, both royal and commercial, and generally from deep remembrances of slighted love, women have sometimes served in disguise for many years, taking contentedly their daily allowance of burgoo, biscuit, or cannon balls—­anything, in short, digestible or indigestible, that it might please Providence to send.  One thing, at least, is to their credit:  never any of these poor masks, with their deep silent remembrances, have been detected through murmuring, or what is nautically understood by “skulking.”  So, for once, M. Michelet has an erratum to enter upon the fly-leaf of his book in presentation copies.

4.  But the last of these ebullitions is the most lively.  We English, at Orleans, and after Orleans (which is not quite so extraordinary, if all were told,) fled before the Maid of Arc.  Yes, says M. Michelet, you did:  deny it, if you can.  Deny it, my dear?  I don’t mean to deny it.  Running away, in many cases, is a thing so excellent, that no philosopher would, at times, condescend to adopt any other step.  All of us nations in Europe, without one exception, have shown our philosophy in that way at times.  Even people, “qui ne se rendent pas,” have deigned both to run and to shout, “Sauve qui pent” at odd times of sunset; though, for my part, I have no pleasure in recalling unpleasant remembrances to brave men; and yet, really, being so philosophic, they ought not to be unpleasant.  But the amusing feature in M. Michelet’s reproach, is the way in which he improves and varies against us the charge of running, as if he were singing a catch.  Listen to him.  They “showed their backs,” did these English. (Hip, hip, hurrah! three times three!) “Behind good walls, they let themselves be taken,” (Hip, hip! nine times nine!) They “ran as fast as their legs could carry them.” (Hurrah! twenty-seven times twenty-seven!) They “ran before a girl;” they did. (Hurrah! eighty-one times eighty-one!) This reminds one of criminal indictments on the old model in English courts, where (for fear the prisoner should escape) the crown lawyer varied the charge perhaps