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