been represented by xxx^yy

3. A macron, or bar over a letter, is shown as [=letter]

4. In the paragraph that begins, "Sketch for yourself, first, a map of
France" there are images in the paragraph. I have represented
back-slanting diagonal shading with "\\\" and forward-slanting
diagonal shading with "///" and horizontal shading with "=".

5. In the original text, footnotes in Chapter I are represented with
numbers, and footnotes in all the rest of the text, including the
notes on Chapter I, are represented with symbols. I have converted
all of them to numbers, since there is no overlap, and they seem to
be used in the same way in the text.

PREFACE.

The long abandoned purpose, of which the following pages begin some
attempt at fulfilment, has been resumed at the request of a young
English governess, that I would write some pieces of history which her
pupils could gather some good out of;--the fruit of historical
documents placed by modern educational systems at her disposal, being
to them labour only, and sorrow.

What else may be said for the book, if it ever become one, it must say
for itself: preface, more than this, I do not care to write: and the
less, because some passages of British history, at this hour under
record, call for instant, though brief, comment.

I am told that the Queen's Guards have gone to Ireland; playing "God
save the Queen." And being, (as I have declared myself in the course
of some letters to which public attention has been lately more than
enough directed,) to the best of my knowledge, the staunchest
Conservative in England, I am disposed gravely to question the
propriety of the mission of the Queen's Guards on the employment
commanded them. My own Conservative notion of the function of the
Guards is that they should guard the Queen's throne and life, when
threatened either by domestic or foreign enemy: but not that they
should become a substitute for her inefficient police force, in the
execution of her domiciliary laws.

And still less so, if the domiciliary laws which they are sent to
execute, playing "God save the Queen," be perchance precisely contrary
to that God the Saviour's law; and therefore, such as, in the long run,
no quantity either of Queens, or Queen's men, _could_ execute. Which is
a question I have for these ten years been endeavouring to get the
British public to consider--vainly enough hitherto; and will not at
present add to my