The importance of giving effectual protection to the hull “between wind and water,” as it is called (signifying from a few feet below the water-line to a few feet above that line), has been steadily recognized by Continental governments, with but the rarest exceptions. Nothing corresponding to that wholesale abandonment of armor for about a hundred feet at each end of the ship which has been practised in the British ships of the _Inflexible_ and _Admiral_ types is displayed in the line-of-battle ships of the Continent. In France, indeed, two such ships were laid down under some temporary influence, _viz._, the _Brennus_ and the _Charles Martel_, but they appear to have soon fallen under suspicion, and there has not been, to my knowledge, any great disposition to complete them for service. A return made by the Admiralty to the order of the House of Commons has been printed, and says of the _Brennus_ and _Charles Martel_: “Though these vessels still appear in the list of the French navy, but little money has been voted for their construction in 1886, and all work on them is now reported to have been stopped.” I know not what significance is to be attached to the fact, but I observe that these two ships were omitted altogether from the iron-clad ships of France published so recently as May, 1886, in the _Universal Register_ of shipping, which _Lloyd’s Register_ Committee “believe will be found the most complete list that has yet been published.” It seems not improbable, therefore, that the dangerous system of exposing two-thirds of the ship’s length to destruction from all kinds and every system of naval guns, even the smallest, which prevailed in the British navy for more than twelve years, and which has now happily been superseded in the powerful new ships _Nile_ and _Trafalgar_, obtained but little more than momentary approval in France, and is likely to have led to the condemnation of the only two ships in which it was attempted—a result which is creditable alike to French science and to French sagacity.