In 1850, a clergyman of this city tells me that he saw women, wearing leathern breast-plates, harnessed to the canal-boats of the Low Countries, and doing the work of oxen. In France, we find the same evidences of out-door work and physical ability. Galignani tells us, that, in consequence of the success of a certain Madame Isabelle in breaking horses for the Russian Army, the French minister of war lately authorized her to proceed officially before a commission of officers, with General Régnault de St. Jean d'Angely at their head, to break some horses for the cavalry. After twenty days, the animals were so completely broken, that the minister immediately entered into an arrangement with her to introduce her system into all the schools of cavalry in the empire, beginning with that of Saumur. Marshal Baraguay d'Hilliers, at Nantes, recently made a distribution of St. Helena medals to the old soldiers of the empire. Among the number was a woman named Jeanne Louise Antonini, who had served ten years in the navy, and fifteen in the infantry, where she obtained the rank of non-commisioned officer in the seventieth regiment of the line. She received nine wounds while bravely fighting. "It is not the _coat_ that makes the man," said our marshal when he gave the medal. One of the great celebrities of the Invalides was buried, very lately, with great pomp. This "old invalid" was an individual of the softer sex,--the widow Brulow,--who entered the army, in 1792, as a soldier in the forty-second regiment of infantry, authorized to enlist, in spite of her sex, by General Casabianca. At Fort Gesco, she was promoted to the rank of sergeant, after being severely wounded in the encounter which took place. Perceiving that the troops were getting short of powder, she set out alone at midnight for Calvi, roused the women of that place to the number of sixty, and started them off for Gesco, laden with powder and ammunition, which enabled the little fort to hold out eight and forty hours longer, until relief came. A little after, at the siege of Calvi, the widow Brulow, while in charge of a gun, was so desperately wounded that she was forced to renounce her military career; and none other was open to her but the retirement of the Invalides, where she was admitted with the rank of sub-lieutenant. The present emperor, to whom the widow Brulow was introduced on his visit to the Invalides, presented her with the cross of the Legion of Honor and the medal of St. Helena; her comrades, by acclamation, having designated her as most worthy of the honor. By a decree, dated from the imperial headquarters, since our first edition was printed, we learn that the race of heroines is not extinct; for two other women, by that decree, obtained the military medal for their courage at the battle of Magenta.