text:  During the contest we had constantly refreshed our zeal by fervent declarations of contempt for the frog-eating spindle shanked mounseers and persuaded ourselves that their whole literature consisted in atheism and murder and though we now know that frogs are by no means the common food of the peasantry--costing about a guinea a dish--and that it is possible for a Frenchman to be a strapping fellow of six feet high the taint of our former persuasion remains with us still as to their books; and in some remote districts we have no doubt that Peter Pindar would be thought a more harmless volume in a young lady's hands than _Pascal's Thoughts_--in French