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Title: The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc

Author: Thomas de Quincey

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THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH AND JOAN OF ARC

BY
THOMAS DE QUINCEY

EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY
MILTON HAIGHT TURK, PH.D.




TO CHARLES DEACON CREE
THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED
_Glencairn, Kilmacolm, Scotland June 27, 1905_




PREFACE


Some portions of this Introduction have been taken from the Athenæum
Press _Selections from De Quincey_; many of the notes have also
been transferred from that volume. A number of the new notes I owe to a
review of the _Selections_ by Dr. Lane Cooper, of Cornell University. I
wish also to thank for many favors the Committee and officers of the
Glasgow University Library.

If a word by way of suggestion to teachers be pertinent, I would
venture to remark that the object of the teacher of literature is, of
course, only to fulfill the desire of the author--to make clear his
facts and to bring home his ideas in all their power and beauty.
Introductions and notes are only means to this end. Teachers, I think,
sometimes lose sight of this fact; I know it is fatally easy for
students to forget it. That teacher will have rendered a great service
who has kept his pupils alive to the real aim of their studies,--to
know the author, not to know of him.

M.H.T




CONTENTS


INTRODUCTION
I.   LIFE
II.  CRITICAL REMARKS
III. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

SELECTIONS
  THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH
  JOAN OF ARC

NOTES




INTRODUCTION

I. LIFE


Thomas de Quincey was born in Manchester on the 15th of August, 1785.
His father was a man of high character and great taste for literature
as well as a successful man of business; he died, most unfortunately,
when Thomas was quite young. Very soon after our author's birth the
family removed to The Farm, and later to Greenhay, a larger country
place near Manchester. In 1796 De Quincey's mother, now for some years
a widow, removed to Bath and placed him in the grammar school there.

Thomas, the future opium-eater, was a weak and sickly child. His first
years were spent in solitude, and when his elder brother, William, a
real boy, came home, the young author followed in humility mingled with
terror the diversions of that ingenious and pugnacious "son of eternal
racket." De Quincey's mother was a woman of strong character and
emotions, as well as excellent mind, but she was excessively formal,
and she seems to have inspired more awe than affection in her children,
to whom she was for all that deeply devoted. Her notions of conduct in
general and of child rearing in particular were very strict. She took
Thomas out of Bath School, after three years' excellent work there,
because he was too much praised, and kept him for a year at an inferior
school at Winkfield in Wiltshire.

In 1800, at the age of fifteen, De Quincey was ready for Oxford; he had
not been praised without reason, for his scholarship was far in advance
of that of ordinary pupils of his years. "That boy," his master at Bath
School had said, "that boy could harangue an Athenian mob better than
you or I could address an English one." He was sent to Manchester
Grammar School, however, in order that after three years' stay he might
secure a scholarship at Brasenose College, Oxford. He remained there--
strongly protesting against a situation which deprived him "of
_health_, of _society_, of _amusement_, of _liberty_, of _congeniality
of pursuits_"--for nineteen months, and then ran away.

His first plan had been to reach Wordsworth, whose _Lyrical Ballads_
(1798) had solaced him in fits of melancholy and had awakened in him a
deep reverence for the neglected poet. His timidity preventing this, he
made his way to Chester, where his mother then lived, in the hope of
seeing a sister; was apprehended by the older members of the family;
and through the intercession of his uncle, Colonel Penson, received the
promise of a guinea a week to carry out his later project of a solitary
tramp through Wales. From July to November, 1802, De Quincey then led a
wayfarer's life. [Footnote: For a most interesting account of this
period see the _Confessions of an English Opium-Eater_, Athenæum Press
_Selections from De Quincey_, pp. 165-171, and notes.] He soon lost his
guinea, however, by ceasing to keep his family informed of his
whereabouts, and subsisted for a time with great difficulty. Still
apparently fearing pursuit, with a little borrowed money he broke away
entirely from his home by exchanging the solitude of Wales for the
greater wilderness of London. Failing there to raise money on his
expected patrimony, he for some time deliberately clung to a life of
degradation and starvation rather than return to his lawful governors.

Discovered by chance by his friends, De Quincey was brought home and
finally allowed (1803) to go to Worcester College, Oxford, on a reduced
income. Here, we are told, "he came to be looked upon as a strange
being who associated with no one." During this time he learned to take
opium. He left, apparently about 1807, without a degree. In the same
year he made the acquaintance of Coleridge and Wordsworth; Lamb he had
sought out in London several years before.

His acquaintance with Wordsworth led to his settlement in 1809 at
Grasmere, in the beautiful English Lake District; his home for ten
years was Dove Cottage, which Wordsworth had occupied for several years
and which is now held in trust as a memorial of the poet. De Quincey
was married in 1816, and soon after, his patrimony having been
exhausted, he took up literary work in earnest.

In 1821 he went to London to dispose of some translations from German
authors, but was persuaded first to write and publish an account of his
opium experiences, which accordingly appeared in the _London
Magazine_ in that year. This new sensation eclipsed Lamb's _Essays
of Elia_, which were appearing in the same periodical. The
_Confessions of an English Opium-Eater_ was forthwith published in
book form. De Quincey now made literary acquaintances. Tom Hood found
the shrinking author "at home in a German ocean of literature, in a
storm, flooding all the floor, the tables, and the chairs--billows of
books." Richard Woodhouse speaks of the "depth and reality of his
knowledge. ... His conversation appeared like the elaboration of a mine
of results. ... Taylor led him into political economy, into the Greek
and Latin accents, into antiquities, Roman roads, old castles, the
origin and analogy of languages; upon all these he was informed to
considerable minuteness. The same with regard to Shakespeare's sonnets,
Spenser's minor poems, and the great writers and characters of
Elizabeth's age and those of Cromwell's time."

From this time on De Quincey maintained himself by contributing to
various magazines. He soon exchanged London and the Lakes for Edinburgh
and its suburb, Lasswade, where the remainder of his life was spent.
_Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine_ and its rival _Tatt's Magazine_
received a large number of contributions. _The English Mail-Coach_
appeared in 1849 in Blackwood. _Joan of Arc_ had already been published
(1847) in _Tait_. De Quincey continued to drink laudanum throughout his
life,--twice after 1821 in very great excess. During his last years he
nearly completed a collected edition of his works. He died in Edinburgh
on the 8th of December, 1859.


II. CRITICAL REMARKS


The Opium-Eater had been a weak, lonely, and over-studious child, and
he was a solitary and ill-developed man. His character and his work
present strange contradictions. He is most precise in statement, yet
often very careless of fact; he is most courteous in manner, yet
inexcusably inconsiderate in his behavior. Again, he sets up a high
standard of purity of diction, yet uses slang quite unnecessarily and
inappropriately; and though a great master of style, he is guilty, at
times, of digression within digression until all trace of the original
subject is lost.

De Quincey divides his writings into three groups: first, that class
which "proposes primarily to amuse the reader, but which, in doing so,
may or may not happen occasionally to reach a higher station, at which
the amusement passes into an impassioned interest." To this class would
belong the _Autobiographic Sketches_ and the _Literary Reminiscences_.
As a second class he groups "those papers which address themselves
purely to the understanding as an insulated faculty, or do so
primarily." These essays would include, according to Professor Masson's
subdivision, (a) Biographies, such as _Shakespeare_ or _Pope_--_Joan of
Arc_ falls here, yet has some claim to a place in the first class; (b)
Historical essays, like The _Cæsars_; (c) Speculative and Theological
essays; (d) Essays in Political Economy and Politics; (e) Papers of
Literary Theory and Criticism, such as the brilliant discussions of
_Rhetoric, Style_, and _Conversation_, and the famous _On the Knocking
at the Gate in 'Macbeth_.' As a third and "far higher" class the author
ranks the _Confessions of an English Opium-Eater_, and also (but more
emphatically) the _Suspiria de Profundis_. "On these," he says, "as
modes of impassioned prose ranging under no precedents that I am aware
of in any literature, it is much more difficult to speak justly,
whether in a hostile or a friendly character."

Of De Quincey's essays in general it may be said that they bear witness
alike to the diversity of his knowledge and the penetrative power of
his intellect. The wide range of his subjects, however, deprives his
papers when taken together of the weight which might attach to a series
of related discussions. And, remarkable as is De Quincey's aptitude for
analysis and speculation, more than once we have to regret the lack of
the "saving common-sense" possessed by many far less gifted men. His
erudition and insight are always a little in advance of his good
judgment.

As to the works of the first class, the _Reminiscences_ are defaced
by the shrewish spirit shown in the accounts of Wordsworth and other
friends; nor can we depend upon them as records of fact. But our author
had had exceptional opportunities to observe these famous men and
women, and he possessed no little insight into literature and
personality. As to the _Autobiographic Sketches_, the handling of
events is hopelessly arbitrary and fragmentary. In truth, De Quincey is
drawing an idealized picture of childhood,--creating a type rather than
re-creating a person; it is a study of a child of talent that we
receive from him, and as such these sketches form one of the most
satisfactory products of his pen.

The _Confessions_ as a narrative is related to the Autobiography,
while its poetical passages range it with the _Suspiria_ and the
_Mail-Coach_. De Quincey seems to have believed that he was
creating in such writings a new literary type of prose poetry or prose
phantasy; he had, with his splendid dreams as subject-matter, lifted
prose to heights hitherto scaled only by the poet. In reality his style
owed much to the seventeenth-century writers, such as Milton and Sir
Thomas Browne.  He took part with Coleridge, Lamb, and others in the
general revival of interest in earlier modern English prose, which is a
feature of the Romantic Movement. Still none of his contemporaries
wrote as he did; evidently De Quincey has a distinct quality of his
own. Ruskin, in our own day, is like him, but never the same.

Yet De Quincey's prose poetry is a very small portion of his work, and
it is not in this way only that he excels. Mr. Saintsbury has spoken of
the strong appeal that De Quincey makes to boys. [Footnote: "Probably
more boys have in the last forty years been brought to a love of
literature proper by De Quincy than by any other writer whatever."--
_History of Nineteenth-Century Literature_, p.198.] It is not
without significance that he mentions as especially attractive to the
young only writings with a large narrative element. [Footnote: "To read
the _Essay on Murder_, the _English Mail-Coach_, _The Spanish
Nun_, _The Cæsars_, and half a score other things at the age of
about fifteen or sixteen is, or ought to be, to fall in love with
them."--_Essays in English Literature_, 1780-1860, p.307.] Few boys
read poetry, whether in verse or prose, and fewer still criticism or
philosophy; to every normal boy the gate of good literature is the good
story.  It is the narrative skill of De Quincey that has secured for
him, in preference to other writers of his class, the favor of youthful
readers.

It would be too much to say that the talent that attracts the young to
him must needs be the Opium-Eater's grand talent, though the notion is
defensible, seeing that only salient qualities in good writing appeal
to inexperienced readers. I believe, however, that this skill in
narration is De Quincey's most persistent quality,--the golden thread
that unites all his most distinguished and most enduring work. And it
is with him a part of his genius for style. Creative power of the kind
that goes to the making of plots De Quincey had not; he has proved that
forever by the mediocrity of _Klosterheim_. Give him Bergmann's
account of the Tartar Migration, or the story of the Fighting Nun,--
give him the matter,--and a brilliant narrative will result. Indeed, De
Quincey loved a story for its own sake; he rejoiced to see it extend
its winding course before him; he delighted to follow it, touch it,
color it, see it grow into body and being under his hand. That this
enthusiasm should now and then tend to endanger the integrity of the
facts need not surprise us; as I have said elsewhere, accuracy in these
matters is hardly to be expected of De Quincey. And we can take our
pleasure in the skillful unfolding of the dramatic narrative of the
Tartar Flight--we can feel the author's joy in the scenic possibilities
of his theme--even if we know that here and there an incident appears
that is quite in its proper place--but is unknown to history.

In his _Confessions_ the same constructive power bears its part in
the author's triumph. A peculiar end was to be reached in that
narrative,--an end in which the writer had a deep personal interest.
What is an opium-eater? Says a character in a recent work of fiction,
of a social wreck: "If it isn't whisky with him, it's opium; if it
isn't opium, it's whisky." This speech establishes the popular category
in which De Quincey's habit had placed him. Our attention was to be
drawn from these degrading connections. And this is done not merely by
the correction of some widespread fallacies as to the effects of the
drug; far more it is the result of narrative skill. As we follow with
ever-increasing sympathy the lonely and sensitive child, the wandering
youth, the neuralgic patient, into the terrible grasp of opium, who
realizes, amid the gorgeous delights and the awful horrors of the tale,
that the writer is after all the victim of the worst of bad habits? We
can hardly praise too highly the art which even as we look beneath it
throws its glamour over us still.

Nor is it only in this constructive power, in the selection and
arrangement of details, that De Quincey excels as a narrator; a score
of minor excellences of his style, such as the fine Latin words or the
sweeping periodic sentences, contribute to the effective progress of
his narrative prose. Mr. Lowell has said that "there are no such vistas
and avenues of verse as Milton's." The comparison is somewhat
hazardous, still I should like to venture the parallel claim that there
are no such streams of prose as De Quincey's. The movement of his
discourse is that of the broad river, not in its weight or force
perhaps, but in its easy flowing progress, in its serene, unhurried
certainty of its end. To be sure, only too often the waters overflow
their banks and run far afield in alien channels. Yet, when great power
over the instrument of language is joined to so much constructive
skill, the result is narrative art of high quality,--an achievement
that must be in no small measure the solid basis of De Quincey's fame.


III. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

I. WORKS


1. _The Collected Writings of Thomas de Quincey_. New and enlarged
edition by David Masson. Edinburgh: A. and C. Black, 1889-1890. [New
York: The Macmillan Co. 14 vols., with footnotes, a preface to each
volume, and index. Reissued in cheaper form. The standard edition.]

2. _The Works of Thomas de Quincey_. Riverside Edition. Boston:
Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1877. [12 vols., with notes and index.]

3. _Selections from De Quincey._ Edited with an Introduction and
Notes, by M. H. Turk. Athenaeum Press Series. Boston, U.S.A., and
London: Ginn and Company, 1902. ["The largest body of selections from
De Quincey recently published.... The selections are _The affliction
of Childhood, Introduction to the World of Strife, A Meeting with Lamb,
A Meeting with Coleridge, Recollections of Wordsworth, Confessions, A
Portion of Suspiria, The English Mail-Coach, Murder as one of the Fine
Arts, Second Paper, Joan of Arc,_ and _On the Knocking at the Gate
in 'Macbeth.'_"]


II. BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM


4. D. MASSON. _Thomas De Quincey._ English Men of Letters. London.
[New York: Harper. An excellent brief biography.  This book, with a
good volume of selections, should go far toward supplying the ordinary
student's needs.]

5. H. S. SALT. DE QUINCEY. Bell's Miniature Series of Great Writers.
London: George Bell and Sons. [A good short life.] 6. A. H. JAPP.
_Thomas De Quincey: His Life and Writings._ London, 1890. [New
York: Scribner. First edition by "H. A. Page," 1877. The standard life
of De Quincey; it contains valuable communications from De Quincey's
daughters, J. Hogg, Rev. F. Jacox, Professor Masson, and others.]

7. A. H. JAPP. _De Quincey Memorials. Being Letters and Other
Records, here first published. With Communications from Coleridge, the
Wordsworths, Hannah More, Professor Wilson, and others._ 2 vols.
London: W. Heinemann, 1891.

8. J. HOGG. _De Quincey and his Friends, Personal Recollections,
Souvenirs, and Anecdotes_ [including Woodhouse's _Conversations_,
Findlay's _Personal Recollections_, Hodgson's _On the Genius of
De Quincey_, and a mass of personal notes from a host of friends].
London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co., 1895.

9. E. T. MASON. _Personal Traits of British Authors_. New York,
1885. [4 vols. The volume subtitled _Scott, Hogg,_ etc., contains
some accounts of De Quincey not included by Japp or Hogg.]

10. L. STEPHEN. _Hours in a Library_. Vol. I. New York, 1892.

11. W. MINTO. _Manual of English Prose Literature_. Boston, 1889.
[Contains the best general discussion of De Quincey's style.]

12. L. COOPER. _The Prose Poetry of Thomas De Quincey_. Leipzig,
1902.




THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH

SECTION I--THE GLORY OF MOTION


Some twenty or more years before I matriculated at Oxford, Mr. Palmer,
at that time M.P. for Bath, had accomplished two things, very hard to
do on our little planet, the Earth, however cheap they may be held by
eccentric people in comets: he had invented mail-coaches, and he had
married the daughter of a duke. He was, therefore, just twice as great
a man as Galileo, who did certainly invent (or, which is the same
thing, [Footnote: "_The same thing_":--Thus, in the calendar of the
Church Festivals, the discovery of the true cross (by Helen, the mother
of Constantine) is recorded (and, one might think, with the express
consciousness of sarcasm) as the _Invention_ of the Cross.]
discover) the satellites of Jupiter, those very next things extant to
mail-coaches in the two capital pretensions of speed and keeping time,
but, on the other hand, who did _not_ marry the daughter of a duke.

These mail-coaches, as organised by Mr. Palmer, are entitled to a
circumstantial notice from myself, having had so large a share in
developing the anarchies of my subsequent dreams: an agency which they
accomplished, 1st, through velocity at that time unprecedented--for
they first revealed the glory of motion; 2dly, through grand effects
for the eye between lamplight and the darkness upon solitary roads;
3dly, through animal beauty and power so often displayed in the class
of horses selected for this mail service; 4thly, through the conscious
presence of a central intellect, that, in the midst of vast distances
[Footnote: "Vast distances":--One case was familiar to mail-coach
travellers where two mails in opposite directions, north and south,
starting at the same minute from points six hundred miles apart, met
almost constantly at a particular bridge which bisected the total
distance.]--of storms, of darkness, of danger--overruled all obstacles
into one steady co-operation to a national result. For my own feeling,
this post-office service spoke as by some mighty orchestra, where a
thousand instruments, all disregarding each other, and so far in danger
of discord, yet all obedient as slaves to the supreme _baton_ of
some great leader, terminate in a perfection of harmony like that of
heart, brain, and lungs in a healthy animal organisation. But, finally,
that particular element in this whole combination which most impressed
myself, and through which it is that to this hour Mr. Palmer's mail-
coach system tyrannises over my dreams by terror and terrific beauty,
lay in the awful _political_ mission which at that time it fulfilled.
The mail-coach it was that distributed over the face of the land, like
the opening of apocalyptic vials, the heart-shaking news of Trafalgar,
of Salamanca, of Vittoria, of Waterloo. These were the harvests that,
in the grandeur of their reaping, redeemed the tears and blood in which
they had been sown. Neither was the meanest peasant so much below the
grandeur and the sorrow of the times as to confound battles such as
these, which were gradually moulding the destinies of Christendom, with
the vulgar conflicts of ordinary warfare, so often no more than
gladiatorial trials of national prowess. The victories of England in
this stupendous contest rose of themselves as natural _Te Deums_ to
heaven; and it was felt by the thoughtful that such victories, at such
a crisis of general prostration, were not more beneficial to ourselves
than finally to France, our enemy, and to the nations of all western or
central Europe, through whose pusillanimity it was that the French
domination had prospered.

The mail-coach, as the national organ for publishing these mighty
events, thus diffusively influential, became itself a spiritualised and
glorified object to an impassioned heart; and naturally, in the Oxford
of that day, _all_ hearts were impassioned, as being all (or nearly
all) in _early_ manhood. In most universities there is one single
college; in Oxford there were five-and-twenty, all of which were
peopled by young men, the _élite_ of their own generation; not
boys, but men: none under eighteen. In some of these many colleges the
custom permitted the student to keep what are called "short terms";
that is, the four terms of Michaelmas, Lent, Easter, and Act, were kept
by a residence, in the aggregate, of ninety-one days, or thirteen
weeks. Under this interrupted residence, it was possible that a student
might have a reason for going down to his home four times in the year.
This made eight journeys to and fro. But, as these homes lay dispersed
through all the shires of the island, and most of us disdained all
coaches except his Majesty's mail, no city out of London could pretend
to so extensive a connexion with Mr. Palmer's establishment as Oxford.
Three mails, at the least, I remember as passing every day through
Oxford, and benefiting by my personal patronage--viz., the Worcester,
the Gloucester, and the Holyhead mail. Naturally, therefore, it became
a point of some interest with us, whose journeys revolved every six
weeks on an average, to look a little into the executive details of the
system. With some of these Mr. Palmer had no concern; they rested upon
bye-laws enacted by posting-houses for their own benefit, and upon
other bye-laws, equally stern, enacted by the inside passengers for the
illustration of their own haughty exclusiveness. These last were of a
nature to rouse our scorn; from which the transition was not very long
to systematic mutiny. Up to this time, say 1804, or 1805 (the year of
Trafalgar), it had been the fixed assumption of the four inside people
(as an old tradition of all public carriages derived from the reign of
Charles II) that they, the illustrious quaternion, constituted a
porcelain variety of the human race, whose dignity would have been
compromised by exchanging one word of civility with the three miserable
delf-ware outsides. Even to have kicked an outsider might have been
held to attaint the foot concerned in that operation, so that, perhaps,
it would have required an act of Parliament to restore its purity of
blood. What words, then, could express the horror, and the sense of
treason, in that case, which _had_ happened, where all three
outsides (the trinity of Pariahs) made a vain attempt to sit down at
the same breakfast-table or dinner-table with the consecrated four? I
myself witnessed such an attempt; and on that occasion a benevolent old
gentleman endeavoured to soothe his three holy associates, by
suggesting that, if the outsides were indicted for this criminal
attempt at the next assizes, the court would regard it as a case of
lunacy or _delirium tremens_ rather than of treason. England owes
much of her grandeur to the depth of the aristocratic element in her
social composition, when pulling against her strong democracy. I am not
the man to laugh at it. But sometimes, undoubtedly, it expressed itself
in comic shapes. The course taken with the infatuated outsiders, in the
particular attempt which I have noticed, was that the waiter, beckoning
them away from the privileged _salle-à-manger_, sang out, "This
way, my good men," and then enticed these good men away to the kitchen.
But that plan had not always answered. Sometimes, though rarely, cases
occurred where the intruders, being stronger than usual, or more
vicious than usual, resolutely refused to budge, and so far carried
their point as to have a separate table arranged for themselves in a
corner of the general room. Yet, if an Indian screen could be found
ample enough to plant them out from the very eyes of the high table, or
_dais_, it then became possible to assume as a fiction of law that
the three delf fellows, after all, were not present. They could be
ignored by the porcelain men, under the maxim that objects not
appearing and objects not existing are governed by the same logical
construction. [Footnote: _De non apparentibus_, etc.]

Such being, at that time, the usage of mail-coaches, what was to be
done by us of young Oxford? We, the most aristocratic of people, who
were addicted to the practice of looking down superciliously even upon
the insides themselves as often very questionable characters--were we,
by voluntarily going outside, to court indignities? If our dress and
bearing sheltered us generally from the suspicion of being "raff" (the
name at that period for "snobs" [Footnote: "_Snobs_," and its
antithesis, "_nobs_," arose among the internal factions of shoemakers
perhaps ten years later. Possibly enough, the terms may have existed
much earlier; but they were then first made known, picturesquely and
effectively, by a trial at some assizes which happened to fix the
public attention.]), we really _were_ such constructively by the place
we assumed. If we did not submit to the deep shadow of eclipse, we
entered at least the skirts of its penumbra. And the analogy of
theatres was valid against us,--where no man can complain of the
annoyances incident to the pit or gallery, having his instant remedy in
paying the higher price of the boxes. But the soundness of this analogy
we disputed. In the case of the theatre, it cannot be pretended that
the inferior situations have any separate attractions, unless the pit
may be supposed to have an advantage for the purposes of the critic or
the dramatic reporter. But the critic or reporter is a rarity. For most
people, the sole benefit is in the price. Now, on the contrary, the
outside of the mail had its own incommunicable advantages. These we
could not forego. The higher price we would willingly have paid, but
not the price connected with the condition of riding inside; which
condition we pronounced insufferable. The air, the freedom of prospect,
the proximity to the horses, the elevation of seat: these were what we
required; but, above all, the certain anticipation of purchasing
occasional opportunities of driving.

Such was the difficulty which pressed us; and under the coercion of
this difficulty we instituted a searching inquiry into the true quality
and valuation of the different apartments about the mail. We conducted
this inquiry on metaphysical principles; and it was ascertained
satisfactorily that the roof of the coach, which by some weak men had
been called the attics, and by some the garrets, was in reality the
drawing-room; in which drawing-room the box was the chief ottoman or
sofa; whilst it appeared that the _inside_ which had been
traditionally regarded as the only room tenantable by gentlemen, was,
in fact, the coal-cellar in disguise.

Great wits jump. The very same idea had not long before struck the
celestial intellect of China. Amongst the presents carried out by our
first embassy to that country was a state-coach. It had been specially
selected as a personal gift by George III; but the exact mode of using
it was an intense mystery to Pekin. The ambassador, indeed (Lord
Macartney), had made some imperfect explanations upon this point; but,
as His Excellency communicated these in a diplomatic whisper at the
very moment of his departure, the celestial intellect was very feebly
illuminated, and it became necessary to call a cabinet council on the
grand state question, "Where was the Emperor to sit?" The hammer-cloth
happened to be unusually gorgeous; and, partly on that consideration,
but partly also because the box offered the most elevated seat, was
nearest to the moon, and undeniably went foremost, it was resolved by
acclamation that the box was the imperial throne, and, for the
scoundrel who drove,--he might sit where he could find a perch. The
horses, therefore, being harnessed, solemnly his imperial majesty
ascended his new English throne under a flourish of trumpets, having
the first lord of the treasury on his right hand, and the chief jester
on his left. Pekin gloried in the spectacle; and in the whole flowery
people, constructively present by representation, there was but one
discontented person, and _that_ was the coachman. This mutinous
individual audaciously shouted, "Where am _I_ to sit?" But the
privy council, incensed by his disloyalty, unanimously opened the door,
and kicked him into the inside. He had all the inside places to
himself; but such is the rapacity of ambition that he was still
dissatisfied. "I say," he cried out in an extempore petition addressed
to the Emperor through the window--"I say, how am I to catch hold of
the reins?"--"Anyhow," was the imperial answer; "don't trouble
_me_, man, in my glory. How catch the reins? Why, through the
windows, through the keyholes--_anyhow_." Finally this contumacious
coachman lengthened the check-strings into a sort of jury-reins
communicating with the horses; with these he drove as steadily as Pekin
had any right to expect. The Emperor returned after the briefest of
circuits; he descended in great pomp from his throne, with the severest
resolution never to remount it. A public thanksgiving was ordered for
his majesty's happy escape from the disease of a broken neck; and the
state-coach was dedicated thenceforward as a votive offering to the god
Fo Fo--whom the learned more accurately called Fi Fi.

A revolution of this same Chinese character did young Oxford of that
era effect in the constitution of mail-coach society. It was a perfect
French Revolution; and we had good reason to say, _ça ira_. In
fact, it soon became _too_ popular. The "public"--a well-known
character, particularly disagreeable, though slightly respectable, and
notorious for affecting the chief seats in synagogues--had at first
loudly opposed this revolution; but, when the opposition showed itself
to be ineffectual, our disagreeable friend went into it with headlong
zeal. At first it was a sort of race between us; and, as the public is
usually from thirty to fifty years old, naturally we of young Oxford,
that averaged about twenty, had the advantage. Then the public took to
bribing, giving fees to horse-keepers, &c., who hired out their persons
as warming-pans on the box seat. _That_, you know, was shocking to
all moral sensibilities. Come to bribery, said we, and there is an end
to all morality,--Aristotle's, Zeno's, Cicero's, or anybody's. And,
besides, of what use was it? For _we_ bribed also. And, as our
bribes, to those of the public, were as five shillings to sixpence,
here again young Oxford had the advantage. But the contest was ruinous
to the principles of the stables connected with the mails. This whole
corporation was constantly bribed, rebribed, and often surrebribed; a
mail-coach yard was like the hustings in a contested election; and a
horse-keeper, ostler, or helper, was held by the philosophical at that
time to be the most corrupt character in the nation.

There was an impression upon the public mind, natural enough from the
continually augmenting velocity of the mail, but quite erroneous, that
an outside seat on this class of carriages was a post of danger. On the
contrary, I maintained that, if a man had become nervous from some
gipsy prediction in his childhood, allocating to a particular moon now
approaching some unknown danger, and he should inquire earnestly,
"Whither can I fly for shelter? Is a prison the safest retreat? or a
lunatic hospital? or the British Museum?" I should have replied, "Oh
no; I'll tell you what to do. Take lodgings for the next forty days on
the box of his Majesty's mail. Nobody can touch you there. If it is by
bills at ninety days after date that you are made unhappy--if noters
and protesters are the sort of wretches whose astrological shadows
darken the house of life--then note you what I vehemently protest:
viz., that, no matter though the sheriff and under-sheriff in every
county should be running after you with his _posse_, touch a hair
of your head he cannot whilst you keep house and have your legal
domicile on the box of the mail. It is felony to stop the mail; even
the sheriff cannot do that. And an _extra_ touch of the whip to the
leaders (no great matter if it grazes the sheriff) at any time
guarantees your safety." In fact, a bedroom in a quiet house seems a
safe enough retreat; yet it is liable to its own notorious nuisances--
to robbers by night, to rats, to fire. But the mail laughs at these
terrors. To robbers, the answer is packed up and ready for delivery in
the barrel of the guard's blunderbuss. Rats again! there _are_ none
about mail-coaches any more than snakes in Von Troil's Iceland;
[Footnote: "_Von Troil's Iceland_":--The allusion is to a well-
known chapter in Von Troil's work, entitled, "Concerning the Snakes of
Iceland." The entire chapter consists of these six words--"_There art
no snakes in Iceland_."] except, indeed, now and then a parliamentary
rat, who always hides his shame in what I have shown to be the "coal-
cellar." And, as to fire, I never knew but one in a mail-coach; which
was in the Exeter mail, and caused by an obstinate sailor bound to
Devonport. Jack, making light of the law and the lawgiver that had set
their faces against his offence, insisted on taking up a forbidden seat
[Footnote: "_Forbidden seat_":--The very sternest code of rules was
enforced upon the mails by the Post-office. Throughout England, only
three outsides were allowed, of whom one was to sit on the box, and the
other two immediately behind the box; none, under any pretext, to come
near the guard; an indispensable caution; since else, under the guise
of a passenger, a robber might by any one of a thousand advantages--
which sometimes are created, but always are favoured, by the animation
of frank social intercourse--have disarmed the guard. Beyond the
Scottish border, the regulation was so far relaxed as to allow of
_four_ outsides, but not relaxed at all as to the mode of placing
them. One, as before, was seated on the box, and the other three on the
front of the roof, with a determinate and ample separation from the
little insulated chair of the guard. This relaxation was conceded by
way of compensating to Scotland her disadvantages in point of
population. England, by the superior density of her population, might
always count upon a large fund of profits in the fractional trips of
chance passengers riding for short distances of two or three stages. In
Scotland this chance counted for much less. And therefore, to make good
the deficiency, Scotland was allowed a compensatory profit upon one
_extra_ passenger.] in the rear of the roof, from which he could
exchange his own yarns with those of the guard. No greater offence was
then known to mail-coaches; it was treason, it was _læsa majestas_,
it was by tendency arson; and the ashes of Jack's pipe, falling amongst
the straw of the hinder boot, containing the mail-bags, raised a flame
which (aided by the wind of our motion) threatened a revolution in the
republic of letters. Yet even this left the sanctity of the box
unviolated. In dignified repose, the coachman and myself sat on,
resting with benign composure upon our knowledge that the fire would
have to burn its way through four inside passengers before it could
reach ourselves. I remarked to the coachman, with a quotation from
Virgil's "Æneid" really too hackneyed--

  "Jam proximus ardet
  Ucalegon."

But, recollecting that the Virgilian part of the coachman's education
might have been neglected, I interpreted so far as to say that perhaps
at that moment the flames were catching hold of our worthy brother and
inside passenger, Ucalegon. The coachman made no answer,--which is my
own way when a stranger addresses me either in Syriac or in Coptic; but
by his faint sceptical smile he seemed to insinuate that he knew
better,--for that Ucalegon, as it happened, was not in the way-bill,
and therefore could not have been booked.

No dignity is perfect which does not at some point ally itself with the
mysterious. The connexion of the mail with the state and the executive
government--a connexion obvious, but yet not strictly defined--gave to
the whole mail establishment an official grandeur which did us service
on the roads, and invested us with seasonable terrors. Not the less
impressive were those terrors because their legal limits were
imperfectly ascertained. Look at those turnpike gates: with what
deferential hurry, with what an obedient start, they fly open at our
approach! Look at that long line of carts and carters ahead,
audaciously usurping the very crest of the road. Ah! traitors, they do
not hear us as yet; but, as soon as the dreadful blast of our horn
reaches them with proclamation of our approach, see with what frenzy of
trepidation they fly to their horses' heads, and deprecate our wrath by
the precipitation of their crane-neck quarterings. Treason they feel to
be their crime; each individual carter feels himself under the ban of
confiscation and attainder; his blood is attainted through six
generations; and nothing is wanting but the headsman and his axe, the
block and the sawdust, to close up the vista of his horrors. What!
shall it be within benefit of clergy to delay the king's message on the
high road?--to interrupt the great respirations, ebb and flood,
_systole_ and _diastole_, of the national intercourse?--to endanger the
safety of tidings running day and night between all nations and
languages? Or can it be fancied, amongst the weakest of men, that the
bodies of the criminals will be given up to their widows for Christian
burial? Now, the doubts which were raised as to our powers did more to
wrap them in terror, by wrapping them in uncertainty, than could have
been effected by the sharpest definitions of the law from the Quarter
Sessions. We, on our parts (we, the collective mail, I mean), did our
utmost to exalt the idea of our privileges by the insolence with which
we wielded them. Whether this insolence rested upon law that gave it a
sanction, or upon conscious power that haughtily dispensed with that
sanction, equally it spoke from a potential station; and the agent, in
each particular insolence of the moment, was viewed reverentially, as
one having authority.

Sometimes after breakfast his Majesty's mail would become frisky; and,
in its difficult wheelings amongst the intricacies of early markets, it
would upset an apple-cart, a cart loaded with eggs, &c. Huge was the
affliction and dismay, awful was the smash. I, as far as possible,
endeavoured in such a case to represent the conscience and moral
sensibilities of the mail; and, when wildernesses of eggs were lying
poached under our horses' hoofs, then would I stretch forth my hands in
sorrow, saying (in words too celebrated at that time, from the false
echoes [Footnote: "_False echoes_":--Yes, false! for the words
ascribed to Napoleon, as breathed to the memory of Desaix, never were
uttered at all. They stand in the same category of theatrical fictions
as the cry of the foundering line-of-battle ship _Vengeur_, as the
vaunt of General Cambronne at Waterloo, "La Garde meurt, mais ne se
rend pas," or as the repartees of Talleyrand.] of Marengo), "Ah!
wherefore have we not time to weep over you?"--which was evidently
impossible, since, in fact, we had not time to laugh over them. Tied to
post-office allowance in some cases of fifty minutes for eleven miles,
could the royal mail pretend to undertake the offices of sympathy and
condolence? Could it be expected to provide tears for the accidents of
the road? If even it seemed to trample on humanity, it did so, I felt,
in discharge of its own more peremptory duties.

Upholding the morality of the mail, _a fortiori_ I upheld its
rights; as a matter of duty, I stretched to the uttermost its privilege
of imperial precedency, and astonished weak minds by the feudal powers
which I hinted to be lurking constructively in the charters of this
proud establishment. Once I remember being on the box of the Holyhead
mail, between Shrewsbury and Oswestry, when a tawdry thing from
Birmingham, some "Tallyho" or "Highflyer," all flaunting with green and
gold, came up alongside of us. What a contrast to our royal simplicity
of form and colour in this plebeian wretch! The single ornament on our
dark ground of chocolate colour was the mighty shield of the imperial
arms, but emblazoned in proportions as modest as a signet-ring bears to
a seal of office. Even this was displayed only on a single panel,
whispering, rather than proclaiming, our relations to the mighty state;
whilst the beast from Birmingham, our green-and-gold friend from false,
fleeting, perjured Brummagem, had as much writing and painting on its
sprawling flanks as would have puzzled a decipherer from the tombs of
Luxor. For some time this Birmingham machine ran along by our side--a
piece of familiarity that already of itself seemed to me sufficiently
Jacobinical. But all at once a movement of the horses announced a
desperate intention of leaving us behind. "Do you see _that?_" I
said to the coachman.--"I see," was his short answer. He was wide
awake,--yet he waited longer than seemed prudent; for the horses of our
audacious opponent had a disagreeable air of freshness and power. But
his motive was loyal; his wish was that the Birmingham conceit should
be full-blown before he froze it. When _that_ seemed right, he
unloosed, or, to speak by a stronger word, he _sprang_, his known
resources: he slipped our royal horses like cheetahs, or hunting-
leopards, after the affrighted game. How they could retain such a
reserve of fiery power after the work they had accomplished seemed hard
to explain. But on our side, besides the physical superiority, was a
tower of moral strength, namely the king's name, "which they upon the
adverse faction wanted." Passing them without an effort, as it seemed,
we threw them into the rear with so lengthening an interval between us
as proved in itself the bitterest mockery of their presumption; whilst
our guard blew back a shattering blast of triumph that was really too
painfully full of derision.

I mention this little incident for its connexion with what followed. A
Welsh rustic, sitting behind me, asked if I had not felt my heart burn
within me during the progress of the race? I said, with philosophic
calmness, _No_; because we were not racing with a mail, so that no
glory could be gained. In fact, it was sufficiently mortifying that
such a Birmingham thing should dare to challenge us. The Welshman
replied that he didn't see _that_; for that a cat might look at a
king, and a Brummagem coach might lawfully race the Holyhead mail.
"_Race_ us, if you like," I replied, "though even _that_ has an
air of sedition; but not _beat_ us. This would have been treason;
and for its own sake I am glad that the 'Tallyho' was disappointed." So
dissatisfied did the Welshman seem with this opinion that at last I was
obliged to tell him a very fine story from one of our elder dramatists:
viz., that once, in some far Oriental kingdom, when the sultan of all
the land, with his princes, ladies, and chief omrahs, were flying their
falcons, a hawk suddenly flew at a majestic eagle, and, in defiance of
the eagle's natural advantages, in contempt also of the eagle's
traditional royalty, and before the whole assembled field of astonished
spectators from Agra and Lahore, killed the eagle on the spot.
Amazement seized the sultan at the unequal contest, and burning
admiration for its unparalleled result. He commanded that the hawk
should be brought before him; he caressed the bird with enthusiasm; and
he ordered that, for the commemoration of his matchless courage, a
diadem of gold and rubies should be solemnly placed on the hawk's head,
but then that, immediately after this solemn coronation, the bird
should be led off to execution, as the most valiant indeed of traitors,
but not the less a traitor, as having dared to rise rebelliously
against his liege lord and anointed sovereign, the eagle. "Now," said I
to the Welshman, "to you and me, as men of refined sensibilities, how
painful it would have been that this poor Brummagem brute, the
'Tallyho,' in the impossible case of a victory over us, should have
been crowned with Birmingham tinsel, with paste diamonds and Roman
pearls, and then led off to instant execution." The Welshman doubted if
that could be warranted by law. And, when I hinted at the 6th of Edward
Longshanks, chap. 18, for regulating the precedency of coaches, as
being probably the statute relied on for the capital punishment of such
offences, he replied drily that, if the attempt to pass a mail really
were treasonable, it was a pity that the "Tallyho" appeared to have so
imperfect an acquaintance with law.

The modern modes of travelling cannot compare with the old mail-coach
system in grandeur and power. They boast of more velocity,--not,
however, as a consciousness, but as a fact of our lifeless knowledge,
resting upon _alien_ evidence: as, for instance, because somebody
_says_ that we have gone fifty miles in the hour, though we are far
from feeling it as a personal experience; or upon the evidence of a
result, as that actually we find ourselves in York four hours after
leaving London. Apart from such an assertion, or such a result, I
myself am little aware of the pace. But, seated on the old mail-coach,
we needed no evidence out of ourselves to indicate the velocity. On
this system the word was not _magna loquimur_, as upon railways,
but _vivimus_. Yes, "magna _vivimus_"; we do not make verbal
ostentation of our grandeurs, we realise our grandeurs in act, and in
the very experience of life. The vital experience of the glad animal
sensibilities made doubts impossible on the question of our speed; we
heard our speed, we saw it, we felt it as a thrilling; and this speed
was not the product of blind insensate agencies, that had no sympathy
to give, but was incarnated in the fiery eyeballs of the noblest
amongst brutes, in his dilated nostril, spasmodic muscles, and thunder-
beating hoofs. The sensibility of the horse, uttering itself in the
maniac light of his eye, might be the last vibration of such a
movement; the glory of Salamanca might be the first. But the
intervening links that connected them, that spread the earthquake of
battle into the eyeballs of the horse, were the heart of man and its
electric thrillings--kindling in the rapture of the fiery strife, and
then propagating its own tumults by contagious shouts and gestures to
the heart of his servant the horse. But now, on the new system of
travelling, iron tubes and boilers have disconnected man's heart from
the ministers of his locomotion. Nile nor Trafalgar has power to raise
an extra bubble in a steam-kettle. The galvanic cycle is broken up for
ever; man's imperial nature no longer sends itself forward through the
electric sensibility of the horse; the inter-agencies are gone in the
mode of communication between the horse and his master out of which
grew so many aspects of sublimity under accidents of mists that hid, or
sudden blazes that revealed, of mobs that agitated, or midnight
solitudes that awed. Tidings fitted to convulse all nations must
henceforwards travel by culinary process; and the trumpet that once
announced from afar the laurelled mail, heart-shaking when heard
screaming on the wind and proclaiming itself through the darkness to
every village or solitary house on its route, has now given way for
ever to the pot-wallopings of the boiler. Thus have perished multiform
openings for public expressions of interest, scenical yet natural, in
great national tidings,--for revelations of faces and groups that could
not offer themselves amongst the fluctuating mobs of a railway station.
The gatherings of gazers about a laurelled mail had one centre, and
acknowledged one sole interest. But the crowds attending at a railway
station have as little unity as running water, and own as many centres
as there are separate carriages in the train.

How else, for example, than as a constant watcher for the dawn, and for
the London mail that in summer months entered about daybreak amongst
the lawny thickets of Maryborough forest, couldst thou, sweet Fanny of
the Bath road, have become the glorified inmate of my dreams? Yet
Fanny, as the loveliest young woman for face and person that perhaps in
my whole life I have beheld, merited the station which even now, from a
distance of forty years, she holds in my dreams; yes, though by links
of natural association she brings along with her a troop of dreadful
creatures, fabulous and not fabulous, that are more abominable to the
heart than Fanny and the dawn are delightful.

Miss Fanny of the Bath road, strictly speaking, lived at a mile's
distance from that road, but came so continually to meet the mail that
I on my frequent transits rarely missed her, and naturally connected
her image with the great thoroughfare where only I had ever seen her.
Why she came so punctually I do not exactly know; but I believe with
some burden of commissions, to be executed in Bath, which had gathered
to her own residence as a central rendezvous for converging them. The
mail-coachman who drove the Bath mail and wore the royal livery
[Footnote: "Wore the royal livery":--The general impression was that
the royal livery belonged of right to the mail-coachmen as their
professional dress. But that was an error. To the guard it _did_
belong, I believe, and was obviously essential as an official warrant,
and as a means of instant identification for his person, in the
discharge of his important public duties. But the coachman, and
especially if his place in the series did not connect him immediately
with London and the General Post-Office, obtained the scarlet coat only
as an honorary distinction after long (or, if not long, trying and
special) service.] happened to be Fanny's grandfather. A good man he
was, that loved his beautiful granddaughter, and, loving her wisely,
was vigilant over her deportment in any case where young Oxford might
happen to be concerned. Did my vanity then suggest that I myself,
individually, could fall within the line of his terrors? Certainly not,
as regarded any physical pretensions that I could plead; for Fanny (as
a chance passenger from her own neighbourhood once told me) counted in
her train a hundred and ninety-nine professed admirers, if not open
aspirants to her favour; and probably not one of the whole brigade but
excelled myself in personal advantages. Ulysses even, with the unfair
advantage of his accursed bow, could hardly have undertaken that amount
of suitors. So the danger might have seemed slight--only that woman is
universally aristocratic; it is amongst her nobilities of heart that
she _is_ so. Now, the aristocratic distinctions in my favour might
easily with Miss Fanny have compensated my physical deficiencies. Did I
then make love to Fanny? Why, yes; about as much love as one
_could_ make whilst the mail was changing horses--a process which,
ten years later, did not occupy above eighty seconds; but _then_,--
viz., about Waterloo--it occupied five times eighty. Now, four hundred
seconds offer a field quite ample enough for whispering into a young
woman's ear a great deal of truth, and (by way of parenthesis) some
trifle of falsehood. Grandpapa did right, therefore, to watch me. And
yet, as happens too often to the grandpapas of earth in a contest with
the admirers of granddaughters, how vainly would he have watched me had
I meditated any evil whispers to Fanny! She, it is my belief, would
have protected herself against any man's evil suggestions. But he, as
the result showed, could not have intercepted the opportunities for
such suggestions. Yet, why not? Was he not active? Was he not blooming?
Blooming he was as Fanny herself.

"Say, all our praises why should lords----"

Stop, that's not the line.

"Say, all our roses why should girls engross?"

The coachman showed rosy blossoms on his face deeper even than his
granddaughter's--_his_ being drawn from the ale-cask, Fanny's from
the fountains of the dawn. But, in spite of his blooming face, some
infirmities he had; and one particularly in which he too much resembled
a crocodile. This lay in a monstrous inaptitude for turning round. The
crocodile, I presume, owes that inaptitude to the absurd _length_
of his back; but in our grandpapa it arose rather from the absurd
_breadth_ of his back, combined, possibly, with some growing
stiffness in his legs. Now, upon this crocodile infirmity of his I
planted a human advantage for tendering my homage to Miss Fanny. In
defiance of all his honourable vigilance, no sooner had he presented to
us his mighty Jovian back (what a field for displaying to mankind his
royal scarlet!), whilst inspecting professionally the buckles, the
straps, and the silvery turrets [Footnote: "_Turrets_":--As one who
loves and venerates Chaucer for his unrivalled merits of tenderness, of
picturesque characterisation, and of narrative skill, I noticed with
great pleasure that the word _torrettes_ is used by him to designate
the little devices through which the reins are made to pass. This same
word, in the same exact sense, I heard uniformly used by many scores of
illustrious mail-coachmen to whose confidential friendship I had the
honour of being admitted in my younger days.] of his harness, than I
raised Miss Fanny's hand to my lips, and, by the mixed tenderness and
respectfulness of my manner, caused her easily to understand how happy
it would make me to rank upon her list as No. 10 or 12: in which case a
few casualties amongst her lovers (and, observe, they _hanged_
liberally in those days) might have promoted me speedily to the top of
the tree; as, on the other hand, with how much loyalty of submission I
acquiesced by anticipation in her award, supposing that she should
plant me in the very rearward of her favour, as No. 199 + 1. Most truly
I loved this beautiful and ingenuous girl; and, had it not been for the
Bath mail, timing all courtships by post- office allowance, heaven only
knows what might have come of it. People talk of being over head and
ears in love; now, the mail was the cause that I sank only over ears in
love,--which, you know, still left a trifle of brain to overlook the
whole conduct of the affair.

Ah, reader! when I look back upon those days, it seems to me that all
things change--all things perish. "Perish the roses and the palms of
kings": perish even the crowns and trophies of Waterloo: thunder and
lightning are not the thunder and lightning which I remember. Roses are
degenerating. The Fannies of our island--though this I say with
reluctance--are not visibly improving; and the Bath road is notoriously
superannuated. Crocodiles, you will say, are stationary. Mr. Waterton
tells me that the crocodile does _not change_,--that a cayman, in
fact, or an alligator, is just as good for riding upon as he was in the
time of the Pharaohs. _That_ may be; but the reason is that the
crocodile does not live fast--he is a slow coach. I believe it is
generally understood among naturalists that the crocodile is a
blockhead. It is my own impression that the Pharaohs were also
blockheads. Now, as the Pharaohs and the crocodile domineered over
Egyptian society, this accounts for a singular mistake that prevailed
through innumerable generations on the Nile. The crocodile made the
ridiculous blunder of supposing man to be meant chiefly for his own
eating. Man, taking a different view of the subject, naturally met that
mistake by another: he viewed the crocodile as a thing sometimes to
worship, but always to run away from. And this continued till Mr.
Waterton [Footnote: "_Mr. Waterton_":--Had the reader lived through
the last generation, he would not need to be told that, some thirty or
thirty-five years back, Mr. Waterton, a distinguished country gentleman
of ancient family in Northumberland, publicly mounted and rode in top-
boots a savage old crocodile, that was restive and very impertinent,
but all to no purpose. The crocodile jibbed and tried to kick, but
vainly. He was no more able to throw the squire than Sinbad was to
throw the old scoundrel who used his back without paying for it, until
he discovered a mode (slightly immoral, perhaps, though some think not)
of murdering the old fraudulent jockey, and so circuitously of
unhorsing him.] changed the relations between the animals. The mode of
escaping from the reptile he showed to be not by running away, but by
leaping on its back booted and spurred. The two animals had
misunderstood each other. The use of the crocodile has now been cleared
up--viz., to be ridden; and the final cause of man is that he may
improve the health of the crocodile by riding him a-fox-hunting before
breakfast. And it is pretty certain that any crocodile who has been
regularly hunted through the season, and is master of the weight he
carries, will take a six-barred gate now as well as ever he would have
done in the infancy of the pyramids.

If, therefore, the crocodile does _not_ change, all things else
undeniably _do_: even the shadow of the pyramids grows less. And
often the restoration in vision of Fanny and the Bath road makes me too
pathetically sensible of that truth. Out of the darkness, if I happen
to call back the image of Fanny, up rises suddenly from a gulf of forty
years a rose in June; or, if I think for an instant of the rose in
June, up rises the heavenly face of Fanny. One after the other, like
the antiphonies in the choral service, rise Fanny and the rose in June,
then back again the rose in June and Fanny. Then come both together, as
in a chorus--roses and Fannies, Fannies and roses, without end, thick
as blossoms in paradise. Then comes a venerable crocodile, in a royal
livery of scarlet and gold, with sixteen capes; and the crocodile is
driving four-in-hand from the box of the Bath mail. And suddenly we
upon the mail are pulled up by a mighty dial, sculptured with the
hours, that mingle with the heavens and the heavenly host. Then all at
once we are arrived at Marlborough forest, amongst the lovely
households [Footnote: "_Households_":--Roe-deer do not congregate
in herds like the fallow or the red deer, but by separate families,
parents and children; which feature of approximation to the sanctity of
human hearths, added to their comparatively miniature and graceful
proportions, conciliates to them an interest of peculiar tenderness,
supposing even that this beautiful creature is less characteristically
impressed with the grandeurs of savage and forest life.] of the roe-
deer; the deer and their fawns retire into the dewy thickets; the
thickets are rich with roses; once again the roses call up the sweet
countenance of Fanny; and she, being the granddaughter of a crocodile,
awakens a dreadful host of semi-legendary animals--griffins, dragons,
basilisks, sphinxes--till at length the whole vision of fighting images
crowds into one towering armorial shield, a vast emblazonry of human
charities and human loveliness that have perished, but quartered
heraldically with unutterable and demoniac natures, whilst over all
rises, as a surmounting crest, one fair female hand, with the
forefinger pointing, in sweet, sorrowful admonition, upwards to heaven,
where is sculptured the eternal writing which proclaims the frailty of
earth and her children.


GOING DOWN WITH VICTORY


But the grandest chapter of our experience within the whole mail-coach
service was on those occasions when we went down from London with the
news of victory. A period of about ten years stretched from Trafalgar
to Waterloo; the second and third years of which period (1806 and 1807)
were comparatively sterile; but the other nine (from 1805 to 1815
inclusively) furnished a long succession of victories, the least of
which, in such a contest of Titans, had an inappreciable value of
position: partly for its absolute interference with the plans of our
enemy, but still more from its keeping alive through central Europe the
sense of a deep-seated vulnerability in France. Even to tease the
coasts of our enemy, to mortify them by continual blockades, to insult
them by capturing if it were but a baubling schooner under the eyes of
their arrogant armies, repeated from time to time a sullen proclamation
of power lodged in one quarter to which the hopes of Christendom turned
in secret. How much more loudly must this proclamation have spoken in
the audacity [Footnote: "_Audacity_":--Such the French accounted
it; and it has struck me that Soult would not have been so popular in
London, at the period of her present Majesty's coronation, or in
Manchester, on occasion of his visit to that town, if they had been
aware of the insolence with which he spoke of us in notes written at
intervals from the field of Waterloo. As though it had been mere felony
in our army to look a French one in the face, he said in more notes
than one, dated from two to four P.M. on the field of Waterloo, "Here
are the English--we have them; they are caught _en flagrant délit_"
Yet no man should have known us better; no man had drunk deeper from
the cup of humiliation than Soult had in 1809, when ejected by us with
headlong violence from Oporto, and pursued through a long line of
wrecks to the frontier of Spain; and subsequently at Albuera, in the
bloodiest of recorded battles, to say nothing of Toulouse, he should
have learned our pretensions.] of having bearded the _élite_ of
their troops, and having beaten them in pitched battles! Five years of
life it was worth paying down for the privilege of an outside place on
a mail-coach, when carrying down the first tidings of any such event.
And it is to be noted that, from our insular situation, and the
multitude of our frigates disposable for the rapid transmission of
intelligence, rarely did any unauthorised rumour steal away a
prelibation from the first aroma of the regular despatches. The
government news was generally the earliest news.

From eight P.M. to fifteen or twenty minutes later imagine the mails
assembled on parade in Lombard Street; where, at that time, [Footnote:
"_At that time_":--I speak of the era previous to Waterloo.] and
not in St. Martin's-le-Grand, was seated the General Post-Office. In
what exact strength we mustered I do not remember; but, from the length
of each separate _attelage_, we filled the street, though a long
one, and though we were drawn up in double file. On _any_ night the
spectacle was beautiful. The absolute perfection of all the
appointments about the carriages and the harness, their strength, their
brilliant cleanliness, their beautiful simplicity--but, more than all,
the royal magnificence of the horses--were what might first have fixed
the attention. Every carriage on every morning in the year was taken
down to an official inspector for examination: wheels, axles,
linchpins, pole, glasses, lamps, were all critically probed and tested.
Every part of every carriage had been cleaned, every horse had been
groomed, with as much rigour as if they belonged to a private
gentleman; and that part of the spectacle offered itself always. But
the night before us is a night of victory; and, behold! to the ordinary
display what a heart-shaking addition!--horses, men, carriages, all are
dressed in laurels and flowers, oak-leaves and ribbons. The guards, as
being officially his Majesty's servants, and of the coachmen such as
are within the privilege of the post-office, wear the royal liveries of
course; and, as it is summer (for all the _land_ victories were
naturally won in summer), they wear, on this fine evening, these
liveries exposed to view, without any covering of upper coats. Such a
costume, and the elaborate arrangement of the laurels in their hats,
dilate their hearts, by giving to them openly a personal connexion with
the great news in which already they have the general interest of
patriotism. That great national sentiment surmounts and quells all
sense of ordinary distinctions. Those passengers who happen to be
gentlemen are now hardly to be distinguished as such except by dress;
for the usual reserve of their manner in speaking to the attendants has
on this night melted away. One heart, one pride, one glory, connects
every man by the transcendent bond of his national blood. The
spectators, who are numerous beyond precedent, express their sympathy
with these fervent feelings by continual hurrahs. Every moment are
shouted aloud by the post-office servants, and summoned to draw up, the
great ancestral names of cities known to history through a thousand
years--Lincoln, Winchester, Portsmouth, Gloucester, Oxford, Bristol,
Manchester, York, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Perth, Stirling,
Aberdeen--expressing the grandeur of the empire by the antiquity of its
towns, and the grandeur of the mail establishment by the diffusive
radiation of its separate missions. Every moment you hear the thunder
of lids locked down upon the mail-bags. That sound to each individual
mail is the signal for drawing off; which process is the finest part of
the entire spectacle. Then come the horses into play. Horses! can these
be horses that bound off with the action and gestures of leopards? What
stir!--what sea-like ferment!--what a thundering of wheels!--what a
trampling of hoofs!--what a sounding of trumpets!--what farewell
cheers--what redoubling peals of brotherly congratulation, connecting
the name of the particular mail--"Liverpool for ever!"--with the name
of the particular victory--"Badajoz for ever!" or "Salamanca for ever!"
The half-slumbering consciousness that all night long, and all the next
day--perhaps for even a longer period--many of these mails, like fire
racing along a train of gunpowder, will be kindling at every instant
new successions of burning joy, has an obscure effect of multiplying
the victory itself, by multiplying to the imagination into infinity the
stages of its progressive diffusion. A fiery arrow seems to be let
loose, which from that moment is destined to travel, without
intermission, westwards for three hundred [Footnote: "_Three
hundred_":--Of necessity, this scale of measurement, to an American,
if he happens to be a thoughtless man, must sound ludicrous.
Accordingly, I remember a case in which an American writer indulges
himself in the luxury of a little fibbing, by ascribing to an
Englishman a pompous account of the Thames, constructed entirely upon
American ideas of grandeur, and concluding in something like these
terms:--"And, sir, arriving at London, this mighty father of rivers
attains a breadth of at least two furlongs, having, in its winding
course, traversed the astonishing distance of one hundred and seventy
miles." And this the candid American thinks it fair to contrast with
the scale of the Mississippi. Now, it is hardly worth while to answer a
pure fiction gravely; else one might say that no Englishman out of
Bedlam ever thought of looking in an island for the rivers of a
continent, nor, consequently, could have thought of looking for the
peculiar grandeur of the Thames in the length of its course, or in the
extent of soil which it drains. Yet, if he _had_ been so absurd,
the American might have recollected that a river, not to be compared
with the Thames even as to volume of water--viz., the Tiber--has
contrived to make itself heard of in this world for twenty-five
centuries to an extent not reached as yet by any river, however
corpulent, of his own land. The glory of the Thames is measured by the
destiny of the population to which it ministers, by the commerce which
it supports, by the grandeur of the empire in which, though far from
the largest, it is the most influential stream. Upon some such scale,
and not by a transfer of Columbian standards, is the course of our
English mails to be valued. The American may fancy the effect of his
own valuations to our English ears by supposing the case of a Siberian
glorifying his country in these terms:--"These wretches, sir, in France
and England, cannot march half a mile in any direction without finding
a house where food can be had and lodging; whereas such is the noble
desolation of our magnificent country that in many a direction for a
thousand miles I will engage that a dog shall not find shelter from a
snow-storm, nor a wren find an apology for breakfast."] miles--
northwards for six hundred; and the sympathy of our Lombard Street
friends at parting is exalted a hundredfold by a sort of visionary
sympathy with the yet slumbering sympathies which in so vast a
succession we are going to awake.

Liberated from the embarrassments of the city, and issuing into the
broad uncrowded avenues of the northern suburbs, we soon begin to enter
upon our natural pace of ten miles an hour. In the broad light of the
summer evening, the sun, perhaps, only just at the point of setting, we
are seen from every storey of every house. Heads of every age crowd to
the windows; young and old understand the language of our victorious
symbols; and rolling volleys of sympathising cheers run along us,
behind us, and before us. The beggar, rearing himself against the wall,
forgets his lameness--real or assumed--thinks not of his whining trade,
but stands erect, with bold exulting smiles, as we pass him. The
victory has healed him, and says, Be thou whole! Women and children,
from garrets alike and cellars, through infinite London, look down or
look up with loving eyes upon our gay ribbons and our martial laurels;
sometimes kiss their hands; sometimes hang out, as signals of
affection, pocket-handkerchiefs, aprons, dusters, anything that, by
catching the summer breezes, will express an aerial jubilation. On the
London side of Barnet, to which we draw near within a few minutes after
nine, observe that private carriage which is approaching us. The
weather being so warm, the glasses are all down; and one may read, as
on the stage of a theatre, everything that goes on within. It contains
three ladies--one likely to be "mamma," and two of seventeen or
eighteen, who are probably her daughters. What lovely animation, what
beautiful unpremeditated pantomime, explaining to us every syllable
that passes, in these ingenuous girls! By the sudden start and raising
of the hands on first discovering our laurelled equipage, by the sudden
movement and appeal to the elder lady from both of them, and by the
heightened colour on their animated countenances, we can almost hear
them saying, "See, see! Look at their laurels! Oh, mamma! there has
been a great battle in Spain; and it has been a great victory." In a
moment we are on the point of passing them. We passengers--I on the
box, and the two on the roof behind me--raise our hats to the ladies;
the coachman makes his professional salute with the whip; the guard
even, though punctilious on the matter of his dignity as an officer
under the crown, touches his hat. The ladies move to us, in return,
with a winning graciousness of gesture; all smile on each side in a way
that nobody could misunderstand, and that nothing short of a grand
national sympathy could so instantaneously prompt. Will these ladies
say that we are nothing to _them_? Oh no; they will not say
_that_. They cannot deny--they do not deny--that for this night
they are our sisters; gentle or simple, scholar or illiterate servant,
for twelve hours to come, we on the outside have the honour to be their
brothers. Those poor women, again, who stop to gaze upon us with
delight at the entrance of Barnet, and seem, by their air of weariness,
to be returning from labour--do you mean to say that they are
washerwomen and charwomen? Oh, my poor friend, you are quite mistaken.
I assure you they stand in a far higher rank; for this one night they
feel themselves by birthright to be daughters of England, and answer to
no humbler title.

Every joy, however, even rapturous joy--such is the sad law of earth--
may carry with it grief, or fear of grief, to some. Three miles beyond
Barnet, we see approaching us another private carriage, nearly
repeating the circumstances of the former case. Here, also, the glasses
are all down; here, also, is an elderly lady seated; but the two
daughters are missing; for the single young person sitting by the
lady's side seems to be an attendant--so I judge from her dress, and
her air of respectful reserve. The lady is in mourning; and her
countenance expresses sorrow. At first she does not look up; so that I
believe she is not aware of our approach, until she hears the measured
beating of our horses' hoofs. Then she raises her eyes to settle them
painfully on our triumphal equipage. Our decorations explain the case
to her at once; but she beholds them with apparent anxiety, or even
with terror. Some time before this, I, finding it difficult to hit a
flying mark when embarrassed by the coachman's person and reins
intervening, had given to the guard a "Courier" evening paper,
containing the gazette, for the next carriage that might pass.
Accordingly he tossed it in, so folded that the huge capitals
expressing some such legend as GLORIOUS VICTORY might catch the eye at
once. To see the paper, however, at all, interpreted as it was by our
ensigns of triumph, explained everything; and, if the guard were right
in thinking the lady to have received it with a gesture of horror, it
could not be doubtful that she had suffered some deep personal
affliction in connexion with this Spanish war.

Here, now, was the case of one who, having formerly suffered, might,
erroneously perhaps, be distressing herself with anticipations of
another similar suffering. That same night, and hardly three hours
later, occurred the reverse case. A poor woman, who too probably would
find herself, in a day or two, to have suffered the heaviest of
afflictions by the battle, blindly allowed herself to express an
exultation so unmeasured in the news and its details as gave to her the
appearance which amongst Celtic Highlanders is called _fey_. This
was at some little town where we changed horses an hour or two after
midnight. Some fair or wake had kept the people up out of their beds,
and had occasioned a partial illumination of the stalls and booths,
presenting an unusual but very impressive effect. We saw many lights
moving about as we drew near; and perhaps the most striking scene on
the whole route was our reception at this place. The flashing of
torches and the beautiful radiance of blue lights (technically, Bengal
lights) upon the heads of our horses; the fine effect of such a showery
and ghostly illumination falling upon our flowers and glittering
laurels [Footnote: "_Glittering laurels_":--I must observe that the
colour of _green_ suffers almost a spiritual change and exaltation
under the effect of Bengal lights.]; whilst all around ourselves, that
formed a centre of light, the darkness gathered on the rear and flanks
in massy blackness: these optical splendours, together with the
prodigious enthusiasm of the people, composed a picture at once
scenical and affecting, theatrical and holy. As we staid for three or
four minutes, I alighted; and immediately from a dismantled stall in
the street, where no doubt she had been presiding through the earlier
part of the night, advanced eagerly a middle-aged woman. The sight of
my newspaper it was that had drawn her attention upon myself. The
victory which we were carrying down to the provinces on _this_
occasion was the imperfect one of Talavera--imperfect for its results,
such was the virtual treachery of the Spanish general, Cuesta, but not
imperfect in its ever-memorable heroism. I told her the main outline of
the battle. The agitation of her enthusiasm had been so conspicuous
when listening, and when first applying for information, that I could
not but ask her if she had not some relative in the Peninsular army. Oh
yes; her only son was there. In what regiment? He was a trooper in the
23d Dragoons. My heart sank within me as she made that answer. This
sublime regiment, which an Englishman should never mention without
raising his hat to their memory, had made the most memorable and
effective charge recorded in military annals. They leaped their horses
--_over_ a trench where they could; _into_ it, and with the result of
death or mutilation, when they could _not_. What proportion cleared the
trench is nowhere stated. Those who _did_ closed up and went down upon
the enemy with such divinity of fervour (I use the word _divinity_ by
design: the inspiration of God must have prompted this movement for
those whom even then He was calling to His presence) that two results
followed. As regarded the enemy, this 23d Dragoons, not, I believe,
originally three hundred and fifty strong, paralysed a French column
six thousand strong, then ascended the hill, and fixed the gaze of the
whole French army. As regarded themselves, the 23d were supposed at
first to have been barely not annihilated; but eventually, I believe,
about one in four survived. And this, then, was the regiment--a
regiment already for some hours glorified and hallowed to the ear of
all London, as lying stretched, by a large majority, upon one bloody
aceldama--in which the young trooper served whose mother was now
talking in a spirit of such joyous enthusiasm. Did I tell her the
truth? Had I the heart to break up her dreams? No. To-morrow, said I to
myself--to-morrow, or the next day, will publish the worst. For one
night more wherefore should she not sleep in peace? After to-morrow the
chances are too many that peace will forsake her pillow. This brief
respite, then, let her owe to _my_ gift and _my_ forbearance. But, if I
told her not of the bloody price that had been paid, not therefore was
I silent on the contributions from her son's regiment to that day's
service and glory. I showed her not the funeral banners under which the
noble regiment was sleeping. I lifted not the overshadowing laurels
from the bloody trench in which horse and rider lay mangled together.
But I told her how these dear children of England, officers and
privates, had leaped their horses over all obstacles as gaily as
hunters to the morning's chase. I told her how they rode their horses
into the midst of death,--saying to myself, but not saying to _her_
"and laid down their young lives for thee, O mother England! as
willingly--poured out their noble blood as cheerfully--as ever, after a
long day's sport, when infants, they had rested their weary heads upon
their mother's knees, or had sunk to sleep in her arms." Strange it is,
yet true, that she seemed to have no fears for her son's safety, even
after this knowledge that the 23d Dragoons had been memorably engaged;
but so much was she enraptured by the knowledge that _his_ regiment,
and therefore that _he_, had rendered conspicuous service in the
dreadful conflict--a service which had actually made them, within the
last twelve hours, the foremost topic of conversation in London--so
absolutely was fear swallowed up in joy--that, in the mere simplicity
of her fervent nature, the poor woman threw her arms round my neck, as
she thought of her son, and gave to _me_ the kiss which secretly was
meant for _him_.


SECTION II--THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH


What is to be taken as the predominant opinion of man, reflective and
philosophic, upon SUDDEN DEATH? It is remarkable that, in different
conditions of society, sudden death has been variously regarded as the
consummation of an earthly career most fervently to be desired, or,
again, as that consummation which is with most horror to be deprecated.
Cæsar the Dictator, at his last dinner-party (_coena_), on the very
evening before his assassination, when the minutes of his earthly
career were numbered, being asked what death, in _his_ judgment,
might be pronounced the most eligible, replied "That which should be
most sudden." On the other hand, the divine Litany of our English
Church, when breathing forth supplications, as if in some
representative character, for the whole human race prostrate before
God, places such a death in the very van of horrors: "From lightning
and tempest; from plague, pestilence, and famine; from battle and
murder, and from SUDDEN DEATH--_Good Lord, deliver us_." Sudden
death is here made to crown the climax in a grand ascent of calamities;
it is ranked among the last of curses; and yet by the noblest of Romans
it was ranked as the first of blessings. In that difference most
readers will see little more than the essential difference between
Christianity and Paganism. But this, on consideration, I doubt. The
Christian Church may be right in its estimate of sudden death; and it
is a natural feeling, though after all it may also be an infirm one, to
wish for a quiet dismissal from life, as that which _seems_ most
reconcilable with meditation, with penitential retrospects, and with
the humilities of farewell prayer. There does not, however, occur to me
any direct scriptural warrant for this earnest petition of the English
Litany, unless under a special construction of the word "sudden." It
seems a petition indulged rather and conceded to human infirmity than
exacted from human piety. It is not so much a doctrine built upon the
eternities of the Christian system as a plausible opinion built upon
special varieties of physical temperament. Let that, however, be as it
may, two remarks suggest themselves as prudent restraints upon a
doctrine which else _may_ wander, and _has_ wandered, into an
uncharitable superstition. The first is this: that many people are
likely to exaggerate the horror of a sudden death from the disposition
to lay a false stress upon words or acts simply because by an accident
they have become _final_ words or acts. If a man dies, for
instance, by some sudden death when he happens to be intoxicated, such
a death is falsely regarded with peculiar horror; as though the
intoxication were suddenly exalted into a blasphemy. But _that_ is
unphilosophic. The man was, or he was not, _habitually_ a drunkard.
If not, if his intoxication were a solitary accident, there can be no
reason for allowing special emphasis to this act simply because through
misfortune it became his final act. Nor, on the other hand, if it were
no accident, but one of his _habitual_ transgressions, will it be
the more habitual or the more a transgression because some sudden
calamity, surprising him, has caused this habitual transgression to be
also a final one. Could the man have had any reason even dimly to
foresee his own sudden death, there would have been a new feature in
his act of intemperance--a feature of presumption and irreverence, as
in one that, having known himself drawing near to the presence of God,
should have suited his demeanour to an expectation so awful. But this
is no part of the case supposed. And the only new element in the man's
act is not any element of special immorality, but simply of special
misfortune.

The other remark has reference to the meaning of the word _sudden_.
Very possibly Cæsar and the Christian Church do not differ in the way
supposed,--that is, do not differ by any difference of doctrine as
between Pagan and Christian views of the moral temper appropriate to
death; but perhaps they are contemplating different cases. Both
contemplate a violent death, a _Biathanatos_--death that is
_biaios_, or, in other words, death that is brought about, not by
internal and spontaneous change, but by active force having its origin
from without. In this meaning the two authorities agree. Thus far they
are in harmony. But the difference is that the Roman by the word
"sudden" means _unlingering_, whereas the Christian Litany by
"sudden death" means a death _without warning_, consequently
without any available summons to religious preparation. The poor
mutineer who kneels down to gather into his heart the bullets from
twelve firelocks of his pitying comrades dies by a most sudden death in
Cæsar's sense; one shock, one mighty spasm, one (possibly _not_
one) groan, and all is over. But, in the sense of the Litany, the
mutineer's death is far from sudden: his offence originally, his
imprisonment, his trial, the interval between his sentence and its
execution, having all furnished him with separate warnings of his fate
--having all summoned him to meet it with solemn preparation.

Here at once, in this sharp verbal distinction, we comprehend the
faithful earnestness with which a holy Christian Church pleads on
behalf of her poor departing children that God would vouchsafe to them
the last great privilege and distinction possible on a death-bed, viz.,
the opportunity of untroubled preparation for facing this mighty trial.
Sudden death, as a mere variety in the modes of dying where death in
some shape is inevitable, proposes a question of choice which, equally
in the Roman and the Christian sense, will be variously answered
according to each man's variety of temperament. Meantime, one aspect of
sudden death there is, one modification, upon which no doubt can arise,
that of all martyrdoms it is the most agitating--viz., where it
surprises a man under circumstances which offer (or which seem to
offer) some hurrying, flying, inappreciably minute chance of evading
it. Sudden as the danger which it affronts must be any effort by which
such an evasion can be accomplished. Even _that_, even the sickening
necessity for hurrying in extremity where all hurry seems destined to
be vain,--even that anguish is liable to a hideous exasperation in one
particular case: viz., where the appeal is made not exclusively to the
instinct of self-preservation, but to the conscience, on behalf of some
other life besides your own, accidentally thrown upon _your_
protection. To fail, to collapse in a service merely your own, might
seem comparatively venial; though, in fact, it is far from venial. But
to fail in a case where Providence has suddenly thrown into your hands
the final interests of another,--a fellow creature shuddering between
the gates of life and death: this, to a man of apprehensive conscience,
would mingle the misery of an atrocious criminality with the misery of
a bloody calamity. You are called upon, by the case supposed, possibly
to die, but to die at the very moment when, by any even partial failure
or effeminate collapse of your energies, you will be self-denounced as
a murderer. You had but the twinkling of an eye for your effort, and
that effort might have been unavailing; but to have risen to the level
of such an effort would have rescued you, though not from dying, yet
from dying as a traitor to your final and farewell duty.

The situation here contemplated exposes a dreadful ulcer, lurking far
down in the depths of human nature. It is not that men generally are
summoned to face such awful trials. But potentially, and in shadowy
outline, such a trial is moving subterraneously in perhaps all men's
natures. Upon the secret mirror of our dreams such a trial is darkly
projected, perhaps, to every one of us. That dream, so familiar to
childhood, of meeting a lion, and, through languishing prostration in
hope and the energies of hope, that constant sequel of lying down
before the lion publishes the secret frailty of human nature--reveals
its deep-seated falsehood to itself--records its abysmal treachery.
Perhaps not one of us escapes that dream; perhaps, as by some sorrowful
doom of man, that dream repeats for every one of us, through every
generation, the original temptation in Eden. Every one of us, in this
dream, has a bait offered to the infirm places of his own individual
will; once again a snare is presented for tempting him into captivity
to a luxury of ruin; once again, as in aboriginal Paradise, the man
falls by his own choice; again, by infinite iteration, the ancient
earth groans to Heaven, through her secret caves, over the weakness of
her child. "Nature, from her seat, sighing through all her works,"
again "gives signs of woe that all is lost"; and again the counter-sigh
is repeated to the sorrowing heavens for the endless rebellion against
God. It is not without probability that in the world of dreams every
one of us ratifies for himself the original transgression. In dreams,
perhaps under some secret conflict of the midnight sleeper, lighted up
to the consciousness at the time, but darkened to the memory as soon as
all is finished, each several child of our mysterious race completes
for himself the treason of the aboriginal fall.

The incident, so memorable in itself by its features of horror, and so
scenical by its grouping for the eye, which furnished the text for this
reverie upon _Sudden Death_ occurred to myself in the dead of
night, as a solitary spectator, when seated on the box of the
Manchester and Glasgow mail, in the second or third summer after
Waterloo. I find it necessary to relate the circumstances, because they
are such as could not have occurred unless under a singular combination
of accidents. In those days, the oblique and lateral communications
with many rural post-offices were so arranged, either through necessity
or through defect of system, as to make it requisite for the main
north-western mail (_i.e._, the _down_ mail) on reaching Manchester to
halt for a number of hours; how many, I do not remember; six or seven,
I think; but the result was that, in the ordinary course, the mail
recommenced its journey northwards about midnight. Wearied with the
long detention at a gloomy hotel, I walked out about eleven o'clock at
night for the sake of fresh air; meaning to fall in with the mail and
resume my seat at the post-office. The night, however, being yet dark,
as the moon had scarcely risen, and the streets being at that hour
empty, so as to offer no opportunities for asking the road, I lost my
way, and did not reach the post-office until it was considerably past
midnight; but, to my great relief (as it was important for me to be in
Westmoreland by the morning), I saw in the huge saucer eyes of the
mail, blazing through the gloom, an evidence that my chance was not yet
lost. Past the time it was; but, by some rare accident, the mail was
not even yet ready to start. I ascended to my seat on the box, where my
cloak was still lying as it had lain at the Bridgewater Arms. I had
left it there in imitation of a nautical discoverer, who leaves a bit
of bunting on the shore of his discovery, by way of warning off the
ground the whole human race, and notifying to the Christian and the
heathen worlds, with his best compliments, that he has hoisted his
pocket-handkerchief once and for ever upon that virgin soil:
thenceforward claiming the _jus dominii_ to the top of the atmosphere
above it, and also the right of driving shafts to the centre of the
earth below it; so that all people found after this warning either
aloft in upper chambers of the atmosphere, or groping in subterraneous
shafts, or squatting audaciously on the surface of the soil, will be
treated as trespassers--kicked, that is to say, or decapitated, as
circumstances may suggest, by their very faithful servant, the owner of
the said pocket-handkerchief. In the present case, it is probable that
my cloak might not have been respected, and the _jus gentium_ might
have been cruelly violated in my person--for, in the dark, people
commit deeds of darkness, gas being a great ally of morality; but it so
happened that on this night there was no other outside passenger; and
thus the crime, which else was but too probable, missed fire for want
of a criminal.

Having mounted the box, I took a small quantity of laudanum, having
already travelled two hundred and fifty miles--viz., from a point
seventy miles beyond London. In the taking of laudanum there was
nothing extraordinary. But by accident it drew upon me the special
attention of my assessor on the box, the coachman. And in _that_
also there was nothing extraordinary. But by accident, and with great
delight, it drew my own attention to the fact that this coachman was a
monster in point of bulk, and that he had but one eye. In fact, he had
been foretold by Virgil as

  "Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum."

He answered to the conditions in every one of the items:--1, a monster
he was; 2, dreadful; 3, shapeless; 4, huge; 5, who had lost an eye. But
why should _that_ delight me? Had he been one of the Calendars in
the "Arabian Nights," and had paid down his eye as the price of his
criminal curiosity, what right had _I_ to exult in his misfortune?
I did _not_ exult; I delighted in no man's punishment, though it
were even merited. But these personal distinctions (Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
identified in an instant an old friend of mine whom I had known in the
south for some years as the most masterly of mail-coachmen. He was the
man in all Europe that could (if _any_ could) have driven six-in-
hand full gallop over _Al Sirat_--that dreadful bridge of Mahomet,
with no side battlements, and of _extra_ room not enough for a
razor's edge--leading right across the bottomless gulf. Under this
eminent man, whom in Greek I cognominated Cyclops _Diphrélates_
(Cyclops the Charioteer), I, and others known to me, studied the
diphrelatic art. Excuse, reader, a word too elegant to be pedantic. As
a pupil, though I paid extra fees, it is to be lamented that I did not
stand high in his esteem. It showed his dogged honesty (though,
observe, not his discernment) that he could not see my merits. Let us
excuse his absurdity in this particular by remembering his want of an
eye. Doubtless _that_ made him blind to my merits. In the art of
conversation, however, he admitted that I had the whip-hand of him. On
the present occasion great joy was at our meeting. But what was Cyclops
doing here? Had the medical men recommended northern air, or how? I
collected, from such explanations as he volunteered, that he had an
interest at stake in some suit-at-law now pending at Lancaster; so that
probably he had got himself transferred to this station for the purpose
of connecting with his professional pursuits an instant readiness for
the calls of his lawsuit.

Meantime, what are we stopping for? Surely we have now waited long
enough. Oh, this procrastinating mail, and this procrastinating post-
office! Can't they take a lesson upon that subject from _me_? Some
people have called _me_ procrastinating. Yet you are witness,
reader, that I was here kept waiting for the post-office. Will the
post-office lay its hand on its heart, in its moments of sobriety, and
assert that ever it waited for me? What are they about? The guard tells
me that there is a large extra accumulation of foreign mails this
night, owing to irregularities caused by war, by wind, by weather, in
the packet service, which as yet does not benefit at all by steam. For
an _extra_ hour, it seems, the post-office has been engaged in
threshing out the pure wheaten correspondence of Glasgow, and winnowing
it from the chaff of all baser intermediate towns. But at last all is
finished. Sound your horn, guard! Manchester, good-bye! we've lost an
hour by your criminal conduct at the post-office: which, however,
though I do not mean to part with a serviceable ground of complaint,
and one which really _is_ such for the horses, to me secretly is an
advantage, since it compels us to look sharply for this lost hour
amongst the next eight or nine, and to recover it (if we can) at the
rate of one mile extra per hour. Off we are at last, and at eleven
miles an hour; and for the moment I detect no changes in the energy or
in the skill of Cyclops.

From Manchester to Kendal, which virtually (though not in law) is the
capital of Westmoreland, there were at this time seven stages of eleven
miles each. The first five of these, counting from Manchester,
terminate in Lancaster; which is therefore fifty-five miles north of
Manchester, and the same distance exactly from Liverpool. The first
three stages terminate in Preston (called, by way of distinction from
other towns of that name, _Proud_ Preston); at which place it is
that the separate roads from Liverpool and from Manchester to the north
become confluent. [Footnote: "_Confluent_":--Suppose a capital Y
(the Pythagorean letter): Lancaster is at the foot of this letter;
Liverpool at the top of the _right_ branch; Manchester at the top
of the _left_; Proud Preston at the centre, where the two branches
unite. It is thirty-three miles along either of the two branches; it is
twenty-two miles along the stem,--viz., from Preston in the middle to
Lancaster at the root. There's a lesson in geography for the reader!]
Within these first three stages lay the foundation, the progress, and
termination of our night's adventure. During the first stage, I found
out that Cyclops was mortal: he was liable to the shocking affection of
sleep--a thing which previously I had never suspected. If a man
indulges in the vicious habit of sleeping, all the skill in aurigation
of Apollo himself, with the horses of Aurora to execute his notions,
avails him nothing. "Oh, Cyclops!" I exclaimed, "thou art mortal. My
friend, thou snorest." Through the first eleven miles, however, this
infirmity--which I grieve to say that he shared with the whole Pagan
Pantheon--betrayed itself only by brief snatches. On waking up, he made
an apology for himself which, instead of mending matters, laid open a
gloomy vista of coming disasters. The summer assizes, he reminded me,
were now going on at Lancaster: in consequence of which for three
nights and three days he had not lain down on a bed. During the day he
was waiting for his own summons as a witness on the trial in which he
was interested, or else, lest he should be missing at the critical
moment, was drinking with the other witnesses under the pastoral
surveillance of the attorneys. During the night, or that part of it
which at sea would form the middle watch, he was driving. This
explanation certainly accounted for his drowsiness, but in a way which
made it much more alarming; since now, after several days' resistance
to this infirmity, at length he was steadily giving way. Throughout the
second stage he grew more and more drowsy. In the second mile of the
third stage he surrendered himself finally and without a struggle to
his perilous temptation. All his past resistance had but deepened the
weight of this final oppression. Seven atmospheres of sleep rested upon
him; and, to consummate the case, our worthy guard, after singing "Love
amongst the Roses" for perhaps thirty times, without invitation and
without applause, had in revenge moodily resigned himself to slumber--
not so deep, doubtless, as the coachman's, but deep enough for
mischief. And thus at last, about ten miles from Preston, it came about
that I found myself left in charge of his Majesty's London and Glasgow
mail, then running at the least twelve miles an hour.

What made this negligence less criminal than else it must have been
thought was the condition of the roads at night during the assizes. At
that time, all the law business of populous Liverpool, and also of
populous Manchester, with its vast cincture of populous rural
districts, was called up by ancient usage to the tribunal of
Lilliputian Lancaster. To break up this old traditional usage required,
1, a conflict with powerful established interests, 2, a large system of
new arrangements, and 3, a new parliamentary statute. But as yet this
change was merely in contemplation. As things were at present, twice in
the year [Footnote: "_Twice in the year_":--There were at that time
only two assizes even in the most populous counties--viz., the Lent
Assizes and the Summer Assizes.] so vast a body of business rolled
northwards from the southern quarter of the county that for a fortnight
at least it occupied the severe exertions of two judges in its
despatch. The consequence of this was that every horse available for
such a service, along the whole line of road, was exhausted in carrying
down the multitudes of people who were parties to the different suits.
By sunset, therefore, it usually happened that, through utter
exhaustion amongst men and horses, the road sank into profound silence.
Except the exhaustion in the vast adjacent county of York from a
contested election, no such silence succeeding to no such fiery uproar
was ever witnessed in England.

On this occasion the usual silence and solitude prevailed along the
road. Not a hoof nor a wheel was to be heard. And, to strengthen this
false luxurious confidence in the noiseless roads, it happened also
that the night was one of peculiar solemnity and peace. For my own
part, though slightly alive to the possibilities of peril, I had so far
yielded to the influence of the mighty calm as to sink into a profound
reverie. The month was August; in the middle of which lay my own
birthday--a festival to every thoughtful man suggesting solemn and
often sigh-born [Footnote: "_Sigh-born_":--I owe the suggestion of
this word to an obscure remembrance of a beautiful phrase in "Giraldus
Cambrensis"--viz., _suspiriosæ cogitationes_.] thoughts. The county
was my own native county--upon which, in its southern section, more
than upon any equal area known to man past or present, had descended
the original curse of labour in its heaviest form, not mastering the
bodies only of men, as of slaves, or criminals in mines, but working
through the fiery will. Upon no equal space of earth was, or ever had
been, the same energy of human power put forth daily. At this
particular season also of the assizes, that dreadful hurricane of
flight and pursuit, as it might have seemed to a stranger, which swept
to and from Lancaster all day long, hunting the county up and down, and
regularly subsiding back into silence about sunset, could not fail
(when united with this permanent distinction of Lancashire as the very
metropolis and citadel of labour) to point the thoughts pathetically
upon that counter-vision of rest, of saintly repose from strife and
sorrow, towards which, as to their secret haven, the profounder
aspirations of man's heart are in solitude continually travelling.
Obliquely upon our left we were nearing the sea; which also must, under
the present circumstances, be repeating the general state of halcyon
repose. The sea, the atmosphere, the light, bore each an orchestral
part in this universal lull. Moonlight and the first timid tremblings
of the dawn were by this time blending; and the blendings were brought
into a still more exquisite state of unity by a slight silvery mist,
motionless and dreamy, that covered the woods and fields, but with a
veil of equable transparency. Except the feet of our own horses,--
which, running on a sandy margin of the road, made but little
disturbance,--there was no sound abroad. In the clouds and on the earth
prevailed the same majestic peace; and, in spite of all that the
villain of a schoolmaster has done for the ruin of our sublimer
thoughts, which are the thoughts of our infancy, we still believe in no
such nonsense as a limited atmosphere. Whatever we may swear with our
false feigning lips, in our faithful hearts we still believe, and must
for ever believe, in fields of air traversing the total gulf between
earth and the central heavens. Still, in the confidence of children
that tread without fear every chamber in their father's house, and to
whom no door is closed, we, in that Sabbatic vision which sometimes is
revealed for an hour upon nights like this, ascend with easy steps from
the sorrow-stricken fields of earth upwards to the sandals of God.

Suddenly, from thoughts like these I was awakened to a sullen sound, as
of some motion on the distant road. It stole upon the air for a moment;
I listened in awe; but then it died away. Once roused, however, I could
not but observe with alarm the quickened motion of our horses. Ten
years' experience had made my eye learned in the valuing of motion; and
I saw that we were now running thirteen miles an hour. I pretend to no
presence of mind. On the contrary, my fear is that I am miserably and
shamefully deficient in that quality as regards action. The palsy of
doubt and distraction hangs like some guilty weight of dark unfathomed
remembrances upon my energies when the signal is flying for
_action_. But, on the other hand, this accursed gift I have, as
regards _thought_, that in the first step towards the possibility
of a misfortune I see its total evolution; in the radix of the series I
see too certainly and too instantly its entire expansion; in the first
syllable of the dreadful sentence I read already the last. It was not
that I feared for ourselves. _Us_ our bulk and impetus charmed
against peril in any collision. And I had ridden through too many
hundreds of perils that were frightful to approach, that were matter of
laughter to look back upon, the first face of which was horror, the
parting face a jest--for any anxiety to rest upon _our_ interests.
The mail was not built, I felt assured, nor bespoke, that could betray
_me_ who trusted to its protection. But any carriage that we could
meet would be frail and light in comparison of ourselves. And I
remarked this ominous accident of our situation,--we were on the wrong
side of the road. But then, it may be said, the other party, if other
there was, might also be on the wrong side; and two wrongs might make a
right. _That_ was not likely. The same motive which had drawn
_us_ to the right-hand side of the road--viz., the luxury of the
soft beaten sand as contrasted with the paved centre--would prove
attractive to others. The two adverse carriages would therefore, to a
certainty, be travelling on the same side; and from this side, as not
being ours in law, the crossing over to the other would, of course, be
looked for from _us_. [Footnote: It is true that, according to the
law of the case as established by legal precedents, all carriages were
required to give way before royal equipages, and therefore before the
mail as one of them. But this only increased the danger, as being a
regulation very imperfectly made known, very unequally enforced, and
therefore often embarrassing the movements on both sides.] Our lamps,
still lighted, would give the impression of vigilance on our part. And
every creature that met us would rely upon _us_ for quartering.
[Footnote: "_Quartering_":--This is the technical word, and, I
presume, derived from the French _cartayer_, to evade a rut or any
obstacle.] All this, and if the separate links of the anticipation had
been a thousand times more, I saw, not discursively, or by effort, or
by succession, but by one flash of horrid simultaneous intuition.

Under this steady though rapid anticipation of the evil which
_might_ be gathering ahead, ah! what a sullen mystery of fear, what
a sigh of woe, was that which stole upon the air, as again the far-off
sound of a wheel was heard! A whisper it was--a whisper from, perhaps,
four miles off--secretly announcing a ruin that, being foreseen, was
not the less inevitable; that, being known, was not therefore healed.
What could be done--who was it that could do it--to check the storm-
flight of these maniacal horses? Could I not seize the reins from the
grasp of the slumbering coachman? You, reader, think that it would have
been in _your_ power to do so. And I quarrel not with your estimate
of yourself. But, from the way in which the coachman's hand was viced
between his upper and lower thigh, this was impossible. Easy was it?
See, then, that bronze equestrian statue. The cruel rider has kept the
bit in his horse's mouth for two centuries. Unbridle him for a minute,
if you please, and wash his mouth with water. Easy was it? Unhorse me,
then, that imperial rider; knock me those marble feet from those marble
stirrups of Charlemagne.

The sounds ahead strengthened, and were now too clearly the sounds of
wheels. Who and what could it be? Was it industry in a taxed cart? Was
it youthful gaiety in a gig? Was it sorrow that loitered, or joy that
raced? For as yet the snatches of sound were too intermitting, from
distance, to decipher the character of the motion. Whoever were the
travellers, something must be done to warn them. Upon the other party
rests the active responsibility, but upon _us_--and, woe is me!
that _us_ was reduced to my frail opium-shattered self--rests the
responsibility of warning. Yet, how should this be accomplished? Might
I not sound the guard's horn? Already, on the first thought, I was
making my way over the roof of the guard's seat. But this, from the
accident which I have mentioned, of the foreign mails being piled upon
the roof, was a difficult and even dangerous attempt to one cramped by
nearly three hundred miles of outside travelling. And, fortunately,
before I had lost much time in the attempt, our frantic horses swept
round an angle of the road which opened upon us that final stage where
the collision must be accomplished and the catastrophe sealed. All was
apparently finished. The court was sitting; the case was heard; the
judge had finished; and only the verdict was yet in arrear.

Before us lay an avenue straight as an arrow, six hundred yards,
perhaps, in length; and the umbrageous trees, which rose in a regular
line from either side, meeting high overhead, gave to it the character
of a cathedral aisle. These trees lent a deeper solemnity to the early
light; but there was still light enough to perceive, at the further end
of this Gothic aisle, a frail reedy gig, in which were seated a young
man, and by his side a young lady. Ah, young sir! what are you about?
If it is requisite that you should whisper your communications to this
young lady--though really I see nobody, at an hour and on a road so
solitary, likely to overhear you--is it therefore requisite that you
should carry your lips forward to hers? The little carriage is creeping
on at one mile an hour; and the parties within it, being thus tenderly
engaged, are naturally bending down their heads. Between them and
eternity, to all human calculation, there is but a minute and a half.
Oh heavens! what is it that I shall do? Speaking or acting, what help
can I offer? Strange it is, and to a mere auditor of the tale might
seem laughable, that I should need a suggestion from the "Iliad" to
prompt the sole resource that remained. Yet so it was. Suddenly I
remembered the shout of Achilles, and its effect. But could I pretend
to shout like the son of Peleus, aided by Pallas? No: but then I needed
not the shout that should alarm all Asia militant; such a shout would
suffice as might carry terror into the hearts of two thoughtless young
people and one gig-horse. I shouted--and the young man heard me not. A
second time I shouted--and now he heard me, for now he raised his
head.

Here, then, all had been done that, by me, _could_ be done; more on
_my_ part was not possible. Mine had been the first step; the
second was for the young man; the third was for God. If, said I, this
stranger is a brave man, and if indeed he loves the young girl at his
side--or, loving her not, if he feels the obligation, pressing upon
every man worthy to be called a man, of doing his utmost for a woman
confided to his protection--he will at least make some effort to save
her. If _that_ fails, he will not perish the more, or by a death
more cruel, for having made it; and he will die as a brave man should,
with his face to the danger, and with his arm about the woman that he
sought in vain to save. But, if he makes no effort,--shrinking without
a struggle from his duty,--he himself will not the less certainly
perish for this baseness of poltroonery. He will die no less: and why
not? Wherefore should we grieve that there is one craven less in the
world? No; _let_ him perish, without a pitying thought of ours
wasted upon him; and, in that case, all our grief will be reserved for
the fate of the helpless girl who now, upon the least shadow of failure
in _him_, must by the fiercest of translations--must without time
for a prayer--must within seventy seconds stand before the judgment-
seat of God.

But craven he was not: sudden had been the call upon him, and sudden
was his answer to the call. He saw, he heard, he comprehended, the ruin
that was coming down: already its gloomy shadow darkened above him; and
already he was measuring his strength to deal with it. Ah! what a
vulgar thing does courage seem when we see nations buying it and
selling it for a shilling a-day: ah! what a sublime thing does courage
seem when some fearful summons on the great deeps of life carries a
man, as if running before a hurricane, up to the giddy crest of some
tumultuous crisis from which lie two courses, and a voice says to him
audibly, "One way lies hope; take the other, and mourn for ever!" How
grand a triumph if, even then, amidst the raving of all around him, and
the frenzy of the danger, the man is able to confront his situation--is
able to retire for a moment into solitude with God, and to seek his
counsel from _Him!_

For seven seconds, it might be, of his seventy, the stranger settled
his countenance steadfastly upon us, as if to search and value every
element in the conflict before him. For five seconds more of his
seventy he sat immovably, like one that mused on some great purpose.
For five more, perhaps, he sat with eyes upraised, like one that prayed
in sorrow, under some extremity of doubt, for light that should guide
him to the better choice. Then suddenly he rose; stood upright; and, by
a powerful strain upon the reins, raising his horse's fore-feet from
the ground, he slewed him round on the pivot of his hind-legs, so as to
plant the little equipage in a position nearly at right angles to ours.
Thus far his condition was not improved; except as a first step had
been taken towards the possibility of a second. If no more were done,
nothing was done; for the little carriage still occupied the very
centre of our path, though in an altered direction. Yet even now it may
not be too late: fifteen of the seventy seconds may still be
unexhausted; and one almighty bound may avail to clear the ground.
Hurry, then, hurry! for the flying moments--_they_ hurry. Oh,
hurry, hurry, my brave young man! for the cruel hoofs of our horses--
_they_ also hurry! Fast are the flying moments, faster are the
hoofs of our horses. But fear not for _him_, if human energy can
suffice; faithful was he that drove to his terrific duty; faithful was
the horse to _his_ command. One blow, one impulse given with voice
and hand, by the stranger, one rush from the horse, one bound as if in
the act of rising to a fence, landed the docile creature's forefeet
upon the crown or arching centre of the road. The larger half of the
little equipage had then cleared our over-towering shadow: _that_
was evident even to my own agitated sight. But it mattered little that
one wreck should float off in safety if upon the wreck that perished
were embarked the human freightage. The rear part of the carriage--was
_that_ certainly beyond the line of absolute ruin? What power could
answer the question? Glance of eye, thought of man, wing of angel,
which of these had speed enough to sweep between the question and the
answer, and divide the one from the other? Light does not tread upon
the steps of light more indivisibly than did our all-conquering arrival
upon the escaping efforts of the gig. _That_ must the young man
have felt too plainly. His back was now turned to us; not by sight
could he any longer communicate with the peril; but, by the dreadful
rattle of our harness, too truly had his ear been instructed that all
was finished as regarded any effort of _his_. Already in resignation he
had rested from his struggle; and perhaps in his heart he was
whispering, "Father, which art in heaven, do Thou finish above what I
on earth have attempted." Faster than ever mill-race we ran past them
in our inexorable flight. Oh, raving of hurricanes that must have
sounded in their young ears at the moment of our transit! Even in that
moment the thunder of collision spoke aloud. Either with the swingle-
bar, or with the haunch of our near leader, we had struck the off-wheel
of the little gig; which stood rather obliquely, and not quite so far
advanced as to be accurately parallel with the near-wheel. The blow,
from the fury of our passage, resounded terrifically. I rose in horror,
to gaze upon the ruins we might have caused. From my elevated station I
looked down, and looked back upon the scene; which in a moment told its
own tale, and wrote all its records on my heart for ever.

Here was the map of the passion that now had finished. The horse was
planted immovably, with his fore-feet upon the paved crest of the
central road. He of the whole party might be supposed untouched by the
passion of death. The little cany carriage--partly, perhaps, from the
violent torsion of the wheels in its recent movement, partly from the
thundering blow we had given to it--as if it sympathised with human
horror, was all alive with tremblings and shiverings. The young man
trembled not, nor shivered. He sat like a rock. But _his_ was the
steadiness of agitation frozen into rest by horror. As yet he dared not
to look round; for he knew that, if anything remained to do, by him it
could no longer be done. And as yet he knew not for certain if their
safety were accomplished. But the lady--

But the lady--! Oh, heavens! will that spectacle ever depart from my
dreams, as she rose and sank upon her seat, sank and rose, threw up her
arms wildly to heaven, clutched at some visionary object in the air,
fainting, praying, raving, despairing? Figure to yourself, reader, the
elements of the case; suffer me to recall before your mind the
circumstances of that unparalleled situation. From the silence and deep
peace of this saintly summer night--from the pathetic blending of this
sweet moonlight, dawnlight, dreamlight--from the manly tenderness of
this flattering, whispering, murmuring love--suddenly as from the woods
and fields--suddenly as from the chambers of the air opening in
revelation--suddenly as from the ground yawning at her feet, leaped
upon her, with the flashing of cataracts, Death the crowned phantom,
with all the equipage of his terrors, and the tiger roar of his voice.

The moments were numbered; the strife was finished; the vision was
closed. In the twinkling of an eye, our flying horses had carried us to
the termination of the umbrageous aisle; at the right angles we wheeled
into our former direction; the turn of the road carried the scene out
of my eyes in an instant, and swept it into my dreams for ever.


SECTION III--DREAM-FUGUE:

FOUNDED ON THE PRECEDING THEME OF SUDDEN DEATH

        "Whence the sound
  Of instruments, that made melodious chime,
  Was heard, of harp and organ; and who moved
  Their stops and chords was seen; his volant touch
  Instinct through all proportions, low and high,
  Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue."
  _Par. Lost_, Bk. XI.

_Tumultuosissimamente_


Passion of sudden death! that once in youth I read and interpreted by
the shadows of thy averted signs [Footnote: "_Averted signs_":--I
read the course and changes of the lady's agony in the succession of
her involuntary gestures; but it must be remembered that I read all
this from the rear, never once catching the lady's full face, and even
her profile imperfectly.]!--rapture of panic taking the shape (which
amongst tombs in churches I have seen) of woman bursting her sepulchral
bonds--of woman's Ionic form bending forward from the ruins of her
grave with arching foot, with eyes upraised, with clasped adoring
hands--waiting, watching, trembling, praying for the trumpet's call to
rise from dust for ever! Ah, vision too fearful of shuddering humanity
on the brink of almighty abysses!--vision that didst start back, that
didst reel away, like a shrivelling scroll from before the wrath of
fire racing on the wings of the wind! Epilepsy so brief of horror,
wherefore is it that thou canst not die? Passing so suddenly into
darkness, wherefore is it that still thou sheddest thy sad funeral
blights upon the gorgeous mosaics of dreams? Fragment of music too
passionate, heard once, and heard no more, what aileth thee, that thy
deep rolling chords come up at intervals through all the worlds of
sleep, and after forty years have lost no element of horror?


I


Lo, it is summer--almighty summer! The everlasting gates of life and
summer are thrown open wide; and on the ocean, tranquil and verdant as
a savannah, the unknown lady from the dreadful vision and I myself are
floating--she upon a fairy pinnace, and I upon an English three-
decker. Both of us are wooing gales of festal happiness within the
domain of our common country, within that ancient watery park, within
the pathless chase of ocean, where England takes her pleasure as a
huntress through winter and summer, from the rising to the setting sun.
Ah, what a wilderness of floral beauty was hidden, or was suddenly
revealed, upon the tropic islands through which the pinnace moved! And
upon her deck what a bevy of human flowers: young women how lovely,
young men how noble, that were dancing together, and slowly drifting
towards _us_ amidst music and incense, amidst blossoms from forests
and gorgeous corymbi from vintages, amidst natural carolling, and the
echoes of sweet girlish laughter. Slowly the pinnace nears us, gaily
she hails us, and silently she disappears beneath the shadow of our
mighty bows. But then, as at some signal from heaven, the music, and
the carols, and the sweet echoing of girlish laughter--all are hushed.
What evil has smitten the pinnace, meeting or overtaking her? Did ruin
to our friends couch within our own dreadful shadow? Was our shadow the
shadow of death? I looked over the bow for an answer, and, behold! the
pinnace was dismantled; the revel and the revellers were found no more;
the glory of the vintage was dust; and the forests with their beauty
were left without a witness upon the seas. "But where," and I turned to
our crew--"where are the lovely women that danced beneath the awning of
flowers and clustering corymbi? Whither have fled the noble young men
that danced with _them_?" Answer there was none. But suddenly the
man at the mast-head, whose countenance darkened with alarm, cried out,
"Sail on the weather beam! Down she comes upon us: in seventy seconds
she also will founder."


II


I looked to the weather side, and the summer had departed. The sea was
rocking, and shaken with gathering wrath. Upon its surface sat mighty
mists, which grouped themselves into arches and long cathedral aisles.
Down one of these, with the fiery pace of a quarrel from a cross-bow,
ran a frigate right athwart our course. "Are they mad?" some voice
exclaimed from our deck. "Do they woo their ruin?" But in a moment, as
she was close upon us, some impulse of a heady current or local vortex
gave a wheeling bias to her course, and off she forged without a shock.
As she ran past us, high aloft amongst the shrouds stood the lady of
the pinnace. The deeps opened ahead in malice to receive her, towering
surges of foam ran after her, the billows were fierce to catch her. But
far away she was borne into desert spaces of the sea: whilst still by
sight I followed her, as she ran before the howling gale, chased by
angry sea-birds and by maddening billows; still I saw her, as at the
moment when she ran past us, standing amongst the shrouds, with her
white draperies streaming before the wind. There she stood, with hair
dishevelled, one hand clutched amongst the tackling--rising, sinking,
fluttering, trembling, praying; there for leagues I saw her as she
stood, raising at intervals one hand to heaven, amidst the fiery crests
of the pursuing waves and the raving of the storm; until at last, upon
a sound from afar of malicious laughter and mockery, all was hidden for
ever in driving showers; and afterwards, but when I knew not, nor how,


III


Sweet funeral bells from some incalculable distance, wailing over the
dead that die before the dawn, awakened me as I slept in a boat moored
to some familiar shore. The morning twilight even then was breaking;
and, by the dusky revelations which it spread, I saw a girl, adorned
with a garland of white roses about her head for some great festival,
running along the solitary strand in extremity of haste. Her running
was the running of panic; and often she looked back as to some dreadful
enemy in the rear. But, when I leaped ashore, and followed on her steps
to warn her of a peril in front, alas! from me she fled as from another
peril, and vainly I shouted to her of quicksands that lay ahead. Faster
and faster she ran; round a promontory of rocks she wheeled out of
sight; in an instant I also wheeled round it, but only to see the
treacherous sands gathering above her head. Already her person was
buried; only the fair young head and the diadem of white roses around
it were still visible to the pitying heavens; and, last of all, was
visible one white marble arm. I saw by the early twilight this fair
young head, as it was sinking down to darkness--saw this marble arm, as
it rose above her head and her treacherous grave, tossing, faltering,
rising, clutching, as at some false deceiving hand stretched out from
the clouds--saw this marble arm uttering her dying hope, and then
uttering her dying despair. The head, the diadem, the arm--these all
had sunk; at last over these also the cruel quicksand had closed; and
no memorial of the fair young girl remained on earth, except my own
solitary tears, and the funeral bells from the desert seas, that,
rising again more softly, sang a requiem over the grave of the buried
child, and over her blighted dawn.

I sat, and wept in secret the tears that men have ever given to the
memory of those that died before the dawn, and by the treachery of
earth, our mother. But suddenly the tears and funeral bells were hushed
by a shout as of many nations, and by a roar as from some great king's
artillery, advancing rapidly along the valleys, and heard afar by
echoes from the mountains. "Hush!" I said, as I bent my ear earthwards
to listen--"hush!--this either is the very anarchy of strife, or else"
--and then I listened more profoundly, and whispered as I raised my
head--"or else, oh heavens! it is _victory_ that is final, victory
that swallows up all strife."


IV


Immediately, in trance, I was carried over land and sea to some distant
kingdom, and placed upon a triumphal car, amongst companions crowned
with laurel. The darkness of gathering midnight, brooding over all the
land, hid from us the mighty crowds that were weaving restlessly about
ourselves as a centre: we heard them, but saw them not. Tidings had
arrived, within an hour, of a grandeur that measured itself against
centuries; too full of pathos they were, too full of joy, to utter
themselves by other language than by tears, by restless anthems, and
_Te Deums_ reverberated from the choirs and orchestras of earth.
These tidings we that sat upon the laurelled car had it for our
privilege to publish amongst all nations. And already, by signs audible
through the darkness, by snortings and tramplings, our angry horses,
that knew no fear or fleshly weariness, upbraided us with delay.
Wherefore _was_ it that we delayed? We waited for a secret word,
that should bear witness to the hope of nations as now accomplished for
ever. At midnight the secret word arrived; which word was--_Waterloo
and Recovered Christendom!_ The dreadful word shone by its own light;
before us it went; high above our leaders' heads it rode, and spread a
golden light over the paths which we traversed. Every city, at the
presence of the secret word, threw open its gates. The rivers were
conscious as we crossed. All the forests, as we ran along their
margins, shivered in homage to the secret word. And the darkness
comprehended it.

Two hours after midnight we approached a mighty Minster. Its gates,
which rose to the clouds, were closed. But, when the dreadful word that
rode before us reached them with its golden light, silently they moved
back upon their hinges; and at a flying gallop our equipage entered the
grand aisle of the cathedral. Headlong was our pace; and at every
altar, in the little chapels and oratories to the right hand and left
of our course, the lamps, dying or sickening, kindled anew in sympathy
with the secret word that was flying past. Forty leagues we might have
run in the cathedral, and as yet no strength of morning light had
reached us, when before us we saw the aerial galleries of organ and
choir. Every pinnacle of fretwork, every station of advantage amongst
the traceries, was crested by white-robed choristers that sang
deliverance; that wept no more tears, as once their fathers had wept;
but at intervals that sang together to the generations, saying,

  "Chant the deliverer's praise in every tongue,"

and receiving answers from afar,

  "Such as once in heaven and earth were sung."

And of their chanting was no end; of our headlong pace was neither
pause nor slackening.

Thus as we ran like torrents--thus as we swept with bridal rapture over
the Campo Santo [Footnote: "_Campo Santo_":--It is probable that
most of my readers will be acquainted with the history of the Campo
Santo (or cemetery) at Pisa, composed of earth brought from Jerusalem
from a bed of sanctity as the highest prize which the noble piety of
crusaders could ask or imagine. To readers who are unacquainted with
England, or who (being English) are yet unacquainted with the cathedral
cities of England, it may be right to mention that the graves within-
side the cathedrals often form a flat pavement over which carriages and
horses _might_ run; and perhaps a boyish remembrance of one
particular cathedral, across which I had seen passengers walk and
burdens carried, as about two centuries back they were through the
middle of St. Paul's in London, may have assisted my dream.] of the
cathedral graves--suddenly we became aware of a vast necropolis rising
upon the far-off horizon--a city of sepulchres, built within the
saintly cathedral for the warrior dead that rested from their feuds on
earth. Of purple granite was the necropolis; yet, in the first minute,
it lay like a purple stain upon the horizon, so mighty was the
distance. In the second minute it trembled through many changes,
growing into terraces and towers of wondrous altitude, so mighty was
the pace. In the third minute already, with our dreadful gallop, we
were entering its suburbs. Vast sarcophagi rose on every side, having
towers and turrets that, upon the limits of the central aisle, strode
forward with haughty intrusion, that ran back with mighty shadows into
answering recesses. Every sarcophagus showed many bas-reliefs--bas-
reliefs of battles and of battle-fields; battles from forgotten ages,
battles from yesterday; battle-fields that, long since, nature had
healed and reconciled to herself with the sweet oblivion of flowers;
battle-fields that were yet angry and crimson with carnage. Where the
terraces ran, there did _we_ run; where the towers curved, there
did _we_ curve. With the flight of swallows our horses swept round
every angle. Like rivers in flood wheeling round headlands, like
hurricanes that ride into the secrets of forests, faster than ever
light unwove the mazes of darkness, our flying equipage carried earthly
passions, kindled warrior instincts, amongst the dust that lay around
us--dust oftentimes of our noble fathers that had slept in God from
Crécy to Trafalgar. And now had we reached the last sarcophagus, now
were we abreast of the last bas-relief, already had we recovered the
arrow-like flight of the illimitable central aisle, when coming up this
aisle to meet us we beheld afar off a female child, that rode in a
carriage as frail as flowers. The mists which went before her hid the
fawns that drew her, but could not hide the shells and tropic flowers
with which she played--but could not hide the lovely smiles by which
she uttered her trust in the mighty cathedral, and in the cherubim that
looked down upon her from the mighty shafts of its pillars. Face to
face she was meeting us; face to face she rode, as if danger there were
none. "Oh, baby!" I exclaimed, "shalt thou be the ransom for Waterloo?
Must we, that carry tidings of great joy to every people, be messengers
of ruin to thee!" In horror I rose at the thought; but then also, in
horror at the thought, rose one that was sculptured on a bas-relief--a
Dying Trumpeter. Solemnly from the field of battle he rose to his feet;
and, unslinging his stony trumpet, carried it, in his dying anguish, to
his stony lips--sounding once, and yet once again; proclamation that,
in _thy_ ears, oh baby! spoke from the battlements of death.
Immediately deep shadows fell between us, and aboriginal silence. The
choir had ceased to sing. The hoofs of our horses, the dreadful rattle
of our harness, the groaning of our wheels, alarmed the graves no more.
By horror the bas-relief had been unlocked unto life. By horror we,
that were so full of life, we men and our horses, with their fiery
fore-legs rising in mid air to their everlasting gallop, were frozen to
a bas-relief. Then a third time the trumpet sounded; the seals were
taken off all pulses; life, and the frenzy of life, tore into their
channels again; again the choir burst forth in sunny grandeur, as from
the muffling of storms and darkness; again the thunderings of our
horses carried temptation into the graves. One cry burst from our lips,
as the clouds, drawing off from the aisle, showed it empty before us.--
"Whither has the infant fled?--is the young child caught up to God?"
Lo! afar off, in a vast recess, rose three mighty windows to the
clouds; and on a level with their summits, at height insuperable to
man, rose an altar of purest alabaster. On its eastern face was
trembling a crimson glory. A glory was it from the reddening dawn that
now streamed _through_ the windows? Was it from the crimson robes
of the martyrs painted _on_ the windows? Was it from the bloody
bas-reliefs of earth? There, suddenly, within that crimson radiance,
rose the apparition of a woman's head, and then of a woman's figure.
The child it was--grown up to woman's height. Clinging to the horns of
the altar, voiceless she stood--sinking, rising, raving, despairing;
and behind the volume of incense that, night and day, streamed upwards
from the altar, dimly was seen the fiery font, and the shadow of that
dreadful being who should have baptized her with the baptism of death.
But by her side was kneeling her better angel, that hid his face with
wings; that wept and pleaded for _her_; that prayed when _she_ could
_not_; that fought with Heaven by tears for _her_ deliverance; which
also, as he raised his immortal countenance from his wings, I saw, by
the glory in his eye, that from Heaven he had won at last.


V


Then was completed the passion of the mighty fugue. The golden tubes of
the organ, which as yet had but muttered at intervals--gleaming amongst
clouds and surges of incense--threw up, as from fountains unfathomable,
columns of heart-shattering music. Choir and anti-choir were filling
fast with unknown voices. Thou also, Dying Trumpeter, with thy love
that was victorious, and thy anguish that was finishing, didst enter
the tumult; trumpet and echo--farewell love, and farewell anguish--rang
through the dreadful _sanctus_. Oh, darkness of the grave! that
from the crimson altar and from the fiery font wert visited and
searched by the effulgence in the angel's eye--were these indeed thy
children? Pomps of life, that, from the burials of centuries, rose
again to the voice of perfect joy, did ye indeed mingle with the
festivals of Death? Lo! as I looked back for seventy leagues through
the mighty cathedral, I saw the quick and the dead that sang together
to God, together that sang to the generations of man. All the hosts of
jubilation, like armies that ride in pursuit, moved with one step. Us,
that, with laurelled heads, were passing from the cathedral, they
overtook, and, as with a garment, they wrapped us round with thunders
greater than our own. As brothers we moved together; to the dawn that
advanced, to the stars that fled; rendering thanks to God in the
highest--that, having hid His face through one generation behind thick
clouds of War, once again was ascending, from the Campo Santo of
Waterloo was ascending, in the visions of Peace; rendering thanks for
thee, young girl! whom having overshadowed with His ineffable passion
of death, suddenly did God relent, suffered thy angel to turn aside His
arm, and even in thee, sister unknown! shown to me for a moment only to
be hidden for ever, found an occasion to glorify His goodness. A
thousand times, amongst the phantoms of sleep, have I seen thee
entering the gates of the golden dawn, with the secret word riding
before thee, with the armies of the grave behind thee,--seen thee
sinking, rising, raving, despairing; a thousand times in the worlds of
sleep have I seen thee followed by God's angel through storms, through
desert seas, through the darkness of quicksands, through dreams and the
dreadful revelations that are in dreams; only that at the last, with
one sling of His victorious arm, He might snatch thee back from ruin,
and might emblazon in thy deliverance the endless resurrections of His
love!




JOAN OF ARC [Footnote: "_Arc_":--Modern France, that should know a
great deal better than myself, insists that the name is not D'Arc--
_i.e._, of Arc--but _Darc_. Now it happens sometimes that, if
a person whose position guarantees his access to the best information
will content himself with gloomy dogmatism, striking the table with his
fist, and saying in a terrific voice, "It _is_ so, and there's an
end of it," one bows deferentially, and submits. But, if, unhappily for
himself, won by this docility, he relents too amiably into reasons and
arguments, probably one raises an insurrection against him that may
never be crushed; for in the fields of logic one can skirmish, perhaps,
as well as he. Had he confined himself to dogmatism, he would have
intrenched his position in darkness, and have hidden his own vulnerable
points. But coming down to base reasons he lets in light, and one sees
where to plant the blows. Now, the worshipful reason of modern France
for disturbing the old received spelling is that Jean Hordal, a
descendant of La Pucelle's brother, spelled the name _Darc_ in
1612. But what of that? It is notorious that what small matter of
spelling Providence had thought fit to disburse amongst man in the
seventeenth century was all monopolised by printers; now, M. Hordal was
_not_ a printer.]


What is to be thought of _her_? What is to be thought of the poor
shepherd girl from the hills and forests of Lorraine, that--like the
Hebrew shepherd boy from the hills and forests of Judea--rose suddenly
out of the quiet, out of the safety, out of the religious inspiration,
rooted in deep pastoral solitudes, to a station in the van of armies,
and to the more perilous station at the right hand of kings? The Hebrew
boy inaugurated his patriotic mission by an _act_, by a victorious
_act_, such as no man could deny. But so did the girl of Lorraine,
if we read her story as it was read by those who saw her nearest.
Adverse armies bore witness to the boy as no pretender; but so they did
to the gentle girl. Judged by the voices of all who saw them _from a
station of good will_, both were found true and loyal to any promises
involved in their first acts. Enemies it was that made the difference
between their subsequent fortunes. The boy rose to a splendour and a
noonday prosperity, both personal and public, that rang through the
records of his people, and became a byword among his posterity for a
thousand years, until the sceptre was departing from Judah. The poor,
forsaken girl, on the contrary, drank not herself from that cup of rest
which she had secured for France. She never sang together with the
songs that rose in her native Domrémy as echoes to the departing steps
of invaders. She mingled not in the festal dances at Vaucouleurs which
celebrated in rapture the redemption of France. No! for her voice was
then silent; no! for her feet were dust. Pure, innocent, noble-hearted
girl! whom, from earliest youth, ever I believed in as full of truth
and self-sacrifice, this was amongst the strongest pledges for
_thy_ truth, that never once--no, not for a moment of weakness--
didst thou revel in the vision of coronets and honour from man.
Coronets for thee! Oh, no! Honours, if they come when all is over, are
for those that share thy blood. [Footnote: "_Those that share thy
blood_":--A collateral relative of Joanna's was subsequently ennobled
by the title of _Du Lys_.]  Daughter of Domrémy, when the gratitude
of thy king shall awaken, thou wilt be sleeping the sleep of the dead.
Call her, King of France, but she will not hear thee. Cite her by the
apparitors to come and receive a robe of honour, but she will be found
_en contumace_. When the thunders of universal France, as even yet
may happen, shall proclaim the grandeur of the poor shepherd girl that
gave up all for her country, thy ear, young shepherd girl, will have
been deaf for five centuries. To suffer and to do, that was thy portion
in this life; that was thy destiny; and not for a moment was it hidden
from thyself. Life, thou saidst, is short; and the sleep which is in
the grave is long; let me use that life, so transitory, for the glory
of those heavenly dreams destined to comfort the sleep which is so
long! This pure creature--pure from every suspicion of even a visionary
self-interest, even as she was pure in senses more obvious--never once
did this holy child, as regarded herself, relax from her belief in the
darkness that was travelling to meet her. She might not prefigure the
very manner of her death; she saw not in vision, perhaps, the aerial
altitude of the fiery scaffold, the spectators without end, on every
road, pouring into Rouen as to a coronation, the surging smoke, the
volleying flames, the hostile faces all around, the pitying eye that
lurked but here and there, until nature and imperishable truth broke
loose from artificial restraints--these might not be apparent through
the mists of the hurrying future. But the voice that called her to
death, _that_ she heard for ever.

Great was the throne of France even in those days, and great was He
that sat upon it; but well Joanna knew that not the throne, nor he that
sat upon it, was for _her_; but, on the contrary, that she was for
_them_; not she by them, but they by her, should rise from the
dust. Gorgeous were the lilies of France, and for centuries had the
privilege to spread their beauty over land and sea, until, in another
century, the wrath of God and man combined to wither them; but well
Joanna knew, early at Domrémy she had read that bitter truth, that the
lilies of France would decorate no garland for _her_. Flower nor
bud, bell nor blossom, would ever bloom for _her_!

       *       *       *       *       *

But stay. What reason is there for taking up this subject of Joanna
precisely in the spring of 1847? Might it not have been left till the
spring of 1947, or, perhaps, left till called for? Yes, but it _is_
called for, and clamorously. You are aware, reader, that amongst the
many original thinkers whom modern France has produced, one of the
reputed leaders is M. Michelet. All these writers are of a
revolutionary cast; not in a political sense merely, but in all senses;
mad, oftentimes, as March hares; crazy with the laughing gas of
recovered liberty; drunk with the wine cup of their mighty Revolution,
snorting, whinnying, throwing up their heels, like wild horses in the
boundless pampas, and running races of defiance with snipes, or with
the winds, or with their own shadows, if they can find nothing else to
challenge. Some time or other, I, that have leisure to read, may
introduce _you_, that have not, to two or three dozen of these
writers; of whom I can assure you beforehand that they are often
profound, and at intervals are even as impassioned as if they were come
of our best English blood. But now, confining our attention to M.
Michelet, we in England--who know him best by his worst book, the book
against priests, etc.--know him disadvantageously. That book is a
rhapsody of incoherence. But his "History of France" is quite another
thing. A man, in whatsoever craft he sails, cannot stretch away out of
sight when he is linked to the windings of the shore by towing-ropes of
History. Facts, and the consequences of facts, draw the writer back to
the falconer's lure from the giddiest heights of speculation. Here,
therefore--in his "France"--if not always free from flightiness, if now
and then off like a rocket for an airy wheel in the clouds, M.
Michelet, with natural politeness, never forgets that he has left a
large audience waiting for him on earth, and gazing upward in anxiety
for his return; return, therefore, he does. But History, though clear
of certain temptations in one direction, has separate dangers of its
own. It is impossible so to write a history of France, or of England--
works becoming every hour more indispensable to the inevitably
political man of this day--without perilous openings for error. If I,
for instance, on the part of England, should happen to turn my labours
into that channel, and (on the model of Lord Percy going to Chevy
Chase)

  "A vow to God should make
  My pleasure in the Michelet woods
  Three summer days to take,"

probably, from simple delirium, I might hunt M. Michelet into
_delirium tremens_. Two strong angels stand by the side of History,
whether French history or English, as heraldic supporters: the angel of
research on the left hand, that must read millions of dusty parchments,
and of pages blotted with lies; the angel of meditation on the right
hand, that must cleanse these lying records with fire, even as of old
the draperies of _asbestos_ were cleansed, and must quicken them
into regenerated life. Willingly I acknowledge that no man will ever
avoid innumerable errors of detail; with so vast a compass of ground to
traverse, this is impossible; but such errors (though I have a bushel
on hand, at M. Michelet's service) are not the game I chase; it is the
bitter and unfair spirit in which M. Michelet writes against England.
Even _that_, after all, is but my secondary object; the real one is
Joanna, the Pucelle d'Orléans herself.

I am not going to write the history of La Pucelle: to do this, or even
circumstantially to report the history of her persecution and bitter
death, of her struggle with false witnesses and with ensnaring judges,
it would be necessary to have before us _all_ the documents, and
therefore the collection only now forthcoming in Paris. [Footnote:
"_Only now forthcoming_":--In 1847 _began_ the publication (from
official records) of Joanna's trial. It was interrupted, I fear,
by the convulsions of 1848; and whether even yet finished I do not
know.] But _my_ purpose is narrower. There have been great thinkers,
disdaining the careless judgments of contemporaries, who have
thrown themselves boldly on the judgment of a far posterity, that
should have had time to review, to ponder, to compare. There have been
great actors on the stage of tragic humanity that might, with the same
depth of confidence, have appealed from the levity of compatriot
friends--too heartless for the sublime interest of their story, and too
impatient for the labour of sifting its perplexities--to the
magnanimity and justice of enemies. To this class belongs the Maid of
Arc. The ancient Romans were too faithful to the ideal of grandeur in
themselves not to relent, after a generation or two, before the
grandeur of Hannibal. Mithridates, a more doubtful person, yet, merely
for the magic perseverance of his indomitable malice, won from the same
Romans the only real honour that ever he received on earth. And we
English have ever shown the same homage to stubborn enmity. To work
unflinchingly for the ruin of England; to say through life, by word and
by deed, _Delenda est Anglia Victrix_!--that one purpose of malice,
faithfully pursued, has quartered some people upon our national funds
of homage as by a perpetual annuity. Better than an inheritance of
service rendered to England herself has sometimes proved the most
insane hatred to England. Hyder Ali, even his son Tippoo, though so far
inferior, and Napoleon, have all benefited by this disposition among
ourselves to exaggerate the merit of diabolic enmity. Not one of these
men was ever capable, in a solitary instance, of praising an enemy
(what do you say to _that_, reader?); and yet in _their_ behalf, we
consent to forget, not their crimes only, but (which is worse) their
hideous bigotry and anti-magnanimous egotism--for nationality it was
not. Suffren, and some half dozen of other French nautical heroes,
because rightly they did us all the mischief they could (which was
really great), are names justly reverenced in England. On the same
principle, La Pucelle d'Orléans, the victorious enemy of England, has
been destined to receive her deepest commemoration from the magnanimous
justice of Englishmen.

Joanna, as we in England should call her, but according to her own
statement, Jeanne (or, as M. Michelet asserts, Jean [Footnote:
"_Jean_":--M. Michelet asserts that there was a mystical meaning at
that era in calling a child _Jean_; it implied a secret commendation of
a child, if not a dedication, to St. John the evangelist, the beloved
disciple, the apostle of love and mysterious visions. But, really, as
the name was so exceedingly common, few people will detect a mystery in
calling a _boy_ by the name of Jack, though it _does_ seem mysterious
to call a girl Jack. It may be less so in France, where a beautiful
practice has always prevailed of giving a boy his mother's name--
preceded and strengthened by a male name, as _Charles Anne_, _Victor
Victoire_. In cases where a mother's memory has been unusually dear to
a son, this vocal memento of her, locked into the circle of his own
name, gives to it the tenderness of a testamentary relic, or a funeral
ring. I presume, therefore, that La Pucelle must have borne the
baptismal name of Jeanne Jean; the latter with no reference, perhaps,
to so sublime a person as St. John, but simply to some relative.])
D'Arc was born at Domrémy, a village on the marches of Lorraine and
Champagne, and dependent upon the town of Vaucouleurs. I have called
her a Lorrainer, not simply because the word is prettier, but because
Champagne too odiously reminds us English of what are for _us_
imaginary wines--which, undoubtedly, La Pucelle tasted as rarely as we
English: we English, because the champagne of London is chiefly grown
in Devonshire; La Pucelle, because the champagne of Champagne never, by
any chance, flowed into the fountain of Domrémy, from which only she
drank. M. Michelet will have her to be a _Champenoise_, and for no
better reason than that she "took after her father," who happened to be
a _Champenois_.

These disputes, however, turn on refinements too nice. Domrémy stood
upon the frontiers, and, like other frontiers, produced a _mixed_
race, representing the _cis_ and the _trans_. A river (it is
true) formed the boundary line at this point--the river Meuse; and
_that_, in old days, might have divided the populations; but in
these days it did not; there were bridges, there were ferries, and
weddings crossed from the right bank to the left. Here lay two great
roads, not so much for travellers that were few, as for armies that
were too many by half. These two roads, one of which was the great
highroad between France and Germany, _decussated_ at this very
point; which is a learned way of saying that they formed a St. Andrew's
Cross, or letter X. I hope the compositor will choose a good large X;
in which case the point of intersection, the _locus_ of conflux and
intersection for these four diverging arms, will finish the reader's
geographical education, by showing him to a hair's-breadth where it was
that Domrémy stood. These roads, so grandly situated, as great trunk
arteries between two mighty realms,[Footnote: And reminding one of that
inscription, so justly admired by Paul Richter, which a Russian Czarina
placed on a guide-post near Moscow: _This is the road that leads to
Constantinople._] and haunted for ever by wars or rumours of wars,
decussated (for anything I know to the contrary) absolutely under
Joanna's bedroom window; one rolling away to the right, past M. D'Arc's
old barn, and the other unaccountably preferring to sweep round that
odious man's pig-sty to the left.

On whichever side of the border chance had thrown Joanna, the same love
to France would have been nurtured. For it is a strange fact, noticed
by M. Michelet and others, that the Dukes of Bar and Lorraine had for
generations pursued the policy of eternal warfare with France on their
own account, yet also of eternal amity and league with France in case
anybody else presumed to attack her. Let peace settle upon France, and
before long you might rely upon seeing the little vixen Lorraine flying
at the throat of France. Let France be assailed by a formidable enemy,
and instantly you saw a Duke of Lorraine insisting on having his own
throat cut in support of France; which favour accordingly was
cheerfully granted to him in three great successive battles: twice by
the English, viz., at Crécy and Agincourt, once by the Sultan at
Nicopolis.

This sympathy with France during great eclipses, in those that during
ordinary seasons were always teasing her with brawls and guerilla
inroads, strengthened the natural piety to France of those that were
confessedly the children of her own house. The outposts of France, as
one may call the great frontier provinces, were of all localities the
most devoted to the Fleurs de Lys. To witness, at any great crisis, the
generous devotion to these lilies of the little fiery cousin that in
gentler weather was for ever tilting at the breast of France, could not
but fan the zeal of France's legitimate daughters; while to occupy a
post of honour on the frontiers against an old hereditary enemy of
France would naturally stimulate this zeal by a sentiment of martial
pride, by a sense of danger always threatening, and of hatred always
smouldering. That great four-headed road was a perpetual memento to
patriotic ardour. To say "This way lies the road to Paris, and that
other way to Aix-la-Chapelle; this to Prague, that to Vienna,"
nourished the warfare of the heart by daily ministrations of sense. The
eye that watched for the gleams of lance or helmet from the hostile
frontier, the ear that listened for the groaning of wheels, made the
highroad itself, with its relations to centres so remote, into a manual
of patriotic duty.

The situation, therefore, _locally_, of Joanna was full of profound
suggestions to a heart that listened for the stealthy steps of change
and fear that too surely were in motion. But, if the place were grand,
the time, the burden of the time, was far more so. The air overhead in
its upper chambers was _hurtling_ with the obscure sound; was dark
with sullen fermenting of storms that had been gathering for a hundred
and thirty years. The battle of Agincourt in Joanna's childhood had
reopened the wounds of France. Crécy and Poictiers, those withering
overthrows for the chivalry of France, had, before Agincourt occurred,
been tranquilised by more than half a century; but this resurrection of
their trumpet wails made the whole series of battles and endless
skirmishes take their stations as parts in one drama. The graves that
had closed sixty years ago seemed to fly open in sympathy with a sorrow
that echoed their own. The monarchy of France laboured in extremity,
rocked and reeled like a ship fighting with the darkness of monsoons.
The madness of the poor king (Charles VI), falling in at such a crisis,
like the case of women labouring in child-birth during the storming of
a city, trebled the awfulness of the time. Even the wild story of the
incident which had immediately occasioned the explosion of this
madness--the case of a man unknown, gloomy, and perhaps maniacal
himself, coming out of a forest at noonday, laying his hand upon the
bridle of the king's horse, checking him for a moment to say, "Oh,
king, thou art betrayed," and then vanishing, no man knew whither, as
he had appeared for no man knew what--fell in with the universal
prostration of mind that laid France on her knees, as before the slow
unweaving of some ancient prophetic doom. The famines, the
extraordinary diseases, the insurrections of the peasantry up and down
Europe--these were chords struck from the same mysterious harp; but
these were transitory chords. There had been others of deeper and more
ominous sound. The termination of the Crusades, the destruction of the
Templars, the Papal interdicts, the tragedies caused or suffered by the
house of Anjou, and by the Emperor--these were full of a more permanent
significance. But, since then, the colossal figure of feudalism was
seen standing, as it were on tiptoe, at Crécy, for flight from earth:
that was a revolution unparalleled; yet _that_ was a trifle by
comparison with the more fearful revolutions that were mining below the
Church. By her own internal schisms, by the abominable spectacle of a
double Pope--so that no man, except through political bias, could even
guess which was Heaven's vicegerent, and which the creature of Hell--
the Church was rehearsing, as in still earlier forms she had already
rehearsed, those vast rents in her foundations which no man should ever
heal.

These were the loftiest peaks of the cloudland in the skies that to the
scientific gazer first caught the colors of the _new_ morning in
advance. But the whole vast range alike of sweeping glooms overhead
dwelt upon all meditative minds, even upon those that could not
distinguish the tendencies nor decipher the forms. It was, therefore,
not her own age alone, as affected by its immediate calamities, that
lay with such weight upon Joanna's mind, but her own age as one section
in a vast mysterious drama, unweaving through a century back, and
drawing nearer continually to some dreadful crisis. Cataracts and
rapids were heard roaring ahead; and signs were seen far back, by help
of old men's memories, which answered secretly to signs now coming
forward on the eye, even as locks answer to keys. It was not wonderful
that in such a haunted solitude, with such a haunted heart, Joanna
should see angelic visions, and hear angelic voices. These voices
whispered to her for ever the duty, self-imposed, of delivering France.
Five years she listened to these monitory voices with internal
struggles. At length she could resist no longer. Doubt gave way; and
she left her home for ever in order to present herself at the dauphin's
court.  The education of this poor girl was mean according to the
present standard: was ineffably grand, according to a purer philosophic
standard: and only not good for our age because for us it would be
unattainable. She read nothing, for she could not read; but she had
heard others read parts of the Roman martyrology. She wept in sympathy
with the sad "Misereres" of the Romish Church; she rose to heaven with
the glad triumphant "Te Deums" of Rome; she drew her comfort and her
vital strength from the rites of the same Church. But, next after these
spiritual advantages, she owed most to the advantages of her situation.
The fountain of Domrémy was on the brink of a boundless forest; and it
was haunted to that degree by fairies that the parish priest
(_curé_) was obliged to read mass there once a year, in order to
keep them in any decent bounds. Fairies are important, even in a
statistical view: certain weeds mark poverty in the soil; fairies mark
its solitude. As surely as the wolf retires before cities does the
fairy sequester herself from the haunts of the licensed victualer. A
village is too much for her nervous delicacy; at most, she can tolerate
a distant view of a hamlet. We may judge, therefore, by the uneasiness
and extra trouble which they gave to the parson, in what strength the
fairies mustered at Domrémy, and, by a satisfactory consequence, how
thinly sown with men and women must have been that region even in its
inhabited spots. But the forests of Domrémy--those were the glories of
the land: for in them abode mysterious powers and ancient secrets that
towered into tragic strength. "Abbeys there were, and abbey windows"--
"like Moorish temples of the Hindoos"--that exercised even princely
power both in Lorraine and in the German Diets. These had their sweet
bells that pierced the forests for many a league at matins or vespers,
and each its own dreamy legend. Few enough, and scattered enough, were
these abbeys, so as in no degree to disturb the deep solitude of the
region; yet many enough to spread a network or awning of Christian
sanctity over what else might have seemed a heathen wilderness. This
sort of religious talisman being secured, a man the most afraid of
ghosts (like myself, suppose, or the reader) becomes armed into courage
to wander for days in their sylvan recesses. The mountains of the
Vosges, on the eastern frontier of France, have never attracted much
notice from Europe, except in 1813-14 for a few brief months, when they
fell within Napoleon's line of defence against the Allies. But they are
interesting for this among other features, that they do not, like some
loftier ranges, repel woods; the forests and the hills are on sociable
terms. "Live and let live" is their motto. For this reason, in part,
these tracts in Lorraine were a favourite hunting-ground with the
Carlovingian princes. About six hundred years before Joanna's
childhood, Charlemagne was known to have hunted there. That, of itself,
was a grand incident in the traditions of a forest or a chase. In these
vast forests, also, were to be found (if anywhere to be found) those
mysterious fawns that tempted solitary hunters into visionary and
perilous pursuits. Here was seen (if anywhere seen) that ancient stag
who was already nine hundred years old, but possibly a hundred or two
more, when met by Charlemagne; and the thing was put beyond doubt by
the inscription upon his golden collar. I believe Charlemagne knighted
the stag; and, if ever he is met again by a king, he ought to be made
an earl, or, being upon the marches of France, a marquis. Observe, I
don't absolutely vouch for all these things: my own opinion varies. On
a fine breezy forenoon I am audaciously sceptical; but as twilight sets
in my credulity grows steadily, till it becomes equal to anything that
could be desired. And I have heard candid sportsmen declare that,
outside of these very forests, they laughed loudly at all the dim tales
connected with their haunted solitudes, but, on reaching a spot
notoriously eighteen miles deep within them, they agreed with Sir Roger
de Coverley that a good deal might be said on both sides.

Such traditions, or any others that (like the stag) connect distant
generations with each other, are, for that cause, sublime; and the
sense of the shadowy, connected with such appearances that reveal
themselves or not according to circumstances, leaves a colouring of
sanctity over ancient forests, even in those minds that utterly reject
the legend as a fact.

But, apart from all distinct stories of that order, in any solitary
frontier between two great empires--as here, for instance, or in the
desert between Syria and the Euphrates--there is an inevitable
tendency, in minds of any deep sensibility, to people the solitudes
with phantom images of powers that were of old so vast. Joanna,
therefore, in her quiet occupation of a shepherdess, would be led
continually to brood over the political condition of her country by the
traditions of the past no less than by the mementoes of the local
present.

M. Michelet, indeed, says that La Pucelle was not a shepherdess. I beg
his pardon; she was. What he rests upon I guess pretty well: it is the
evidence of a woman called Haumette, the most confidential friend of
Joanna. Now, she is a good witness, and a good girl, and I like her;
for she makes a natural and affectionate report of Joanna's ordinary
life. But still, however good she may be as a witness, Joanna is
better; and she, when speaking to the dauphin, calls herself in the
Latin report _Bergereta_. Even Haumette confesses that Joanna
tended sheep in her girlhood. And I believe that, if Miss Haumette were
taking coffee along with me this very evening (February 12, 1847)--in
which there would be no subject for scandal or for maiden blushes,
because I am an intense philosopher, and Miss H. would be hard upon 450
years old--she would admit the following comment upon her evidence to
be right. A Frenchman, about forty years ago--M. Simond, in his
"Travels"--mentions accidentally the following hideous scene as one
steadily observed and watched by himself in chivalrous France not very
long before the French Revolution: A peasant was plowing; and the team
that drew his plow was a donkey and a woman. Both were regularly
harnessed; both pulled alike. This is bad enough; but the Frenchman
adds that, in distributing his lashes, the peasant was obviously
desirous of being impartial; or, if either of the yokefellows had a
right to complain, certainly it was not the donkey. Now, in any country
where such degradation of females could be tolerated by the state of
manners, a woman of delicacy would shrink from acknowledging, either
for herself or her friend, that she had ever been addicted to any mode
of labour not strictly domestic; because, if once owning herself a
prædial servant, she would be sensible that this confession extended by
probability in the hearer's thoughts to the having incurred indignities
of this horrible kind. Haumette clearly thinks it more dignified for
Joanna to have been darning the stockings of her horny-hoofed father,
M. D'Arc, than keeping sheep, lest she might then be suspected of
having ever done something worse. But, luckily, there was no danger of
_that_: Joanna never was in service; and my opinion is that her
father should have mended his own stockings, since probably he was the
party to make the holes in them, as many a better man than D'Arc does--
meaning by _that_ not myself, because, though probably a better man
than D'Arc, I protest against doing anything of the kind. If I lived
even with Friday in Juan Fernandez, either Friday must do all the
darning, or else it must go undone. The better men that I meant were
the sailors in the British navy, every man of whom mends his own
stockings. Who else is to do it? Do you suppose, reader, that the
junior lords of the admiralty are under articles to darn for the navy?

The reason, meantime, for my systematic hatred of D'Arc is this: There
was a story current in France before the Revolution, framed to ridicule
the pauper aristocracy, who happened to have long pedigrees and short
rent rolls: viz., that a head of such a house, dating from the
Crusades, was overheard saying to his son, a Chevalier of St. Louis,
"_Chevalier, as-tu donné au cochon à manger_?" Now, it is clearly
made out by the surviving evidence that D'Arc would much have preferred
continuing to say, "_Ma fille, as-tu donné au cochon à manger_?" to
saying, "_Pucelle d'Orléans, as-tu sauvé les fleurs-de-lys_?" There
is an old English copy of verses which argues thus:

  "If the man that turnips cries
  Cry not when his father dies,
  Then 'tis plain the man had rather
  Have a turnip than his father."

I cannot say that the logic of these verses was ever _entirely_ to
my satisfaction. I do not see my way through it as clearly as could be
wished. But I see my way most clearly through D'Arc; and the result is
--that he would greatly have preferred not merely a turnip to his
father, but the saving a pound or so of bacon to saving the Oriflamme
of France.

It is probable (as M. Michelet suggests) that the title of Virgin or
Pucelle had in itself, and apart from the miraculous stories about her,
a secret power over the rude soldiery and partisan chiefs of that
period; for in such a person they saw a representative manifestation of
the Virgin Mary, who, in a course of centuries, had grown steadily upon
the popular heart.

As to Joanna's supernatural detection of the dauphin (Charles VII)
among three hundred lords and knights, I am surprised at the credulity
which could ever lend itself to that theatrical juggle. Who admires
more than myself the sublime enthusiasm, the rapturous faith in
herself, of this pure creature? But I am far from admiring stage
artifices which not La Pucelle, but the court, must have arranged; nor
can surrender myself to the conjurer's legerdemain, such as may be seen
every day for a shilling. Southey's "Joan of Arc" was published in
1796. Twenty years after, talking with Southey, I was surprised to find
him still owning a secret bias in favor of Joan, founded on her
detection of the dauphin. The story, for the benefit of the reader new
to the case, was this: La Pucelle was first made known to the dauphin,
and presented to his court, at Chinon; and here came her first trial.
By way of testing her supernatural pretensions, she was to find out the
royal personage amongst the whole ark of clean and unclean creatures.
Failing in this _coup d'essai_, she would not simply disappoint
many a beating heart in the glittering crowd that on different motives
yearned for her success, but she would ruin herself, and, as the oracle
within had told her, would, by ruining herself, ruin France. Our own
Sovereign Lady Victoria rehearses annually a trial not so severe in
degree, but the same in kind. She "pricks" for sheriffs. Joanna pricked
for a king. But observe the difference: our own Lady pricks for two men
out of three; Joanna for one man out of three hundred. Happy Lady of
the Islands and the Orient!--she _can_ go astray in her choice only
by one-half: to the extent of one-half she _must_ have the
satisfaction of being right. And yet, even with these tight limits to
the misery of a boundless discretion, permit me, Liege Lady, with all
loyalty, to submit that now and then you prick with your pin the wrong
man. But the poor child from Domremy, shrinking under the gaze of a
dazzling court--not _because_ dazzling (for in visions she had seen
those that were more so), but because some of them wore a scoffing
smile on their features--how should _she_ throw her line into so
deep a river to angle for a king, where many a gay creature was
sporting that masqueraded as kings in dress! Nay, even more than any
true king would have done: for, in Southey's version of the story, the
dauphin says, by way of trying the virgin's magnetic sympathy with
royalty,

        "On the throne,
  I the while mingling with the menial throng,
  Some courtier shall be seated."

This usurper is even crowned: "the jeweled crown shines on a menial's
head." But, really, that is "_un peu fort_"; and the mob of
spectators might raise a scruple whether our friend the jackdaw upon
the throne, and the dauphin himself, were not grazing the shins of
treason. For the dauphin could not lend more than belonged to him.
According to the popular notion, he had no crown for himself;
consequently none to lend, on any pretence whatever, until the
consecrated Maid should take him to Rheims. This was the _popular_
notion in France. But certainly it was the dauphin's interest to
support the popular notion, as he meant to use the services of Joanna.
For if he were king already, what was it that she could do for him
beyond Orleans? That is to say, what more than a merely _military_
service could she render him? And, above all, if he were king without a
coronation, and without the oil from the sacred ampulla, what advantage
was yet open to him by celerity above his competitor, the English boy?
Now was to be a race for a coronation: he that should win _that_
race carried the superstition of France along with him: he that should
first be drawn from the ovens of Rheims was under that superstition
baked into a king.

La Pucelle, before she could be allowed to practise as a warrior, was
put through her manual and platoon exercise, as a pupil in divinity, at
the bar of six eminent men in wigs. According to Southey (v. 393, bk.
iii., in the original edition of his "Joan of Arc,") she "appalled the
doctors." It's not easy to do _that_: but they had some reason to
feel bothered, as that surgeon would assuredly feel bothered who, upon
proceeding to dissect a subject, should find the subject retaliating as
a dissector upon himself, especially if Joanna ever made the speech to
them which occupies v. 354-391, bk. iii. It is a double impossibility:
1st, because a piracy from Tindal's "Christianity as old as the
Creation"--a piracy _a parte ante_, and by three centuries; 2d, it
is quite contrary to the evidence on Joanna's trial. Southey's "Joan"
of A.D. 1796 (Cottle, Bristol) tells the doctors, among other secrets,
that she never in her life attended--1st, Mass; nor 2d, the Sacramental
Table; nor 3d, Confession. In the meantime, all this deistical
confession of Joanna's, besides being suicidal for the interest of her
cause, is opposed to the depositions upon _both_ trials. The very
best witness called from first to last deposes that Joanna attended
these rites of her Church even too often; was taxed with doing so; and,
by blushing, owned the charge as a fact, though certainly not as a
fault. Joanna was a girl of natural piety, that saw God in forests and
hills and fountains, but did not the less seek him in chapels and
consecrated oratories.

This peasant girl was self-educated through her own natural
meditativeness. If the reader turns to that divine passage in "Paradise
Regained" which Milton has put into the mouth of our Saviour when first
entering the wilderness, and musing upon the tendency of those great
impulses growing within himself-----

  "Oh, what a multitude of thoughts at once
  Awakened in me swarm, while I consider
  What from within I feel myself, and hear
  What from without comes often to my ears,
  Ill sorting with my present state compared!
  When I was yet a child, no childish play
  To me was pleasing; all my mind was set
  Serious to learn and know, and thence to do,
  What might be public good; myself I thought
  Born to that end----"

he will have some notion of the vast reveries which brooded over the
heart of Joanna in early girlhood, when the wings were budding that
should carry her from Orleans to Rheims; when the golden chariot was
dimly revealing itself that should carry her from the kingdom of
_France Delivered_ to the Eternal Kingdom.

It is not requisite for the honour of Joanna, nor is there in this
place room, to pursue her brief career of _action._ That, though
wonderful, forms the earthly part of her story; the spiritual part is
the saintly passion of her imprisonment, trial, and execution. It is
unfortunate, therefore, for Southey's "Joan of Arc" (which, however,
should always be regarded as a _juvenile_ effort), that precisely
when her real glory begins the poem ends. But this limitation of the
interest grew, no doubt, from the constraint inseparably attached to
the law of epic unity. Joanna's history bisects into two opposite
hemispheres, and both could not have been presented to the eye in one
poem, unless by sacrificing all unity of theme, or else by involving
the earlier half, as a narrative episode, in the latter; which,
however, might have been done, for it might have been communicated to a
fellow-prisoner, or a confessor, by Joanna herself. It is sufficient,
as concerns _this_ section of Joanna's life, to say that she
fulfilled, to the height of her promises, the restoration of the
prostrate throne. France had become a province of England, and for the
ruin of both, if such a yoke could be maintained. Dreadful pecuniary
exhaustion caused the English energy to droop; and that critical
opening La Pucelle used with a corresponding felicity of audacity and
suddenness (that were in themselves portentous) for introducing the
wedge of French native resources, for rekindling the national pride,
and for planting the dauphin once more upon his feet. When Joanna
appeared, he had been on the point of giving up the struggle with the
English, distressed as they were, and of flying to the south of France.
She taught him to blush for such abject counsels. She liberated
Orleans, that great city, so decisive by its fate for the issue of the
war, and then beleaguered by the English with an elaborate application
of engineering skill unprecedented in Europe. Entering the city after
sunset on the 29th of April, she sang mass on Sunday, May 8th, for the
entire disappearance of the besieging force. On the 29th of June she
fought and gained over the English the decisive battle of Patay; on the
9th of July she took Troyes by a _coup-de-main_ from a mixed
garrison of English and Burgundians; on the 15th of that month she
carried the dauphin into Rheims; on Sunday the 17th she crowned him;
and there she rested from her labour of triumph. All that was to be
_done_ she had now accomplished; what remained was--to
_suffer_.

All this forward movement was her own; excepting one man, the whole
council was against her. Her enemies were all that drew power from
earth. Her supporters were her own strong enthusiasm, and the headlong
contagion by which she carried this sublime frenzy into the hearts of
women, of soldiers, and of all who lived by labour. Henceforward she
was thwarted; and the worst error that she committed was to lend the
sanction of her presence to counsels which she had ceased to approve.
But she had now accomplished the capital objects which her own visions
had dictated. These involved all the rest. Errors were now less
important; and doubtless it had now become more difficult for herself
to pronounce authentically what _were_ errors. The noble girl had
achieved, as by a rapture of motion, the capital end of clearing out a
free space around her sovereign, giving him the power to move his arms
with effect, and, secondly, the inappreciable end of winning for that
sovereign what seemed to all France the heavenly ratification of his
rights, by crowning him with the ancient solemnities. She had made it
impossible for the English now to step before her. They were caught in
an irretrievable blunder, owing partly to discord among the uncles of
Henry VI, partly to a want of funds, but partly to the very
impossibility which they believed to press with tenfold force upon any
French attempt to forestall theirs. They laughed at such a thought;
and, while they laughed, _she_ did it. Henceforth the single
redress for the English of this capital oversight, but which never
_could_ have redressed it effectually, was to vitiate and taint the
coronation of Charles VII as the work of a witch. That policy, and not
malice (as M. Michelet is so happy to believe), was the moving
principle in the subsequent prosecution of Joanna. Unless they unhinged
the force of the first coronation in the popular mind by associating it
with power given from hell, they felt that the sceptre of the invader
was broken.

But she, the child that, at nineteen, had wrought wonders so great for
France, was she not elated? Did she not lose, as men so often
_have_ lost, all sobriety of mind when standing upon the pinnacle
of success so giddy? Let her enemies declare. During the progress of
her movement, and in the centre of ferocious struggles, she had
manifested the temper of her feelings by the pity which she had
everywhere expressed for the suffering enemy. She forwarded to the
English leaders a touching invitation to unite with the French, as
brothers, in a common crusade against infidels--thus opening the road
for a soldierly retreat. She interposed to protect the captive or the
wounded; she mourned over the excesses of her countrymen; she threw
herself off her horse to kneel by the dying English soldier, and to
comfort him with such ministrations, physical or spiritual, as his
situation allowed. "Nolebat," says the evidence, "uti ense suo, aut
quemquam interficere." She sheltered the English that invoked her aid
in her own quarters. She wept as she beheld, stretched on the field of
battle, so many brave enemies that had died without confession. And, as
regarded herself, her elation expressed itself thus: on the day when
she had finished her work, she wept; for she knew that, when her
_triumphal_ task was done, her end must be approaching. Her
aspirations pointed only to a place which seemed to her more than
usually full of natural piety, as one in which it would give her
pleasure to die. And she uttered, between smiles and tears, as a wish
that inexpressibly fascinated her heart, and yet was half fantastic, a
broken prayer that God would return her to the solitudes from which he
had drawn her, and suffer her to become a shepherdess once more. It was
a natural prayer, because nature has laid a necessity upon every human
heart to seek for rest and to shrink from torment. Yet, again, it was a
half-fantastic prayer, because, from childhood upward, visions that she
had no power to mistrust, and the voices which sounded in her ear for
ever, had long since persuaded her mind that for _her_ no such
prayer could be granted. Too well she felt that her mission must be
worked out to the end, and that the end was now at hand. All went wrong
from this time. She herself had created the _funds_ out of which
the French restoration should grow; but she was not suffered to witness
their development or their prosperous application. More than one
military plan was entered upon which she did not approve. But she still
continued to expose her person as before. Severe wounds had not taught
her caution. And at length, in a sortie from Compiègne (whether through
treacherous collusion on the part of her own friends is doubtful to
this day), she was made prisoner by the Burgundians, and finally
surrendered to the English.

Now came her trial. This trial, moving of course under English
influence, was conducted in chief by the Bishop of Beauvais. He was a
Frenchman, sold to English interests, and hoping, by favour of the
English leaders, to reach the highest preferment. "Bishop that art,
Archbishop that shalt be, Cardinal that mayest be," were the words that
sounded continually in his ear; and doubtless a whisper of visions
still higher, of a triple crown, and feet upon the necks of kings,
sometimes stole into his heart. M. Michelet is anxious to keep us in
mind that this bishop was but an agent of the English. True. But it
does not better the case for his countryman that, being an accomplice
in the crime, making himself the leader in the persecution against the
helpless girl, he was willing to be all this in the spirit, and with
the conscious vileness of a cat's-paw. Never from the foundations of
the earth was there such a trial as this, if it were laid open in all
its beauty of defence and all its hellishness of attack. Oh, child of
France! shepherdess, peasant girl! trodden under foot by all around
thee, how I honour thy flashing intellect, quick as God's lightning,
and true as God's lightning to its mark, that ran before France and
laggard Europe by many a century, confounding the malice of the
ensnarer, and making dumb the oracles of falsehood! Is it not
scandalous, is it not humiliating to civilization, that, even at this
day, France exhibits the horrid spectacle of judges examining the
prisoner against himself; seducing him, by fraud, into treacherous
conclusions against his own head; using the terrors of their power for
extorting confessions from the frailty of hope; nay (which is worse),
using the blandishments of condescension and snaky kindness for thawing
into compliances of gratitude those whom they had failed to freeze into
terror? Wicked judges! barbarian jurisprudence!--that, sitting in your
own conceit on the summits of social wisdom, have yet failed to learn
the first principles of criminal justice--sit ye humbly and with
docility at the feet of this girl from Domrémy, that tore your webs of
cruelty into shreds and dust. "Would you examine me as a witness
against myself?" was the question by which many times she defied their
arts. Continually she showed that their interrogations were irrelevant
to any business before the court, or that entered into the ridiculous
charges against her. General questions were proposed to her on points
of casuistical divinity; two-edged questions, which not one of
themselves could have answered, without, on the one side, landing
himself in heresy (as then interpreted), or, on the other, in some
presumptuous expression of self-esteem. Next came a wretched Dominican,
that pressed her with an objection, which, if applied to the Bible,
would tax every one of its miracles with unsoundness. The monk had the
excuse of never having read the Bible. M. Michelet has no such excuse;
and it makes one blush for him, as a philosopher, to find him
describing such an argument as "weighty," whereas it is but a varied
expression of rude Mahometan metaphysics. Her answer to this, if there
were room to place the whole in a clear light, was as shattering as it
was rapid. Another thought to entrap her by asking what language the
angelic visitors of her solitude had talked--as though heavenly
counsels could want polyglot interpreters for every word, or that God
needed language at all in whispering thoughts to a human heart. Then
came a worse devil, who asked her whether the Archangel Michael had
appeared naked. Not comprehending the vile insinuation, Joanna, whose
poverty suggested to her simplicity that it might be the _costliness_
of suitable robes which caused the demur, asked them if they fancied
God, who clothed the flowers of the valleys, unable to find raiment for
his servants. The answer of Joanna moves a smile of tenderness, but the
disappointment of her judges makes one laugh exultingly. Others
succeeded by troops, who upbraided her with leaving her father; as if
that greater Father, whom she believed herself to have been serving,
did not retain the power of dispensing with his own rules, or had not
said that for a less cause than martyrdom man and woman should leave
both father and mother.

On Easter Sunday, when the trial had been long proceeding, the poor
girl fell so ill as to cause a belief that she had been poisoned. It
was not poison. Nobody had any interest in hastening a death so
certain. M. Michelet, whose sympathies with all feelings are so quick
that one would gladly see them always as justly directed, reads the
case most truly. Joanna had a twofold malady. She was visited by a
paroxysm of the complaint called _homesickness_. The cruel nature
of her imprisonment, and its length, could not but point her solitary
thoughts, in darkness and in chains (for chained she was), to Domrémy.
And the season, which was the most heavenly period of the spring, added
stings to this yearning. That was one of her maladies--_nostalgia_,
as medicine calls it; the other was weariness and exhaustion from daily
combats with malice. She saw that everybody hated her and thirsted for
her blood; nay, many kind-hearted creatures that would have pitied her
profoundly, as regarded all political charges, had their natural
feelings warped by the belief that she had dealings with fiendish
powers. She knew she was to die; that was _not_ the misery! the
misery was that this consummation could not be reached without so much
intermediate strife, as if she were contending for some chance (where
chance was none) of happiness, or were dreaming for a moment of
escaping the inevitable. Why, then, _did_ she contend? Knowing that
she would reap nothing from answering her persecutors, why did she not
retire by silence from the superfluous contest? It was because her
quick and eager loyalty to truth would not suffer her to see it
darkened by frauds which _she_ could expose, but others, even of
candid listeners, perhaps, could not; it was through that imperishable
grandeur of soul which taught her to submit meekly and without a
struggle to her punishment, but taught her _not_ to submit--no, not
for a moment--to calumny as to facts, or to misconstruction as to
motives. Besides, there were secretaries all around the court taking
down her words. That was meant for no good to _her_. But the end
does not always correspond to the meaning. And Joanna might say to
herself, "These words that will be used against me to-morrow and the
next day, perhaps, in some nobler generation, may rise again for my
justification." Yes, Joanna, they _are_ rising even now in Paris,
and for more than justification!

Woman, sister, there are some things which you do not execute as well
as your brother, man; no, nor ever will. Pardon me if I doubt whether
you will ever produce a great poet from your choirs, or a Mozart, or a
Phidias, or a Michael Angelo, or a great philosopher, or a great
scholar. By which last is meant--not one who depends simply on an
infinite memory, but also on an infinite and electrical power of
combination; bringing together from the four winds, like the angel of
the resurrection, what else were dust from dead men's bones, into the
unity of breathing life. If you _can_ create yourselves into any of
these great creators, why have you not?

Yet, sister woman, though I cannot consent to find a Mozart or a
Michael Angelo in your sex, cheerfully, and with the love that burns in
depths of admiration, I acknowledge that you can do one thing as well
as the best of us men--a greater thing than even Milton is known to
have done, or Michael Angelo; you can die grandly, and as goddesses
would die, were goddesses mortal. If any distant worlds (which
_may_ be the case) are so far ahead of us Tellurians in optical
resources as to see distinctly through their telescopes all that we do
on earth, what is the grandest sight to which we ever treat them? St.
Peter's at Rome, do you fancy, on Easter Sunday, or Luxor, or perhaps
the Himalayas? Oh, no! my friend; suggest something better; these are
baubles to _them_; they see in other worlds, in their own, far
better toys of the same kind. These, take my word for it, are nothing.
Do you give it up? The finest thing, then, we have to show them is a
scaffold on the morning of execution. I assure you there is a strong
muster in those far telescopic worlds, on any such morning, of those
who happen to find themselves occupying the right hemisphere for a peep
at _us_. How, then, if it be announced in some such telescopic
world by those who make a livelihood of catching glimpses at our
newspapers, whose language they have long since deciphered, that the
poor victim in the morning's sacrifice is a woman? How, if it be
published in that distant world that the sufferer wears upon her head,
in the eyes of many, the garlands of martyrdom? How, if it should be
some Marie Antoinette, the widowed queen, coming forward on the
scaffold, and presenting to the morning air her head, turned gray by
sorrow--daughter of Caesars kneeling down humbly to kiss the
guillotine, as one that worships death? How, if it were the noble
Charlotte Corday, that in the bloom of youth, that with the loveliest
of persons, that with homage waiting upon her smiles wherever she
turned her face to scatter them--homage that followed those smiles as
surely as the carols of birds, after showers in spring, follow the
reappearing sun and the racing of sunbeams over the hills--yet thought
all these things cheaper than the dust upon her sandals, in comparison
of deliverance from hell for her dear suffering France! Ah! these were
spectacles indeed for those sympathising people in distant worlds; and
some, perhaps, would suffer a sort of martyrdom themselves, because
they could not testify their wrath, could not bear witness to the
strength of love and to the fury of hatred that burned within them at
such scenes, could not gather into golden urns some of that glorious
dust which rested in the catacombs of earth.

On the Wednesday after Trinity Sunday in 1431, being then about
nineteen years of age, the Maid of Arc underwent her martyrdom. She was
conducted before mid-day, guarded by eight hundred spearmen, to a
platform of prodigious height, constructed of wooden billets supported
by occasional walls of lath and plaster, and traversed by hollow spaces
in every direction for the creation of air currents. The pile "struck
terror," says M. Michelet, "by its height"; and, as usual, the English
purpose in this is viewed as one of pure malignity. But there are two
ways of explaining all that. It is probable that the purpose was
merciful. On the circumstances of the execution I shall not linger.
Yet, to mark the almost fatal felicity of M. Michelet in finding out
whatever may injure the English name, at a moment when every reader
will be interested in Joanna's personal appearance, it is really
edifying to notice the ingenuity by which he draws into light from a
dark corner a very unjust account of it, and neglects, though lying
upon the highroad, a very pleasing one. Both are from English pens.
Grafton, a chronicler, but little read, being a stiff-necked John Bull,
thought fit to say that no wonder Joanna should be a virgin, since her
"foule face" was a satisfactory solution of that particular merit.
Holinshead, on the other hand, a chronicler somewhat later, every way
more important, and at one time universally read, has given a very
pleasing testimony to the interesting character of Joanna's person and
engaging manners. Neither of these men lived till the following
century, so that personally this evidence is none at all. Grafton
sullenly and carelessly believed as he wished to believe; Holinshead
took pains to inquire, and reports undoubtedly the general impression
of France. But I cite the case as illustrating M. Michelet's candour.
[Footnote: Amongst the many ebullitions of M. Michelet's fury against
us poor English are four which will be likely to amuse the reader; and
they are the more conspicuous in collision with the justice which he
sometimes does us, and the very indignant admiration which, under some
aspects, he grants to us.  1. Our English literature he admires with
some gnashing of teeth. He pronounces it "fine and sombre," but, I
lament to add, "skeptical, Judaic, Satanic--in a word, antichristian."
That Lord Byron should figure as a member of this diabolical
corporation will not surprise men. It _will_ surprise them to hear
that Milton is one of its Satanic leaders. Many are the generous and
eloquent Frenchmen, besides Chateaubriand, who have, in the course of
the last thirty years, nobly suspended their own burning nationality,
in order to render a more rapturous homage at the feet of Milton; and
some of them have raised Milton almost to a level with angelic natures.
Not one of them has thought of looking for him _below_ the earth.
As to Shakspere, M. Michelet detects in him a most extraordinary mare's
nest. It is this: he does "not recollect to have seen the name of God"
in any part of his works. On reading such words, it is natural to rub
one's eyes, and suspect that all one has ever seen in this world may
have been a pure ocular delusion. In particular, I begin myself to
suspect that the word "_la gloire_" never occurs in any Parisian
journal. "The great English nation," says M. Michelet, "has one immense
profound vice"--to wit, "pride." Why, really, that may be true; but we
have a neighbour not absolutely clear of an "immense profound vice," as
like ours in colour and shape as cherry to cherry. In short, M.
Michelet thinks us, by fits and starts, admirable--only that we are
detestable; and he would adore some of our authors, were it not that so
intensely he could have wished to kick them.

2. M. Michelet thinks to lodge an arrow in our sides by a very odd
remark upon Thomas à Kempis: which is, that a man of any conceivable
European blood--a Finlander, suppose, or a Zantiote--might have written
Tom; only not an Englishman. Whether an Englishman could have forged
Tom must remain a matter of doubt, unless the thing had been tried long
ago. That problem was intercepted for ever by Tom's perverseness in
choosing to manufacture himself. Yet, since nobody is better aware than
M. Michelet that this very point of Kempis _having_ manufactured
Kempis is furiously and hopelessly litigated, three or four nations
claiming to have forged his work for him, the shocking old doubt will
raise its snaky head once more--whether this forger, who rests in so
much darkness, might not, after all, be of English blood. Tom, it may
be feared, is known to modern English literature chiefly by an
irreverent mention of his name in a line of Peter Pindar's (Dr Wolcot)
fifty years back, where he is described as

        "Kempis Tom,
  Who clearly shows the way to Kingdom Come"

Few in these days can have read him, unless in the Methodist version of
John Wesley Among those few, however, happens to be myself, which arose
from the accident of having, when a boy of eleven, received a copy of
the "De Imitatione Christi" as a bequest from a relation who died very
young, from which cause, and from the external prettiness of the book--
being a Glasgow reprint by the celebrated Foulis, and gaily bound--I
was induced to look into it, and finally read it many times over,
partly out of some sympathy which, even in those days, I had with its
simplicity and devotional fervour, but much more from the savage
delight I found in laughing at Tom's Latinity that, I freely grant to M
Michelet, is inimitable. Yet, after all, it is not certain whether the
original _was_ Latin. But, however that may have been, if it is
possible that M Michelet [Footnote: "_If M. Michelet can be
accurate_"--However, on consideration, this statement does not depend
on Michelet. The bibliographer Barbier has absolutely _specified_
sixty in a separate dissertation, _soixante traductions_ among
those even that have not escaped the search. The Italian translations
are said to be thirty. As to mere editions, not counting the early MSS.
for half a century before printing was introduced, those in Latin
amount to 2000, and those in French to 1000. Meantime it is very clear
to me that this astonishing popularity so entirely unparalleled in
literature, could not have existed except in Roman Catholic times, nor
subsequently have lingered in any Protestant land. It was the denial of
Scripture fountains to thirsty lands which made this slender rill of
Scripture truth so passionately welcome.] can be accurate in saying
that there are no less than sixty French versions (not editions,
observe, but separate versions) existing of the "De Imitatione," how
prodigious must have been the adaptation of the book to the religious
heart of the fifteenth century! Excepting the Bible, but excepting
_that_ only in Protestant lands, no book known to man has had the
same distinction. It is the most marvellous bibliographical fact on
record.

3. Our English girls, it seems, are as faulty in one way as we English
males in another. None of us men could have written the _Opera
Omnia_ of Mr. à Kempis; neither could any of our girls have assumed
male attire like La Pucelle. But why? Because, says Michelet, English
girls and German think so much of an indecorum. Well, that is a good
fault, generally speaking. But M. Michelet ought to have remembered a
fact in the martyrologies which justifies both parties--the French
heroine for doing, and the general choir of English girls for _not_
doing. A female saint, specially renowned in France, had, for a reason
as weighty as Joanna's--viz., expressly to shield her modesty among
men--worn a male military harness. That reason and that example
authorised La Pucelle; but our English girls, as a body, have seldom
any such reason, and certainly no such saintly example, to plead. This
excuses _them_. Yet, still, if it is indispensable to the national
character that our young women should now and then trespass over the
frontier of decorum, it then becomes a patriotic duty in me to assure
M. Michelet that we _have_ such ardent females among us, and in a
long series; some detected in naval hospitals when too sick to remember
their disguise; some on fields of battle; multitudes never detected at
all; some only suspected; and others discharged without noise 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, _mon cher_? 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 peut_!"
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 crown lawyer varied the charge perhaps
through forty counts. The law laid its guns so as to rake the accused
at every possible angle. While the indictment was reading, he seemed a
monster of crime in his own eyes; and yet, after all, the poor fellow
had but committed one offence, and not always _that_. N. B.--Not
having the French original at hand, I make my quotations from a
friend's copy of Mr. Walter Kelly's translation; which seems to me
faithful, spirited, and idiomatically English--liable, in fact, only to
the single reproach of occasional provincialisms.]

The circumstantial incidents of the execution, unless with more space
than I can now command, I should be unwilling to relate. I should fear
to injure, by imperfect report, a martyrdom which to myself appears so
unspeakably grand. Yet, for a purpose, pointing not at Joanna, but at
M. Michelet--viz, to convince him that an Englishman is capable of
thinking more highly of La Pucelle than even her admiring countrymen--I
shall, in parting, allude to one or two traits in Joanna's demeanour on
the scaffold, and to one or two in that of the bystanders, which
authorise me in questioning an opinion of his upon this martyr's
firmness. The reader ought to be reminded that Joanna D'Arc was
subjected to an unusually unfair trial of opinion. Any of the elder
Christian martyrs had not much to fear of _personal_ rancour. The
martyr was chiefly regarded as the enemy of Cæsar; at times, also,
where any knowledge of the Christian faith and morals existed, with the
enmity that arises spontaneously in the worldly against the spiritual.
But the martyr, though disloyal, was not supposed to be therefore anti-
national; and still less was _individually_ hateful. What was hated
(if anything) belonged to his class, not to himself separately. Now,
Joanna, if hated at all, was hated personally, and in Rouen on national
grounds. Hence there would be a certainty of calumny arising against
_her_ such as would not affect martyrs in general. That being the
case, it would follow of necessity that some people would impute to her
a willingness to recant. No innocence could escape _that_. Now, had
she really testified this willingness on the scaffold, it would have
argued nothing at all but the weakness of a genial nature shrinking
from the instant approach of torment. And those will often pity that
weakness most who, in their own persons, would yield to it least.
Meantime, there never was a calumny uttered that drew less support from
the recorded circumstances. It rests upon no _positive_ testimony,
and it has a weight of contradicting testimony to stem. And yet,
strange to say, M, Michelet, who at times seems to admire the Maid of
Arc as much as I do, is the one sole writer among her _friends_ who
lends some countenance to this odious slander. His words are that, if
she did not utter this word _recant_ with her lips, she uttered it
in her heart. "Whether she _said_ the word is uncertain; but I
affirm that she _thought_ it."

Now, I affirm that she did not; not in any sense of the word
"_thought_" applicable to the case. Here is France calumniating La
Pucelle; here is England defending her. M. Michelet can only mean that,
on _a priori_ principles, every woman must be presumed liable to
such a weakness; that Joanna was a woman; _ergo_, that she was
liable to such a weakness. That is, he only supposes her to have
uttered the word by an argument which presumes it impossible for
anybody to have done otherwise. I, on the contrary, throw the onus of
the argument not on presumable tendencies of nature, but on the known
facts of that morning's execution, as recorded by multitudes. What
else, I demand, than mere weight of metal, absolute nobility of
deportment, broke the vast line of battle then arrayed against her?
What else but her meek, saintly demeanour won, from the enemies that
till now had believed her a witch, tears of rapturous admiration? "Ten
thousand men," says M. Michelet himself--"ten thousand men wept"; and
of these ten thousand the majority were political enemies knitted
together by cords of superstition. What else was it but her constancy,
united with her angelic gentleness, that drove the fanatic English
soldier--who had sworn to throw a fagot on her scaffold as _his_
tribute of abhorrence, that _did_ so, that fulfilled his vow--
suddenly to turn away a penitent for life, saying everywhere that he
had seen a dove rising upon wings to heaven from the ashes where she
had stood? What else drove the executioner to kneel at every shrine for
pardon to _his_ share in the tragedy? And, if all this were
insufficient, then I cite the closing act of her life as valid on her
behalf, were all other testimonies against her. The executioner had
been directed to apply his torch from below. He did so. The fiery smoke
rose upward in billowing volumes. A Dominican monk was then standing
almost at her side. Wrapped up in his sublime office, he saw not the
danger, but still persisted in his prayers. Even then, when the last
enemy was racing up the fiery stairs to seize her, even at that moment
did this noblest of girls think only for _him_, the one friend that
would not forsake her, and not for herself; bidding him with her last
breath to care for his own preservation, but to leave _her_ to God.
That girl, whose latest breath ascended in this sublime expression of
self-oblivion, did not utter the word _recant_ either with her lips or
in her heart. No; she did not, though one should rise from the dead to
swear it.

       *       *       *       *       *

Bishop of Beauvais! thy victim died in fire upon a scaffold--thou upon
a down bed. But, for the departing minutes of life, both are oftentimes
alike. At the farewell crisis, when the gates of death are opening, and
flesh is resting from its struggles, oftentimes the tortured and the
torturer have the same truce from carnal torment; both sink together
into sleep; together both sometimes kindle into dreams. When the mortal
mists were gathering fast upon you two, bishop and shepherd girl--when
the pavilions of life were closing up their shadowy curtains about you
--let us try, through the gigantic glooms, to decipher the flying
features of your separate visions.

The shepherd girl that had delivered France--she, from her dungeon,
she, from her baiting at the stake, she, from her duel with fire, as
she entered her last dream--saw Domrémy, saw the fountain of Domrémy,
saw the pomp of forests in which her childhood had wandered. That
Easter festival which man had denied to her languishing heart--that
resurrection of springtime, which the darkness of dungeons had
intercepted from _her_, hungering after the glorious liberty of
forests--were by God given back into her hands as jewels that had been
stolen from her by robbers. With those, perhaps (for the minutes of
dreams can stretch into ages), was given back to her by God the bliss
of childhood. By special privilege for _her_ might be created, in
this farewell dream, a second childhood, innocent as the first; but
not, like _that_, sad with the gloom of a fearful mission in the
rear. This mission had now been fulfilled. The storm was weathered; the
skirts even of that mighty storm were drawing off. The blood that she
was to reckon for had been exacted; the tears that she was to shed in
secret had been paid to the last. The hatred to herself in all eyes had
been faced steadily, had been suffered, had been survived. And in her
last fight upon the scaffold she had triumphed gloriously; victoriously
she had tasted the stings of death. For all, except this comfort from
her farewell dream, she had died--died amid the tears of ten thousand
enemies--died amid the drums and trumpets of armies--died amid peals
redoubling upon peals, volleys upon volleys, from the saluting clarions
of martyrs.

Bishop of Beauvais! because the guilt-burdened man is in dreams haunted
and waylaid by the most frightful of his crimes, and because upon that
fluctuating mirror--rising (like the mocking mirrors of _mirage_ in
Arabian deserts) from the fens of death-most of all are reflected the
sweet countenances which the man has laid in ruins; therefore I know,
bishop, that you also, entering your final dream, saw Domrémy. That
fountain, of which the witnesses spoke so much, showed itself to your
eyes in pure morning dews; but neither dews, nor the holy dawn, could
cleanse away the bright spots of innocent blood upon its surface. By
the fountain, bishop, you saw a woman seated, that hid her face. But,
as _you_ draw near, the woman raises her wasted features. Would
Domrémy know them again for the features of her child? Ah, but _you_
know them, bishop, well! Oh, mercy! what a groan was _that_ which the
servants, waiting outside the bishop's dream at his bedside, heard from
his labouring heart, as at this moment he turned away from the fountain
and the woman, seeking rest in the forests afar off. Yet not _so_ to
escape the woman, whom once again he must behold before he dies. In the
forests to which he prays for pity, will he find a respite? What a
tumult, what a gathering of feet is there! In glades where only wild
deer should run armies and nations are assembling; towering in the
fluctuating crowd are phantoms that belong to departed hours. There is
the great English Prince, Regent of France. There is my Lord of
Winchester, the princely cardinal, that died and made no sign. There is
the bishop of Beauvais, clinging to the shelter of thickets. What
building is that which hands so rapid are raising? Is it a martyr's
scaffold? Will they burn the child of Domrémy a second time? No; it is
a tribunal that rises to the clouds; and two nations stand around it,
waiting for a trial. Shall my Lord of Beauvais sit again upon the
judgment-seat, and again number the hours for the innocent? Ah, no! he
is the prisoner at the bar. Already all is waiting: the mighty audience
is gathered, the Court is hurrying to their seats, the witnesses are
arrayed, the trumpets are sounding, the judge is taking his place. Oh,
but this is sudden! My lord, have you no counsel? "Counsel I have none;
in heaven above, or on earth beneath, counsellor there is none now that
would take a brief from _me_: all are silent." Is it, indeed, come to
this? Alas! the time is short, the tumult is wondrous, the crowd
stretches away into infinity; but yet I will search in it for somebody
to take your brief; I know of somebody that will be your counsel. Who
is this that cometh from Domrémy? Who is she in bloody coronation robes
from Rheims? Who is she that cometh with blackened flesh from walking
the furnaces of Rouen? This is she, the shepherd girl, counsellor that
had none for herself, whom I choose, bishop, for yours. She it is, I
engage, that shall take my lord's brief. She it is, bishop, that would
plead for you; yes, bishop, _she_--when heaven and earth are silent.




NOTES

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH


"In October 1849 there appeared in _Blackwood's Magazine_ an
article entitled _The English Mail-Coach, or the Glory of Motion_.
There was no intimation that it was to be continued; but in December
1849 there followed in the same magazine an article in two sections,
headed by a paragraph explaining that it was by the author of the
previous article in the October number, and was to be taken in
connexion with that article. One of the sections of this second article
was entitled _The Vision of Sudden Death_, and the other _Dream-
Fugue on the above theme of Sudden Death_. When De Quincey revised
the papers in 1854 for republication in volume iv of the Collective
Edition of his writings, he brought the whole under the one general
title of _The English Mail-Coach_, dividing the text, as at
present, into three sections or chapters, the first with the sub-title
_The Glory of Motion_, the second with the sub-title _The Vision
of Sudden Death_, and the third with the sub-title _Dream-Fugue,
founded on the preceding theme of Sudden Death_. Great care was
bestowed on the revision. Passages that had appeared in the magazine
articles were omitted; new sentences were inserted; and the language
was retouched throughout."--MASSON. Cf. as to the revision, Professor
Dowden's article, "How De Quincey worked," _Saturday Review_, Feb.
23, 1895. This selection is found in _Works_, Masson's ed., Vol.
XIII, pp. 270-327; Riverside ed., Vol. I, pp. 517-582.

1 6 HE HAD MARRIED THE DAUGHTER OF A DUKE: "Mr. John Palmer, a native
of Bath, and from about 1768 the energetic proprietor of the Theatre
Royal in that city, had been led, by the wretched state in those days
of the means of intercommunication between Bath and London, wand his
own consequent difficulties in arranging for a punctual succession of
good actors at his theatre, to turn his attention to the improvement of
the whole system of Post-Office conveyance, and of locomotive machinery
generally, in the British Islands. The result was a scheme for
superseding, on the great roads at least, the then existing system of
sluggish and irregular stage-coaches, the property of private persons
and companies, by a new system of government coaches, in connexion with
the Post-Office, carrying the mails and also a regulated number of
passengers, with clockwork precision, at a rate of comparative speed,
which he hoped should ultimately be not less than ten miles an hour.
The opposition to the scheme was, of course, enormous; coach
proprietors, innkeepers, the Post-Office officials themselves, were all
against Mr. Palmer; he was voted a crazy enthusiast and a public bore.
Pitt, however, when the scheme was submitted to him, recognized its
feasibility; on the 8th of August 1784 the first mail-coach on Mr.
Palmer's plan started from London at 8 o'clock in the morning and
reached Bristol at 11 o'clock at night; and from that day the success
of the new system was assured.--Mr. Palmer himself, having been
appointed Surveyor and Comptroller-General of the Post-Office, took
rank as an eminent and wealthy public man, M. P. for Bath and what not,
and lived till 1818. De Quincey makes it one of his distinctions that
he "had married the daughter of a duke," and in a footnote to that
paragraph he gives the lady's name as "Lady Madeline Gordon." From an
old Debrett, however, I learn that Lady Madelina Gordon, second
daughter of Alexander, fourth Duke of Gordon, was first married, on the
3d of April 1789, to Sir Robert Sinclair, Bart., and next, on the 25th
of November 1805, to _Charles Palmer, of Lockley Park, Berks, Esq._
If Debrett is right, her second husband was not John Palmer of Mail-
Coach celebrity, and De Quincey is wrong."--MASSON.

1 (footnote) INVENTION OF THE CROSS: Concerning the _Inventio sanctae
crucis_, see Smith, _Dictionary of Christian Antiquities_, Vol.
I, p. 503.

2 4 NATIONAL RESULT: Cf. De Quincey's paper on _Travelling, Works,_
Riverside ed., Vol. II, especially pp. 313-314; Masson's ed., Vol. I,
especially pp. 270-271.

3 13 THE FOUR TERMS OF MICHAELMAS, LENT, EASTER, AND ACT: These might
be called respectively the autumn, winter, spring, and summer terms.
Michaelmas, the feast of St. Michael and All Angels, is on September
29. Hilary and Trinity are other names for Lent term and Act term
respectively. Act term is the last term of the academic year; its name
is that originally given to a disputation for a Master's degree; such
disputations took place at the end of the year generally, and hence
gave a name to the summer term. Although the rules concerning residence
at Oxford are more stringent than in De Quincey's time, only eighteen
weeks' residence is required during the year, six in Michaelmas, six in
Lent, and six in Easter and Act.

3 17 GOING DOWN: Cf. "Going down with victory," i.e. from London into
the country.

3 30 POSTING-HOUSES: inns where relays of horses were furnished for
coaches and carriages. Cf. De Quincey on _Travelling, loc. cit._

4 3 AN OLD TRADITION... from the reign of Charles II: Then no one sat
outside; later, outside places were taken by servants, and were quite
cheap.

4 9 ATTAINT THE FOOT: The word is used in its legal sense. The blood of
one convicted of high treason is "attaint," and his deprivations extend
to his descendants, unless Parliament remove the attainder.

4 14 PARIAHS: The fate of social outcasts seems to have taken early and
strong hold upon De Quincey's mind; one of the _Suspiria_ was to
have enlarged upon this theme. Strictly speaking, the Pariahs is that
one of the lower castes of Hindoo society of which foreigners have seen
most; it is not in all districts the lowest caste, however.

5 6 OBJECTS NOT APPEARING, ETC.: _De non apparentibus et non
existentibus eadem est lex_, a Roman legal phrase.

5 16 "SNOBS": Apparently snob originally meant "shoemaker"; then, in
university cant, a "townsman" as opposed to a "gownsman." Cf. _Gradus
ad Cantabrigiam_ (1824), quoted in _Century Dictionary_: "_Snobs_.--A
term applied indiscriminately to all who have not the honour of being
members of the university; but in a more particular manner to the
'profanum vulgus,' the tag-rag and bob-tail, who vegetate on the sedgy
banks of Camus." This use is in De Quincey's mind. Later, in the
strikes of that time, the workmen who accepted lower wages were called
_snobs_; those who held out for higher, _nobs_.

7 33 FO FO... FI FI: "This paragraph is a caricature of a story told in
Staunton's Account of the Earl of Macartney's Embassy to China in
1792."--MASSON.

8 4 ÇA IRA ("This will do," "This is the go"): "a proverb of the French
Revolutionists when they were hanging the aristocrats in the streets,
&c., and the burden of one of the most popular revolutionary songs, 'Ça
ira, ça ira, ça ira.'"--MASSON.

8 18 ALL MORALITY,--ARISTOTLE'S, ZENO'S, CICERO'S: Each of these three
has a high place in the history of ethical teaching. Aristotle wrote
the so-called _Nicomachean Ethics_. According to his teaching,
"ethical virtue is that permanent direction of the will which guards
the mean [_to méson_] proper for us... Bravery is the mean between
cowardice and temerity; temperance, the mean between inordinate desire
and stupid indifference; etc." (Ueberweg, _History of Philosophy_,
Vol. I, p. 169). Zeno, who died about 264 B.C., founded about 308 the
Stoic sect, which took its name from the "Painted Porch" (_Stoa
poklae_) in the Agora at Athens, where the master taught. The Stoics
held that men should be free from passion, and undisturbed by joy or
grief, submitting themselves uncomplainingly to their fate. Such
austere views are, of course, as far as possible removed from those of
the Eudæmonist, who sought happiness as the end of life. Cicero was
the author of De Officiis, "Of Duties."

9 9 ASTROLOGICAL SHADOWS: misfortunes due to being born under an
unlucky star; house of life is also an astrological term.

9 24 VON TROIL'S ICELAND: The Letters on Iceland (Pinkerton's Voyages
and Travels, Vol. I, p. 621), containing Observations ... made during a
Voyage undertaken in the year 1772, by Uno Von Troil, D.D., of
Stockholm, contains no chapter of the kind. Such a chapter had
appeared, however, in N. Horrebow's (Danish, 1758) Natural History of
Iceland: "Chap. LXXII. Concerning snakes. No snakes of any kind are to
be met with throughout the whole island." In Boswell's Johnson, Vol.
IV, p. 314, Temple ed., there is a much more correct allusion, which
may have been in De Quincey's mind: "Langton said very well to me
afterwards, that he could repeat Johnson's conversation before dinner,
as Johnson had said that he could repeat a complete chapter of The
Natural History of Iceland, from the Danish of Horrebow, the whole of
which was exactly thus: 'Chap. LXXII. Concerning Snakes. There are no
snakes to be met with throughout the whole island.'"

9 25 A PARLIAMENTARY RAT: one who deserts his own party when it is
losing.

10 16 "JAM PROXIMUS," etc.: Æneid, II, lines 311-312: "Now next (to
Deiphobus' house) Ucalegon (i.e. his house) blazes!"

11 27 QUARTERINGS: See p. 47, footnote, and note 47 2.

11 32 WITHIN BENEFIT OF CLERGY: Benefit of clergy was, under old
English law, the right of clerics, afterward extended to all who could
read, to plead exemption from trial before a secular judge. This
privilege was first legally recognized in 1274, and was not wholly
abolished until 1827.

12 9 QUARTER SESSIONS: This court is held in England in the counties by
justices of the peace for the trial of minor criminal offenses and to
administer the poor laws, etc.

12 26 FALSE ECHOES OF MARENGO: General Desaix was shot through the
heart at the battle of Marengo (June 14, 1800); he died without a word,
and his body was found by Rovigo (cf. Memoirs of the Duke of Rovigo,
London, 1835, Vol. I, p. 181), "stripped of his clothes, and surrounded
by other naked bodies." Napoleon, however, published three different
versions of an heroic and devoted message from Desaix to himself, the
original version being: "Go, tell the First Consul that I die with this
regret,--that I have not done enough for posterity." (Cf. Lanfrey,
History of Napoleon the First, 2d ed., London, 1886, Vol. II, p. 39.)
Napoleon himself was credited likewise with the words De Quincey
adopts. "Why is it not permitted me to weep" is one version (Bussey,
_History of Napoleon_, London, 1840, Vol. I, p. 302). Cf. Hazlitt,
_Life of Napoleon_, 2d ed., London, 1852, Vol. II, p. 317,
footnote.

12 (footnote) THE CRY OF THE FOUNDERING LINE-OF-BATTLE SHIP "VENGEUR":
On the 1st of June, 1794, the English fleet under Lord Howe defeated
the French under Villaret-Joyeuse, taking six ships and sinking a
seventh, the _Vengeur_. This ship sank, as a matter of fact, with
part of her crew on board, imploring kid which there was not time to
give them. Some two hundred and fifty men had been taken off by the
English; the rest were lost. On the 9th of July Barrere published a
report setting forth "how the _Vengeur_, ... being entirely
disabled, ... refused to strike, though sinking; how the enemies fired
on her, but she returned their fire, shot aloft all her tricolor
streamers, shouted _Vive la République_,  ... and so, in this mad
whirlwind of fire and shouting and invincible despair, went down into
the ocean depths; _Vive la République_ and a universal volley from
the upper deck being the last sounds she made." Cf. Carlyle, _Sinking
of the Vengeur_, and _French Revolution, Book_ XVIII, Chap. VI.

12 (footnote) LA GARDE MEURT, ETC.: "This phrase, attributed to
Cambronne, who was made prisoner at Waterloo, was vehemently denied by
him. It was invented by Rougemont, a prolific author of _mots_, two
days after the battle, in the _Indépendant_."--Fournier's _L'Esprit
dans l'Histoire_, trans. Bartlett, _Familiar Quotations_, p. 661.

13 25 BRUMMAGEM: Birmingham became early the chief place of manufacture
of cheap wares. Hence the name _Brummagem_, a vulgar pronunciation
of the name of the city, has become in England a common name for cheap,
tawdry jewelry. Cf. also Shakespeare, Richard III, Act I, sc. iv, 1.
55:

  False, fleeting, perjured Clarence.

13 27 LUXOR occupies part of the site of ancient Thebes, capital of
Egypt; its antiquities are famous.

14 9 BUT ON OUR SIDE... WAS A TOWER OF MORAL STRENGTH, ETC.: Cf.
Shakespeare, _Richard_ III, Act V, sc. in, 11. 12-13:

  Besides, the king's name is a tower of strength,
  Which they upon the adverse party want.

14 20 FELT MY HEART BURN WITHIN ME: Cf. Luke xxiv. 32.

14 32 A VERY FINE STORY FROM ONE OF OUR ELDER DRAMATISTS: The dramatist
in question has not been identified. I am indebted indirectly to
Professor W. Strunk, Jr., of Cornell University, for reference to
Johann Caius' Of English Dogs, translated by A. Fleming, in Arber's
English Garner, original edition, Vol. III, p. 253 (new edition, Social
England Illustrated, pp. 28-29), where, after telling how Henry the
Seventh, perceiving that four mastiffs could overcome a lion, ordered
the dogs all hanged, the writer continues: "I read an history
answerable to this, of the selfsame HENRY, who having a notable and an
excellent fair falcon, it fortuned that the King's Falconers, in the
presence and hearing of his Grace, highly commended his Majesty's
Falcon, saying, that it feared not to intermeddle with an eagle, it was
so venturous and so mighty a bird; which when the king heard, he
charged that the falcon should be killed without delay: for the
selfsame reason, as it may seem, which was rehearsed in the conclusion
of the former history concerning the same king."

15 l OMRAHS... FROM AGRA AND LAHORE: There seems to be a reminiscence
here of Wordsworth's Prelude, Book X, 11. 18-20:

  The Great Mogul, when he
  Erewhile went forth from Agra or Lahore,
  Rajahs and Omrahs in his train.

Omrah, which is not found in Century Dictionary, is itself really
plural of Arabic amir (ameer), a commander, nobleman.

15 23 THE 6TH OF EDWARD LONGSHANKS: a De Quinceyan jest, of course.
This wrould refer to a law of the sixth year of Edward I, or 1278, but
there are but fifteen chapters in the laws of that year.

16 8 NOT MAGNA LOQUIMUR,... BUT VIVIMUS: not "we speak great things,"
but "we live" them.

17 21 MARLBOROUGH FOREST is twenty-seven miles east of Bath, where De
Quincey attended school.

18 18 ULYSSES, ETC.: The allusion is, of course, to the slaughter of
the suitors of Penelope, his wife, by Ulysses, after his return. Cf.
Odyssey, Books XXI-XXII.

19 3 ABOUT WATERLOO: i.e. about 1815. This phrase is one of many that
indicate the deep impression made by this event upon the English mind.
Cf. p. 58.

19 17 "SAY, ALL OUR PRAISES," ETC.: Cf. Pope, Moral Essays: Epistle
III, Of the Use of Riches, II. 249-250:

  But all our praises why should lords engross,
  Rise, honest Muse! and sing the Man of Ross.

20 3 TURRETS: "Tourettes fyled rounde" appears in Chaucer's Knight's
Tale, 1. 1294, where it means the ring on a dog's collar through which
the leash was passed. Skeat explains _torets_ as "probably eyes in
which rings will turn round, because each eye is a little larger than
the thickness of the ring." Cf. Chaucer's _Treatise on the
Astrolabe_, Part I, sec. 2, "This ring renneth in a maner turet,"
"this ring runs in a kind of eye." But Chaucer does not refer to
harness.

21 2 MR. WATERTON TELLS ME: Charles Waterton, the naturalist, was born
in 1782 and died in 1865. His _Wanderings in South America_ was
published in 1825.

23 11 EARTH AND HER CHILDREN: This paragraph is about one fifth of the
length of the corresponding paragraph as it appeared in
_Blackwood_. For the longer version see Masson's ed., Vol. XIII, p.
289, note 2.

24 14 THE GENERAL POST-OFFICE: The present office was opened Sept. 23,
1829. St. Martin's-le-Grand is a church within the "city" of London, so
named to distinguish it from St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, which faces
what is now Trafalgar Square, and is, as the name indicates, outside
the "city." The street takes its name from the church.

28 10 BARNET is a Hertfordshire village, eleven miles north of London.

29 33 A "COURIER" EVENING PAPER, CONTAINING THE GAZETTE: A gazette was
originally one of the three official papers of the kingdom; afterwards
any official announcement, as this of a great victory.

30 17 FEY: This is not a Celtic word; it is the Anglo-Saxon _faege_
retained in Lowland Scotch, which is the most northerly English
dialect. The word appears frequently in descriptions of battles, the
Anglo-Saxon fatalistic philosophy teaching that, certain warriors
entered the conflict _faege_, "doomed." Now the meaning is altered
slightly: "You are surely fey," would be said in Scotland, as Professor
Masson remarks, to a person observed to be in extravagantly high
spirits, or in any mood surprisingly beyond the bounds of his ordinary
temperament,--the notion being that the excitement is supernatural, and
a presage of his approaching death, or of some other calamity about to
befall him.

31 27 THE INSPIRATION OF GOD, ETC.: This is an indication--more
interesting than agreeable, perhaps--of the heights to which the
martial ardor of De Quincey's toryism rises.

33 13 CÆSAR THE DICTATOR, AT HIS LAST DINNER-PARTY, ETC.: related by
Suetonius in his life of Julius Cæsar, Chap. LXXXVII: "The day before
he died, some discourse occurring at dinner in M. Lepidus' house upon
that subject, which was the most agreeable way of dying, he expressed
his preference for what is sudden and unexpected" (repentinum
inopinatumque praetulerat). The story is told by Plutarch and Appian
also.

35 13 _BIATHANATOS_: "De Quincey has evidently taken this from John
Donne's treatise: _BIATHANATOS, A Declaration of that Paradoxe or
Thesis, That Self-homicide is not so naturally Sin, that it may never
be otherwise_, 1644. See his paper on _Suicide, etc._, Masson's
ed., VIII, 398 [Riverside, IX, 209]. But not even Donne's precedent
justifies the word formation. The only acknowledged compounds are
_biaio-thanasia_, 'violent death,' and _biaio-thanatos_, 'dying
a violent death.' Even _bia thanatos_, 'death by violence,' is not
classical."--HART. But the form _biathanatos_ is older than Donne
and is said to be common in MSS. It should be further remarked that
neither of the two compounds cited is classical. As to De Quincey's
interpretation of Cæsar's meaning here, cf. Merivale's _History of
the Romans under the Empire_, Chap. XXI, where he translates Cæsar's
famous reply: "That which is least expected." Cf. also Shakespeare,
_Julius Cæsar_, Act II, sc. ii, 1. 33.

37 25 "NATURE, FROM HER SEAT," ETC.: Cf. Milton's _Paradise Lost_,
Book IX, 11. 780-784:

  So saying, her rash hand in evil hour
  Forth reaching to the fruit, she pluck'd, she eat:
  Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat
  Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe,
  That all was lost.

38 2 SO SCENICAL, ETC.: De Quincey's love for effects of this sort
appears everywhere. Cf. the opening paragraphs of the _Revolt of the
Tartars_, Masson's ed., Vol. VII; Riverside ed., Vol. XII.

39 4 JUS DOMINII: "the law of ownership," a legal term.

39 14 JUS GENTIUM: "the law of nations," a legal term.

39 30 "MONSTRUM HORRENDUM," ETC..: _Æneid_, III, 658. Polyphemus,
one of the Cyclopes, whose eye was put out by Ulysses, is meant. Cf.
_Odyssey_, IX, 371 et seq.; _Æneid_, III, 630 _et seq_.

40 1 ONE OF THE CALENDARS, ETC.: The histories of the three Calenders,
sons of kings, will be found in most selections from the _Arabian
Nights_. A Calender is one of an order of Dervishes founded in the
fourteenth century by an Andalusian Arab; they are wanderers who preach
in market places and live by alms.

40 10 AL SIRAT: According to Mahometan teaching this bridge over Hades
was in width as a sword's edge. Over it souls must pass to Paradise.

40 12 UNDER THIS EMINENT MAN, ETC.: For these two sentences the
original in _Blackwood_ had this, with its addition of good De
Quinceyan doctrine: "I used to call him _Cyclops Mastigophorus_,
Cyclops the Whip-bearer, until I observed that his skill made whips
useless, except to fetch off an impertinent fly from a leader's head,
upon which I changed his Grecian name to _Cyclops Diphrelates_
(Cyclops the Charioteer). I, and others known to me, studied under him
the diphrelatic art. Excuse, reader, a word too elegant to be pedantic.
And also take this remark from me as a _gage d'amitié_--that no word
ever was or _can_ be pedantic which, by supporting a distinction,
supports the accuracy of logic, or which fills up a chasm for the
understanding."

41 1 SOME PEOPLE HAVE CALLED ME PROCRASTINATING: Cf. Page's (Japp's)
_Life_, Chap. XIX, and Japp's _De Quincey Memorials_, Vol. II,
pp. 45,47,49-

42 11 THE WHOLE PAGAN PANTHEON: i.e. all the gods put together; from
the Greek _Pantheion_, a temple dedicated to all the gods.

43 2 SEVEN ATMOSPHERES OF SLEEP, ETC.: Professor Hart suggests that De
Quincey is here "indulging in jocular arithmetic. The three nights plus
the three days, plus the present night, equal seven." Dr. Cooper
compares with this a reference to the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. But it
seems doubtful whether any explanation is necessary.

43 17 LILLIPUTIAN LANCASTER: the county town of Lancashire, in which
Liverpool and Manchester, towns of recent and far greater growth, are
situated.

44 (footnote) "Giraldus Cambrensis," or Gerald de Barry (1146-1220),
was a Welsh historian; one of his chief works is the _Itinerarium
Cambrica_, or Voyage in Wales.

47 2 QUARTERING: De Quincey's derivation of this word in his footnote
is correct, but its use in this French sense is not common. De Quincey,
however, has it above, p. 11.

49 8 THE SHOUT OF ACHILLES: Cf. Homer, _Iliad_, XVIII, 217 _et
seq_.

50 10 BUYING IT, ETC.: De Quincey refers, no doubt, to the pay of
common soldiers and to the practice of employing mercenaries.

52 1 FASTER THAN EVER MILL-RACE, ETC.: the change in the wording of
this sentence in De Quincey's revision is, as Masson remarks,
particularly characteristic of his sense of melody; it read in
_Blackwood_, "We ran past them faster than ever mill-race in our
inexorable flight."

52 15 HERE WAS THE MAP, ETC.: This sentence is an addition in the
reprint. Masson remarks "how artistically it causes the due pause
between the horror as still in rush of transaction and the backward
look at the wreck when the crash was past."

53 18 "WHENCE THE SOUND," ETC.: _Paradise Lost_, Book XI, 11. 558-
563.

54 3 WOMAN'S IONIC FORM: In thus using the word Ionic, De Quincey
doubtless has in mind the character of Ionic architecture, with its
tall and graceful column, differing from the severity of the Doric on
the one hand and from the floridity of the Corinthian on the other.
Probably he is thinking of a caryatid. Cf. the following version of the
old story of the origin of the styles of Greek architecture in
Vitruvius, IV,  Chap. I (Gwilt's translation), quoted by Hart: "They
measured a man's foot, and finding its length the sixth part of his
height, they gave the column a similar proportion, that is, they made
its height six times the thickness of the shaft measured at the base.
Thus the Doric order obtained its proportion, its strength, and its
beauty from the human figure. With a similar feeling they afterward
built the Temple of Diana. But in that, seeking a new proportion, they
used the female figure as a standard; and for the purpose of producing
a more lofty effect they first made it eight times its thickness in
height. Under it they placed a base, after the manner of a shoe to the
foot; they also added volutes to its capital, like graceful curling
hair hanging on each side, and the front they ornamented with
_cymatia_ and festoons in the place of hair. On the shafts they
sunk channels, which bear a resemblance to the folds of a matronal
garment. Thus two orders were invented, one of a masculine character,
without ornament, the other bearing a character which resembled the
delicacy, ornament, and proportion of a female. The successors of these
people, improving in taste, and preferring a more slender proportion,
assigned seven diameters to the height of the Doric column, and eight
and a half to the Ionic."

55 3 CORYMBI: clusters of fruit or flowers.

55 28 QUARREL: the bolt of a crossbow, an arrow having a square, or
four-edged head (from Middle Latin _quadrellus_, diminutive of
_quadrum_, a square).

58 20 WATERLOO AND RECOVERED CHRISTENDOM! Cf. note 19 3.

61 20 THEN A THIRD TIME THE TRUMPET SOUNDED: There are throughout this
passage, as Dr. Cooper remarks, many reminiscences of the language of
the Book of Revelation. Cf. this with Revelation viii. 10; cf. 61 28
with Revelation xii. 5, and 62 5 with ix. 13.

63 29 THE ENDLESS RESURRECTIONS OF HIS LOVE: The following, which
Masson prints as a postscript, was a part of De Quincey's introduction
to the volume of the Collective Edition containing this piece:

"'THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH.'--This little paper, according to my original
intention, formed part of the 'Suspiria de Profundis'; from which, for
a momentary purpose, I did not scruple to detach it, and to publish it
apart, as sufficiently intelligible even when dislocated from its place
in a larger whole. To my surprise, however, one or two critics, not
carelessly in conversation, but deliberately in print, professed their
inability to apprehend the meaning of the whole, or to follow the links
of the connexion between its several parts. I am myself as little able
to understand where the difficulty lies, or to detect any lurking
obscurity, as these critics found themselves to unravel my logic.
Possibly I may not be an indifferent and neutral judge in such a case.
I will therefore sketch a brief abstract of the little paper according
to my original design, and then leave the reader to judge how far this
design is kept in sight through the actual execution.

"Thirty-seven years ago, or rather more, accident made me, in the dead
of night, and of a night memorably solemn, the solitary witness of an
appalling scene, which threatened instant death in a shape the most
terrific to two young people whom I had no means of assisting, except
in so far as I was able to give them a most hurried warning of their
danger; but even _that_ not until they stood within the very shadow
of the catastrophe, being divided from the most frightful of deaths by
scarcely more, if more at all, than seventy seconds.

"Such was the scene, such in its outline, from which the whole of this
paper radiates as a natural expansion. This scene is circumstantially
narrated in Section the Second, entitled 'The Vision of Sudden Death.'

"But a movement of horror, and of spontaneous recoil from this dreadful
scene, naturally carried the whole of that scene, raised and idealised,
into my dreams, and very soon into a rolling succession of dreams. The
actual scene, as looked down upon from the box of the mail, was
transformed into a dream, as tumultuous and changing as a musical
fugue. This troubled dream is circumstantially reported in Section the
Third, entitled 'Dream-Fugue on the theme of Sudden Death.' What I had
beheld from my seat upon the mail,--the scenical strife of action and
passion, of anguish and fear, as I had there witnessed them moving in
ghostly silence,--this duel between life and death narrowing itself to
a point of such exquisite evanescence as the collision neared; all
these elements of the scene blended, under the law of association, with
the previous and permanent features of distinction investing the mail
itself; which features at that time lay--1st, in velocity
unprecedented, 2dly, in the power and beauty of the horses, 3dly, in
the official connexion with the government of a great nation, and,
4thly, in the function, almost a consecrated function, of publishing
and diffusing through the land the great political events, and
especially the great battles, during a conflict of unparalleled
grandeur. These honorary distinctions are all described
circumstantially in the First or introductory Section ('The Glory of
Motion'). The three first were distinctions maintained at all times;
but the fourth and grandest belonged exclusively to the war with
Napoleon; and this it was which most naturally introduced Waterloo into
the dream. Waterloo, I understand, was the particular feature of the
'Dream-Fugue' which my censors were least able to account for. Yet
surely Waterloo, which, in common with every other great battle, it had
been our special privilege to publish over all the land, most naturally
entered the dream under the licence of our privilege. If not--if there
be anything amiss--let the Dream be responsible. The Dream is a law to
itself; and as well quarrel with a rainbow for showing, or for
_not_ showing, a secondary arch. So far as I know, every element in
the shifting movements of the Dream derived itself either primarily
from the incidents of the actual scene, or from secondary features
associated with the mail. For example, the cathedral aisle derived
itself from the mimic combination of features which grouped themselves
together at the point of approaching collision--viz. an arrow-like
section of the road, six hundred yards long, under the solemn lights
described, with lofty trees meeting overhead in arches. The guard's
horn, again--a humble instrument in itself--was yet glorified as the
organ of publication for so many great national events. And the
incident of the Dying Trumpeter, who rises from a marble bas-relief,
and carries a marble trumpet to his marble lips for the purpose of
warning the female infant, was doubtless secretly suggested by my own
imperfect effort to seize the guard's horn, and to blow the warning
blast. But the Dream knows best; and the Dream, I say again, is the
responsible party."


JOAN OF ARC


This article appeared originally in _Taifs Magazine_ for March and
August, 1847; it was reprinted by De Quincey in 1854 in the third
volume of his _Collected Writings_. It is found in _Works_,
Masson's ed., Vol. V, pp. 384-416; Riverside ed., Vol. VI, pp. 178-215.

64 10 LORRAINE, now in great part in the possession of Germany, is the
district in which Domrémy, Joan's birthplace, is situated.

65 14 VAUCOULEURS: a town near Domrémy; cf. p. 70.

65 28 EN CONTUMACE: "in contumacy," a legal term applied to one who,
when summoned to court, fails to appear.

66 13 ROUEN: the city in Normandy where Joan was burned at the stake.

66 25 THE LILIES OF FRANCE: the royal emblem of France from very early
times until the Revolution of 1789, when "the wrath of God and man
combined to wither them."

67 5 M. MICHELET: Jules Michelet (1798-1874) is said to have spent
forty years in the preparation of his great work, the _History of
France_. Cf. the same, translated by G. H. Smith, 2 vols., Appleton,
Vol. II, pp. 119-169; or _Joan of Arc_, from Michelet's _History
of France_, translated by O. W. Wight, New York, 1858.

67 8 RECOVERED LIBERTY: The Revolution of 1830 had expelled the
restored Bourbon kings.

67 20 THE BOOK AGAINST PRIESTS: Michelet's lectures as professor of
history in the Collège de France, in which he attacked the Jesuits,
were published as follows: _Des Jésuites_, 1843; _Du Prêtre, de
la Femme et de la Famille_, 1844; _Du Peuple_, 1845. To the
second De Quincey apparently refers.

67 26 BACK TO THE FALCONER'S LURE: The lure was a decoy used to recall
the hawk to its perch,--sometimes a dead pigeon, sometimes an
artificial bird, with some meat attached.

68 6 ON THE MODEL OF LORD PERCY: These lines, as Professor Hart notes,
in Percy's Folio, ed. Hales and Furnivall, Vol. II, p. 7, run:

  The stout Erle of Northumberland
    a vow to God did make,
  his pleasure in the Scottish woods
    3 som_m_ers days to take.

68 27 PUCELLE D'ORLÉANS: Maid of Orleans (the city on the Loire which
Joan saved).

69 1 THE COLLECTION, ETC.: The work meant is Quicherat, _Procès de
Condamnation et Réhabilitation de Jeanne d'Arc_, 5 vols., Paris,
1841-1849. Cf. De Quincey's note.

69 21 DELENDA EST ANGLIA VICTRIX! "Victorious England must be
destroyed!" Cf. _Delenda est Carthago_! "Carthage must be
destroyed!" _Delenda est Karthago_ is the version of Florus (II,
15) of the words used by Cato the Censor, just before the Third Punic
War, whenever he was called upon to record his vote in the Senate on
any subject under discussion.

69 27 HYDER ALI (1702-1782), a Mahometan adventurer, made himself
maharajah of Mysore and gave the English in India serious trouble; he
was defeated in 1782 by Sir Eyre Coote. Tippoo Sahib, his son and
successor, proved less dangerous and was finally killed at Seringapatam
in 1799.

70 4 NATIONALITY IT WAS NOT: i.e. nationalism--patriotism--it was not.
Cf. _Revolt of the Tartars_, Riverside ed., Vol. XII, p. 4;
Masson's ed., Vol. VII, p. 370, where De Quincey speaks of the Torgod
as "tribes whose native ferocity was exasperated by debasing forms of
superstition, and by a nationality as well as an inflated conceit of
their own merit absolutely unparalleled." Cf. also footnote, p. 94.

70 4 SUFFREN: the great French admiral who in 1780-1781 inflicted so
much loss upon the British.

70 10 MAGNANIMOUS JUSTICE OF ENGLISHMEN: As Professor Hart observes,
the treatment of Joan in _Henry VI_ is hardly magnanimous.

71 29 THAT ODIOUS MAN: Cf. pp. 79-80.

72 12 THREE GREAT SUCCESSIVE BATTLES: Rudolf of Lorraine fell at Crécy
(1346); Frederick of Lorraine at Agincourt (1415); the battle of
Nicopolis, which sacrificed the third Lorrainer, took place in 1396.

73 24 CHARLES VI (1368-1422) had killed several men during his first
fit of insanity. He was for the rest of his life wholly unfit to
govern. He declared Henry V of England, the conqueror of Agincourt, his
successor, thus disinheriting the Dauphin, his son.

74 2 THE FAMINES, ETC.: Horrible famines occurred in France and England
in 1315, 1336, and 1353. Such insurrections as Wat Tyler's, in 1381,
are probably in De Quincey's mind.

74 6 THE TERMINATION OF THE CRUSADES: The Crusades came to an end about
1271. "The ulterior results of the crusades," concludes Cox in
_Encyclopedia Britannica_, "were the breaking up of the feudal
system, the abolition of serfdom, the supremacy of a common law over
the independent jurisdiction of chiefs who claimed the right of private
wars."

74 7 THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TEMPLARS: This most famous of the military
orders, founded in the twelfth century for the defense of the Latin
kingdom of Jerusalem, having grown so powerful as to be greatly feared,
was suppressed at the beginning of the fourteenth century.

74 7 THE PAPAL INTERDICTS: "De Quincey has probably in mind such an
interdict as that pronounced in 1200, by Innocent III, against France.
All ecclesiastical functions were suspended and the land was in
desolation."--HART. England was put under interdict several times, as
in 1170 (for the murder of Becket) and 1208.

74 8 THE TRAGEDIES CAUSED OR SUFFERED BY THE HOUSE OF ANJOU, AND BY THE
EMPEROR: "The Emperor is Konradin, the last of the Hohenstaufen,
beheaded by Charles of Anjou at Naples, 1268. The subsequent cruelties
of Charles in Sicily caused the popular uprising known as the Sicilian
Vespers, 1282, in which many thousands of Frenchmen were
assassinated."--HART.

74 10 THE COLOSSAL FIGURE OF FEUDALISM, ETC.: The English yeomen at
Crecy, overpowering the mounted knights of France, took from feudalism
its chief support,--the superiority of the mounted knight to the
unmounted yeoman. Cf. Green, _History of the English People_, Book
IV, Chap. II.

74 15 THE ABOMINABLE SPECTACLE OF A DOUBLE POPE: For thirty-eight years
this paradoxical state of things endured.

75 15 THE ROMAN MARTYROLOGY: a list of the martyrs of the Church,
arranged according to the order of their festivals, and with accounts
of their lives and sufferings.

76 4 "ABBEYS THERE WERE," ETC.: Cf. Wordsworth, _Peter Bell_, Part
Second:

  Temples like those among the Hindoos,
  And mosques, and spires, and abbey windows,
  And castles all with ivy green.

76 17 THE VOSGES ... HAVE NEVER ATTRACTED MUCH NOTICE, ETC.: They came
into like prominence after De Quincey's day in the Franco-Prussian War
of 1870.

76 31 THOSE MYSTERIOUS FAWNS, ETC.: In some of the romances of the
Middle Ages, especially those containing Celtic material, a knight,
while hunting, is led by his pursuit of a white fawn (or a white stag
or boar) to a _fee_ (i.e. an inhabitant of the "Happy Other-world")
or into the confines of the "Happy Other-world" itself. Sometimes, as
in the _Guigemar_ of Marie de France, the knight passes on to a
series of adventures in consequence of his meeting with the white fawn.
I owe this note to the kindness of Mr. S. W. Kinney, A.M., of
Baltimore.

76 33 THAT ANCIENT STAG: See _Englische Studien,_ Vol. V, p. 16,
where additions are made to the following account from Hardwicke's
_Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-Lore,_ Manchester and London,
1872, p. 154:

This chasing of the white doe or the white hart by the spectre huntsman
has assumed various forms. According to Aristotle a white hart was
killed by Agathocles, King of Sicily, which a thousand years beforehand
had been consecrated to Diana by Diomedes. Alexander the Great is said
by Pliny to have caught a white stag, placed a collar of gold about its
neck, and afterwards set it free. Succeeding heroes have in after days
been announced as the capturers of this famous white hart. Julius
Caesar took the place of Alexander, and Charlemagne caught a white hart
at both Magdeburg, and in the Holstein woods. In 1172 William [Henry]
the Lion is reported to have accomplished a similar feat, according to
a Latin inscription on the walls of Lubeck Cathedral. Tradition says
the white hart has been caught on Rothwell Hay Common, in Yorkshire,
and in Windsor Forest.

This reference I owe indirectly to Professor J. M. Manly, of Chicago.

77 4 OR, BEING UPON THE MARCHES OF FRANCE, A MARQUIS: _Marquis_ is
derived from _march,_ and was originally the title of the guardian
of the frontier, or march.

77 13 AGREED WITH SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY THAT A GOOD DEAL MIGHT BE SAID
ON BOTH SIDES: This expression, as has been pointed out to me, is from
the middle of _Spectator_ No. 122, where Sir Roger, having been
appealed to on a question of fishing privileges, replied, "with an air
of a man who would not give his judgment rashly, that much might be
said on both sides." It is likely, however, that De Quincey may have
connected it in his mind with the discussion of witchcraft at the
beginning of _Spectator_ No. 117, where Addison balances the
grounds for belief and unbelief somewhat as De Quincey does here.

78 7 BERGERETA: a very late Latin form of French _bergerette,_ "a
shepherdess."

78 15 M. SIMOND, IN HIS "TRAVELS": The reference is to _Journal of a
Tour and Residence in Great Britain during the years 1810 and 1811,_
by Louis Simond, 2d ed. (Edinburgh, 1817), to which is added an
appendix on France, written in December, 1815, and October, 1816. De
Quincey refers to this story with horror several times, but such scenes
are not yet wholly unknown.

79 21 A CHEVALIER OF ST. LOUIS: The French order of St. Louis was
founded by Louis XIV in 1693 for military service. After its
discontinuance at the Revolution this order was reinstated in 1814; but
no knights have been created since 1830. "Chevalier" is the lowest rank
in such an order; it is here erroneously used by De Quincey as a title
of address.

79 22 "CHEVALIER, AS-TU DONNÉ," etc.: "Chevalier, have you fed the
hog?" "MA FILLE," ETC.: "My daughter, have you," etc. "PUCELLE," ETC.:
"Maid of Orleans, have you saved the lilies (i.e. France)?"

79 28 IF THE MAN THAT TURNIPS CRIES: Cf. _Johnsoniana_, ed. R.
Napier, London, 1884, where, in _Anecdotes of Johnson_, by Mrs.
Piozzi, p. 29, is found: "'T is a mere play of words (added he)"--
Johnson is speaking of certain "verses by Lopez de Vega"--"and you
might as well say, that

  "If the man who turnips cries,
  Cry not when his father dies,
  'T is a proof that he had rather
  Have a turnip than his father."

This reference is given in Bartlett's _Familiar Quotations_.

80 4 THE ORIFLAMME OF FRANCE: the red banner of St. Denis, preserved in
the abbey of that name, near Paris, and borne before the French king as
a consecrated flag.

80 22 TWENTY YEARS AFTER, TALKING WITH SOUTHEY: In 1816 De Quincey was
a resident of Grasmere; Southey lived for many years at Keswick, a few
miles away; they met first in 1807. For De Quincey's estimate of
Southey's _Joan of Arc_, see _Works_, Riverside ed., Vol. VI,
pp. 262-266; Masson's ed., Vol. V, pp. 238-242.

80 28 CHINON is a little town near Tours.

81 3 SHE "PRICKS" FOR SHERIFFS: The old custom was to prick with a pin
the names of those chosen by the sovereign for sheriffs.

82 9 AMPULLA: the flask containing the sacred oil used at coronations.

82 10 THE ENGLISH BOY: Henry VI was nine months old when he was
proclaimed king of England and France in 1422, Charles VI of France,
and Henry V, his legal heir, having both died in that year. Henry's
mother was the eldest daughter of Charles VI.

82 13 DRAWN FROM THE OVENS OF RHEIMS: Rheims, where the kings of France
were crowned, was famous for its biscuits and gingerbread.

82 26 TINDAL'S "CHRISTIANITY AS OLD AS THE CREATION": Matthew Tindal
(1657-1732) published this work in 1732; its greatest interest lies in
the fact that to this book more than to any other Butler's
_Analogy_ was a reply. Tindal's argument was that natural religion,
as taught by the deists, was complete; that no revelation was
necessary. A life according to nature is all that the best religion can
teach. Such doctrine as this Joan preached in the speech ascribed to
her.

82 27 A PARTE ANTE: "from the part gone before"; Joan's speech being
three centuries earlier than the book from which it was taken.

83 9 THAT DIVINE PASSAGE IN "PARADISE REGAINED": from Book I, II. 196-
205.

84 34 PATAY IS NEAR ORLEANS: Troyes was the capital of the old province
of Champagne.

86 25 "NOLEBAT," ETC.: "She would not use her sword or kill any one."

87 24 MADE PRISONER BY THE BURGUNDIANS: The English have accused the
French officers of conniving at Joan's capture through jealousy of her
successes. Compiègne is fifty miles northeast of Paris.

87 27 BISHOP OF BEAUVAIS: Beauvais is forty-three miles northwest of
Paris, in Normandy. This bishop, Pierre Cauchon, rector of the
University at Paris, was devoted to the English party.

87 30 "BISHOP THAT ART," ETC.: Cf. Shakespeare's _Macbeth_, Act I,
sc. v, 1. 13.

87 33 A TRIPLE CROWN: The papacy is meant, of course. The pope's tiara
is a tall cap of golden cloth, encircled by three coronets.

88 17 JUDGES EXAMINING THE PRISONER: The judge in France questions a
prisoner minutely when he is first taken, before he is remanded for
trial. De Quincey displays here his inveterate prejudice against the
French; but this practice is widely regarded as the vital error of
French criminal procedure.,

89 5 A WRETCHED DOMINICAN: a member of the order of mendicant friars
established in France by Domingo de Guzman in 1216. Their official name
was Fratres Predicatores, "Preaching Friars," and their chief objects
were preaching and instruction. Their influence was very great until
the rise of the Jesuit order in the sixteenth century. The Dominicans
Le Maitre and Graverent (the Grand Inquisitor) both took part in the
prosecution.

89 31 FOR A LESS CAUSE THAN MARTYRDOM: Cf. Genesis ii. 24.

91 14 FROM THE FOUR WINDS: There may be a reminiscence here of Ezekiel
xxxvii. 1-10, especially verse 9: "Come from the four winds, O breath,
and breathe upon these slain, that they may live."

91 30 LUXOR. See note 13 27.

92 15 DAUGHTER OF CÆSARS: She was the daughter of the German emperor,
Francis I, whose sovereignty, as the name "Holy Roman Empire" shows,
was supposed to continue that of the ancient Roman emperors.

92 17 CHARLOTTE CORDAY (1768-93) murdered the revolutionist Marat in
the belief that the good of France required it; two days later she paid
the penalty, as she had expected, with her life.

93 18 GRAFTON, A CHRONICLER: Richard Grafton died about 1572. He was
printer to Edward VI. His chronicle was published in 1569.

93 20 "FOULE FACE": _Foule_ formerly meant "ugly."

9321 HOLINSHEAD: Raphael Holinshed died about 1580. His great work,
_Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland_, was used by
Shakespeare as the source of several plays. He writes of Joan: "Of
favor [appearance] was she counted likesome; of person stronglie made,
and manlie; of courage, great, hardie, and stout withall."

94 (footnote) SATANIC: This epithet was applied to the work of some of
his contemporaries by Southey in the preface to his _Vision of
Judgement_, 1821. It has been generally assumed that Byron and
Shelley are meant. See Introduction to Byron's _Vision of Judgment_
in the new Murray edition of Byron, Vol. IV.

96 (footnote) BURGOO: a thick oatmeal gruel or porridge used by seamen.
According to the _New English Dictionary_ the derivation is
unknown; but in the _Athenaeum_, Oct. 6, 1888, quoted by Hart, the
word is explained as a corruption of Arabic _burghul_.

101 30 ENGLISH PRINCE, REGENT OF FRANCE: John, Duke of Bedford, uncle
of Henry VI. "In genius for war as in political capacity," says J. R.
Green, "John was hardly inferior to Henry [the Fifth, his brother]
himself" (_A History of the English People_, Book IV, Chap. VI).

101 31 MY LORD OF WINCHESTER: Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester,
half-brother of Henry IV. He was the most prominent English prelate of
his time and was the only Englishman in the Court that condemned Joan.
As to the story of his death, to which De Quincey alludes, see
Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI, Act III, sc. in. Beaufort became cardinal in
1426.

102 17 WHO IS THIS THAT COMETH FROM DOMRÉMY? This is an evident
imitation of the famous passage from Isaiah Ixiii. I: "Who is this that
cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah?" "Bloody coronation
robes" is rather obscure, but probably refers to the fact that Joan had
shed her own blood to bring about the coronation of her sovereign; she
is supposed to have appeared in armor at the actual coronation
ceremony, and this armor might with reason be imagined as "bloody."

102 22 SHE ... SHALL TAKE MY LORD'S BRIEF: that is, she shall act as
the bishop's counsel. In the case of Beauvais, as in that of
Winchester, it must be remembered that in all monarchical countries the
bishops are "lords spiritual," on an equality with the greater secular
nobles, the "lords temporal."







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