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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc
+by Thomas de Quincey
+#9 in our series by Thomas de Quincey
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+Title: The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc
+
+Author: Thomas de Quincey
+
+Release Date: August, 2004 [EBook #6359]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on December 1, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH AND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Anne Soulard, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+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 Athenaeum
+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_, Athenaeum 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 _Caesars_; (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 Caesars_, 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 _elite_ 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-a-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, _ca 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 _laesa 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 "AEneid" 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 delit_"
+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 _elite_ 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.
+Caesar 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 Caesar 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
+Caesar'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 _Diphrelates_
+(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., _suspiriosae 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
+Crecy 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 Domremy 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 Domremy, 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 Domremy 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'Orleans 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'Orleans, 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 Domremy, 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 Domremy, 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. Domremy 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 Domremy 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 Crecy 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. Crecy 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 Crecy, 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 Domremy was on the brink of a boundless forest; and it
+was haunted to that degree by fairies that the parish priest
+(_cure_) 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 Domremy, 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 Domremy--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
+praedial 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 donne au cochon a 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 donne au cochon a manger_?" to
+saying, "_Pucelle d'Orleans, as-tu sauve 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 Compiegne (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 Domremy, 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 Domremy.
+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 a 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. a 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 Caesar; 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 Domremy, saw the fountain of Domremy,
+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 Domremy. 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
+Domremy 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 Domremy 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 Domremy? 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 CA 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, 'Ca
+ira, ca ira, ca 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 meson_] 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 Eudaemonist, 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.: AEneid, 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 Republique_,  ... and so, in this mad
+whirlwind of fire and shouting and invincible despair, went down into
+the ocean depths; _Vive la Republique_ 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 _Independant_."--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 CAESAR THE DICTATOR, AT HIS LAST DINNER-PARTY, ETC.: related by
+Suetonius in his life of Julius Caesar, 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 Caesar's meaning here, cf. Merivale's _History of
+the Romans under the Empire_, Chap. XXI, where he translates Caesar's
+famous reply: "That which is least expected." Cf. also Shakespeare,
+_Julius Caesar_, 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..: _AEneid_, III, 658. Polyphemus,
+one of the Cyclopes, whose eye was put out by Ulysses, is meant. Cf.
+_Odyssey_, IX, 371 et seq.; _AEneid_, 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'amitie_--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 Domremy, Joan's birthplace, is situated.
+
+65 14 VAUCOULEURS: a town near Domremy; 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 College de France, in which he attacked the Jesuits,
+were published as follows: _Des Jesuites_, 1843; _Du Pretre, 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'ORLEANS: Maid of Orleans (the city on the Loire which
+Joan saved).
+
+69 1 THE COLLECTION, ETC.: The work meant is Quicherat, _Proces de
+Condamnation et Rehabilitation 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 Crecy
+(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 DONNE," 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. Compiegne 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 CAESARS: 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 DOMREMY? 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."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc
+by Thomas de Quincey
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH AND ***
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc
+by Thomas de Quincey
+#9 in our series by Thomas de Quincey
+
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+Title: The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc
+
+Author: Thomas de Quincey
+
+Release Date: August, 2004 [EBook #6359]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on December 1, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH AND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Anne Soulard, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+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."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc
+by Thomas de Quincey
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH AND ***
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