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"Oh, what a multitude of thoughts arise!" &c. 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.

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. What remained was to suffer.

her.

All this forward movement was her own: excepting one man, the whole Council was against Her enemies were all that drew power from It is not requisite, for the honour of Joanna, earth. Her supporters were her own strong nor is there, in this place, room to pursue her enthusiasm, and the headlong contagion by brief career of action. That, though wonderful, which she carried this sublime frenzy into the forms the earthly part of her story: the intellectual hearts of women, of soldiers, and of all who lived part is, the saintly passion of her imprisonment, by labour. Henceforwards she was thwarted; trial, and execution. It is unfortunate, there- and the worst error, that she committed, was to fore, for Southey's "Joan of Arc" (which however lend the sanction of her presence to counsels which should always be regarded as a juvenile effort), she disapproved. But she had accomplished the that, precisely when her real glory begins, the capital objects which her own visions had dictated. poem ends. But this limitation of the interest These involved all the rest. Errors were now less grew, no doubt, from the constraint inseparably important; and doubtless it had now become more attached to the law of Epic unity. Joanna's difficult for herself to pronounce authentically history bisects into two opposite hemispheres, and what were errors. The noble girl had achieved, both could not have been presented to the eye in as by a rapture of motion, the capital end of one poem, unless by sacrificing all unity of theme, clearing out a free space around her sovereign, or else by involving the earlier half, as a narrative giving him the power to move his arms with efepisode, in the latter;—this might have been done fect; and, secondly, the inappreciable end of win-it might have been communicated to a fellow-ning for that sovereign what seemed to all France prisoner, or a confessor, by Joanna herself, in the the heavenly ratification of his rights, by crownsame way that Virgil has contrived to acquainting him with the ancient solemnities. She had the reader, through the hero's mouth, with earlier adventures that, if told by the poet speaking in his own person, would have destroyed the unity of his fable. The romantic interest of the early and irrelate incidents (last night of Troy, &c.) is thrown as an affluent into the general river of the personal narrative, whilst yet the capital current of the epos, as unfolding the origin and incunabula of Rome, is not for a moment suffered to be modified by events so subordinate and so obliquely introduced. 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, ardfor 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 8, 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

made it impossible for the English now to step before her. They were caught in an irretrievable blunder, owing partly to discord amongst 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 forestal theirs. They laughed at such a thought; and whilst 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 successes 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 that ran before France and laggard Europe by 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 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 halffantastic prayer, because, from childhood upwards, 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 catspaw. 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 that lightning to its mark,

many a century, confounding the malice of the
ensnarer, and making dumb the oracles of false-
hood! Is it not scandalous-is it not humiliating to
civilisation-that, even at this day, France ex-
hibits 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 con-
fessions 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 juris-
prudence! 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. Con-
tinually 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 un-
soundness. 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 ar-
gument 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 visiters of her solitude
had talked: as though heavenly counsels could
want polyglott 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 ser-
vants. The answer of Joanna moves a smile of
tenderness, but the disappointment of her judges
makes one laugh horribly. 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 martyr-
dom, 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 two-fold malady. She was visited by a paroxysm of the complaint called home-sickness; 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 Lhese great creators, why have you not? Do not ask me to say otherwise; because if you do, you will lead me into temptation. For I swore early

in life never to utter a falsehood, and, above all, a sycophantic falsehood; and, in the false homage of the modern press towards women, there is horrible sycophancy. It is as hollow, most of it, and it is as fleeting as is the love that lurks in uxoriousness. Yet, if a woman asks me to tell a falsehood, I have long made up my mind-that on moral considerations I will, and ought to do so, whether it be for any purpose of glory to her, or of screening her foibles (for she does commit a few), or of humbly, as a vassal, paying a peppercorn rent to her august privilege of caprice. Barring these cases, I must adhere to my resolution of telling no fibs. And I repeat, therefore, but not to be rude, I repeat in Latin

Excudent alii meliùs spirantia signa,

Credo equidem vivos ducent de marmore vultus:
Altius ascendent: at tu caput, Eva, memento
Sandalo ut infringas referenti oracula tanta.*

Yet, sister woman-though I cannot consent to find a Mozart or a Michael Angelo in your sex, until that day when you claim my promise as to falsehood-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 usmen- -a greater thing than even Mozart is known to have done, or Michael Angelo-you can die grandly, and as goddesses would die were goddesses mortal. If any distant world (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? Pooh! pooh! 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 cccupying the right hemisphere for a peep at us. copes look up in the market on that morning, and bear a monstrous premium; for they cheat, probably, in those scientific worlds as well as we do. How, then, if it be announced in some such telescopic world by those who make a livelihood of catching glimpses at our newspapers,

Teles

* Our sisters are always rather uneasy when we say any thing of them in Latin or Greek. It is like giving sealed orders to a sea captain, which he is not to open for his life till he comes into a certain latitude, which latitude, perhaps, he never will come into, and thus may miss the secret till he is going to the bottom. Generally I acknowledge that it is not polite before our female friends to cite in this particular case, where I am only iterating a disaa single word of Latin without instantly translating it. But greeable truth, they will please to recollect that the politeness lies in not translating. However, if they insist absoit is that those ill-looking lines contain, I refer them to Drylutely on knowing this very night, before going to bed, what den's Virgil, somewhere in the 6th Book of the Eneid, except as to the closing line and a-half, which contain a xious to see the equilibrium of advantages re-established private suggestion of my own to discontented nymphs anbetween the two sexes.

whose language they have long since deciphered, that the poor victim in the morning's sacrifice is a woman? How, if it be published on 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 grey prematurely by sorrow, daughter of Cæsars kneeling down humbly to kiss the guillotine, as one that worships death? How, if it were the "martyred wife of Roland," uttering impassioned truth-truth odious to the rulers of her country-with her expiring breath? 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 high road, 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 universally read, has given a very pleasing testimony to the interesting cha

racter 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.*

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

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, "sceptical, Judaic, Satanic-in a word, member of this diabolical corporation, will not surprise Anti-Christian.' That Lord Byron should figure as a men. It will surprise them to hear that Milton is one of its Satanic leaders. Many are the generous and eloquent Frenchmen, beside 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 gloire" never occurs in any Parisian journal. particular, I begin myself to suspect that the word "la "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.

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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. Amongst those the accident of having, when a boy of eleven, received a few, however, happens to be myself; which arose from 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 fervor; but much more from the savage delight I found in laughing at Tom's Latinity. That, I freely grant to M. Michelet, that I could forge a better De Imitatione myself. But is inimitable; else, as regards substance, it strikes me there is no knowing till one tries. Yet, after all, it is not

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 countryman, 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 Joanne d'Arc was subjected to an unusually unfair trial of opinion. Any of the elder Christian martyrs had not much to fear of personal rancor. 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

certain whether the original was Latin. But, however that may have been, if it is possible that M. Michelet 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 lads could have written the Opera Omnia of Mr. à Kempis; neither could any of our lasses 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 amongst 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 amongst 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

* "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, amongst 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 two thousand, and those in French to one thousand. 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 Scripure truth so passionately welcome.

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 & 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 amongst 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 à 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 ar

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, my dear? I don't mean to deny it. Running away, in many cases, is a thing so excellent, that no philo sopher 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

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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. Whilst 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.

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