← catalogue

Miscellaneous Essays

by Thomas De Quincey · English · Gutenberg #10708 · 418,767 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Miscellaneous Essays
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Miscellaneous Essays

Author: Thomas De Quincey


        
Release date: January 1, 2004 [eBook #10708]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10708

Credits: Produced by Charles Franks, Leonard D. Johnson, Susan Goble and PG Distributed Proofreaders


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS ***

DE QUINCEY'S WRITINGS.

It is the intention of the publishers to issue, at intervals, a complete
collection of Mr. De Quincey's Writings, uniform with this volume. The
first four volumes of the series will contain,--

I. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and Suspiria De Profundis.

II. Biographical Essays.

III. Miscellaneous Essays.

IV. The Cæsars.





MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.

BY

THOMAS DE QUINCEY.



CONTENTS.


ON THE KNOCKING AT THE GATE, IN MACBETH

MURDER, CONSIDERED AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS

SECOND PAPER ON MURDER

JOAN OF ARC

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH

THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH

DINNER, REAL AND REPUTED




ON

THE KNOCKING AT THE GATE,

IN MACBETH.


From my boyish days I had always felt a great perplexity on one point in
Macbeth. It was this: the knocking at the gate, which succeeds to the
murder of Duncan, produced to my feelings an effect for which I never could
account. The effect was, that it reflected back upon the murder a peculiar
awfulness and a depth of solemnity; yet, however obstinately I endeavored
with my understanding to comprehend this, for many years I never could see
_why_ it should produce such an effect.

Here I pause for one moment, to exhort the reader never to pay any
attention to his understanding when it stands in opposition to any
other faculty of his mind. The mere understanding, however useful and
indispensable, is the meanest faculty in the human mind, and the most to
be distrusted; and yet the great majority of people trust to nothing else;
which may do for ordinary life, but not for philosophical purposes. Of this
out of ten thousand instances that I might produce, I will cite one. Ask of
any person whatsoever, who is not previously prepared for the demand by
a knowledge of perspective, to draw in the rudest way the commonest
appearance which depends upon the laws of that science; as for instance, to
represent the effect of two walls standing at right angles to each other,
or the appearance of the houses on each side of a street, as seen by a
person looking down the street from one extremity. Now in all cases, unless
the person has happened to observe in pictures how it is that artists
produce these effects, he will be utterly unable to make the smallest
approximation to it. Yet why? For he has actually seen the effect every day
of his life. The reason is--that he allows his understanding to overrule
his eyes. His understanding, which includes no intuitive knowledge of the
laws of vision, can furnish him with no reason why a line which is known
and can be proved to be a horizontal line, should not _appear_ a horizontal
line; a line that made any angle with the perpendicular less than a right
angle, would seem to him to indicate that his houses were all tumbling down
together. Accordingly he makes the line of his houses a horizontal line,
and fails of course to produce the effect demanded. Here then is one
instance out of many, in which not only the understanding is allowed to
overrule the eyes, but where the understanding is positively allowed to
obliterate the eyes as it were, for not only does the man believe the
evidence of his understanding in opposition to that of his eyes, but,
(what is monstrous!) the idiot is not aware that his eyes ever gave such
evidence. He does not know that he has seen (and therefore _quoad_ his
consciousness has _not_ seen) that which he _has_ seen every day of his
life. But to return from this digression, my understanding could furnish no
reason why the knocking at the gate in Macbeth should produce any effect,
direct or reflected. In fact, my understanding said positively that it
could _not_ produce any effect. But I knew better; I felt that it did; and
I waited and clung to the problem until further knowledge should enable me
to solve it. At length, in 1812, Mr. Williams made his _début_ on the stage
of Ratcliffe Highway, and executed those unparalleled murders which have
procured for him such a brilliant and undying reputation. On which murders,
by the way, I must observe, that in one respect they have had an ill
effect, by making the connoisseur in murder very fastidious in his taste,
and dissatisfied by anything that has been since done in that line. All
other murders look pale by the deep crimson of his; and, as an amateur once
said to me in a querulous tone, "There has been absolutely nothing _doing_
since his time, or nothing that's worth speaking of." But this is wrong;
for it is unreasonable to expect all men to be great artists, and born with
the genius of Mr. Williams. Now it will be remembered that in the first of
these murders, (that of the Marrs,) the same incident (of a knocking at the
door soon after the work of extermination was complete) did actually occur,
which the genius of Shakspeare has invented; and all good judges, and
the most eminent dilettanti, acknowledged the felicity of Shakspeare's
suggestion as soon as it was actually realized. Here, then, was a fresh
proof that I was right in relying on my own feeling in opposition to my
understanding; and I again set myself to study the problem; at length
I solved it to my own satisfaction; and my solution is this. Murder in
ordinary cases, where the sympathy is wholly directed to the case of the
murdered person, is an incident of coarse and vulgar horror; and for this
reason, that it flings the interest exclusively upon the natural but
ignoble instinct by which we cleave to life; an instinct, which, as being
indispensable to the primal law of self-preservation, is the same in kind,
(though different in degree,) amongst all living creatures; this instinct
therefore, because it annihilates all distinctions, and degrades the
greatest of men to the level of "the poor beetle that we tread on,"
exhibits human nature in its most abject and humiliating attitude. Such an
attitude would little suit the purposes of the poet. What then must he
do? He must throw the interest on the murderer. Our sympathy must be with
_him_; (of course I mean a sympathy of comprehension, a sympathy by which
we enter into his feelings, and are made to understand them,--not a
sympathy[1] of pity or approbation.) In the murdered person all strife of
thought, all flux and reflux of passion and of purpose, are crushed by one
overwhelming panic; the fear of instant death smites him "with its petrific
mace." But in the murderer, such a murderer as a poet will condescend to,
there must be raging some great storm of passion,--jealousy, ambition,
vengeance, hatred,--which will create a hell within him; and into this hell
we are to look.

[Footnote 1: It seems almost ludicrous to guard and explain my use of a
word in a situation where it would naturally explain itself. But it has
become necessary to do so, in consequence of the unscholarlike use of the
word sympathy, at present so general, by which, instead of taking it in
its proper sense, as the act of reproducing in our minds the feelings of
another, whether for hatred, indignation, love, pity, or approbation, it
is made a mere synonyme of the word _pity_; and hence, instead of saying
"sympathy _with_ another," many writers adopt the monstrous barbarism of
"sympathy _for_ another."]

In Macbeth, for the sake of gratifying his own enormous and teeming faculty
of creation, Shakspeare has introduced two murderers: and, as usual in his
hands, they are remarkably discriminated: but, though in Macbeth the strife
of mind is greater than in his wife, the tiger spirit not so awake, and his
feelings caught chiefly by contagion from her,--yet, as both were finally
involved in the guilt of murder, the murderous mind of necessity is finally
to be presumed in both. This was to be expressed; and on its own account,
as well as to make it a more proportionable antagonist to the unoffending
nature of their victim, "the gracious Duncan," and adequately to expound
"the deep damnation of his taking off," this was to be expressed with
peculiar energy. We were to be made to feel that the human nature, _i.e._,
the divine nature of love and mercy, spread through the hearts of all
creatures, and seldom utterly withdrawn from man,--was gone, vanished,
extinct; and that the fiendish nature had taken its place. And, as this
effect is marvellously accomplished in the _dialogues_ and _soliloquies_
themselves, so it is finally consummated by the expedient under
consideration; and it is to this that I now solicit the reader's attention.
If the reader has ever witnessed a wife, daughter, or sister, in a fainting
fit, he may chance to have observed that the most affecting moment in
such a spectacle, is _that_ in which a sigh and a stirring announce the
recommencement of suspended life. Or, if the reader has ever been present
in a vast metropolis, on the day when some great national idol was carried
in funeral pomp to his grave, and chancing to walk near the course through
which it passed, has felt powerfully, in the silence and desertion of the
streets and in the stagnation of ordinary business, the deep interest which
at that moment was possessing the heart of man,--if all at once he should
hear the death-like stillness broken up by the sound of wheels rattling
away from the scene, and making known that the transitory vision was
dissolved, he will be aware that at no moment was his sense of the complete
suspension and pause in ordinary human concerns so full and affecting, as
at that moment when the suspension ceases, and the goings-on of human
life are suddenly resumed. All action in any direction is best expounded,
measured, and made apprehensible, by reaction. Now apply this to the case
in Macbeth. Here, as I have said, the retiring of the human heart and the
entrance of the fiendish heart was to be expressed and made sensible.
Another world has stepped in; and the murderers are taken out of the region
of human things, human purposes, human desires. They are transfigured: Lady
Macbeth is "unsexed;" Macbeth has forgot that he was born of woman; both
are conformed to the image of devils; and the world of devils is suddenly
revealed. But how shall this be conveyed and made palpable? In order that a
new world may step in, this world must for a time disappear. The murderers,
and the murder, must be insulated--cut off by an immeasurable gulph
from the ordinary tide and succession of human affairs--locked up and
sequestered in some deep recess; we must be made sensible that the world
of ordinary life is suddenly arrested--laid asleep--tranced--racked into
a dread armistice: time must be annihilated; relation to things without
abolished; and all must pass self-withdrawn into a deep syncope and
suspension of earthly passion. Hence it is, that when the deed is done,
when the work of darkness is perfect, then the world of darkness passes
away like a pageantry in the clouds: the knocking at the gate is heard; and
it makes known audibly that the reaction has commenced: the human has made
its reflux upon the fiendish; the pulses of life are beginning to beat
again; and the re-establishment of the goings-on of the world in which we
live, first makes us profoundly sensible of the awful parenthesis that had
suspended them.

O, mighty poet! Thy works are not as those of other men, simply and merely
great works of art; but are also like the phenomena of nature, like the sun
and the sea, the stars and the flowers,--like frost and snow, rain and dew,
hail-storm and thunder, which are to be studied with entire submission of
our own faculties, and in the perfect faith that in them there can be no
too much or too little, nothing useless or inert--but that, the further
we press in our discoveries, the more we shall see proofs of design and
self-supporting arrangement where the careless eye had seen nothing but
accident!



ON MURDER,

CONSIDERED AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS.


TO THE EDITOR OF BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.


SIR,--We have all heard of a Society for the Promotion of Vice, of the
Hell-Fire Club, &c. At Brighton, I think it was, that a Society was formed
for the Suppression of Virtue. That society was itself suppressed--but I
am sorry to say that another exists in London, of a character still
more atrocious. In tendency, it may be denominated a Society for the
Encouragement of Murder; but, according to their own delicate [Greek:
euphaemismos], it is styled--The Society of Connoisseurs in Murder. They
profess to be curious in homicide; amateurs and dilettanti in the various
modes of bloodshed; and, in short, Murder-Fanciers. Every fresh atrocity
of that class, which the police annals of Europe bring up, they meet and
criticise as they would a picture, statue, or other work of art. But I
need not trouble myself with any attempt to describe the spirit of their
proceedings, as you will collect _that_ much better from one of the Monthly
Lectures read before the society last year. This has fallen into my hands
accidentally, in spite of all the vigilance exercised to keep their
transactions from the public eye. The publication of it will alarm them;
and my purpose is that it should. For I would much rather put them down
quietly, by an appeal to public opinion through you, than by such an
exposure of names as would follow an appeal to Bow Street; which last
appeal, however, if this should fail, I must positively resort to. For it
is scandalous that such things should go on in a Christian land. Even in a
heathen land, the toleration of murder was felt by a Christian writer to be
the most crying reproach of the public morals. This writer was Lactantius;
and with his words, as singularly applicable to the present occasion, I
shall conclude: "Quid tam horribile," says he, "tam tetrum, quam hominis
trucidatio? Ideo severissimis legibus vita nostra munitur; ideo bella
execrabilia sunt. Invenit tamen consuetudo quatenus homicidium sine bello
ac sine legibus faciat: et hoc sibi voluptas quod scelus vindicavit.
Quod si interesse homicidio sceleris conscientia est,--et eidem facinori
spectator obstrictus est cui et admissor; ergo et in his gladiatorum
cædibus non minus cruore profunditur qui spectat, quam ille qui facit:
nec potest esse immunis à sanguine qui voluit effundi; aut videri non
interfecisse, qui interfectori et favit et proemium postulavit." "Human
life," says he, "is guarded by laws of the uttermost rigor, yet custom has
devised a mode of evading them in behalf of murder; and the demands of
taste (voluptas) are now become the same as those of abandoned guilt." Let
the Society of Gentlemen Amateurs consider this; and let me call their
especial attention to the last sentence, which is so weighty, that I shall
attempt to convey it in English: "Now, if merely to be present at a
murder fastens on a man the character of an accomplice; if barely to be a
spectator involves us in one common guilt with the perpetrator; it follows
of necessity, that, in these murders of the amphitheatre, the hand which
inflicts the fatal blow is not more deeply imbrued in blood than his who
sits and looks on: neither can _he_ be clear of blood who has countenanced
its shedding; nor that man seem other than a participator in murder who
gives his applause to the murderer, and calls for prizes in his behalf."
The "_præmia postulavit_" I have not yet heard charged upon the Gentlemen
Amateurs of London, though undoubtedly their proceedings tend to that;
but the "_interfectori favil_" is implied in the very title of this
association, and expressed in every line of the lecture which I send you.

I am, &c. X. Y. Z.

       *       *       *       *       *

LECTURE.

GENTLEMEN,--I have had the honor to be appointed by your committee to the
trying task of reading the Williams' Lecture on Murder, considered as one
of the Fine Arts; a task which might be easy enough three or four centuries
ago, when the art was little understood, and few great models had been
exhibited; but in this age, when masterpieces of excellence have been
executed by professional men, it must be evident, that in the style
of criticism applied to them, the public will look for something of a
corresponding improvement. Practice and theory must advance _pari passu_.
People begin to see that something more goes to the composition of a fine
murder than two blockheads to kill and be killed--a knife--a purse--and a
dark lane. Design, gentlemen, grouping, light and shade, poetry, sentiment,
are now deemed indispensable to attempts of this nature. Mr. Williams
has exalted the ideal of murder to all of us; and to me, therefore, in
particular, has deepened the arduousness of my task. Like Æschylus or
Milton in poetry, like Michael Angelo in painting, he has carried his art
to a point of colossal sublimity; and, as Mr. Wordsworth observes, has in
a manner "created the taste by which he is to be enjoyed." To sketch the
history of the art, and to examine its principles critically, now remains
as a duty for the connoisseur, and for judges of quite another stamp from
his Majesty's Judges of Assize.

Before I begin, let me say a word or two to certain prigs, who affect to
speak of our society as if it were in some degree immoral in its tendency.
Immoral! God bless my soul, gentlemen, what is it that people mean? I am
for morality, and always shall be, and for virtue and all that; and I do
affirm, and always shall, (let what will come of it,) that murder is an
improper line of conduct, highly improper; and I do not stick to assert,
that any man who deals in murder, must have very incorrect ways of
thinking, and truly inaccurate principles; and so far from aiding and
abetting him by pointing out his victim's hiding-place, as a great
moralist[1] of Germany declared it to be every good man's duty to do, I
would subscribe one shilling and sixpense to have him apprehended, which is
more by eighteen-pence than the most eminent moralists have subscribed for
that purpose. But what then? Everything in this world has two handles.
Murder, for instance, may be laid hold of by its moral handle, (as it
generally is in the pulpit, and at the Old Bailey;) and _that_, I confess,
is its weak side; or it may also be treated _æsthetically_, as the Germans
call it, that is, in relation to good taste.

[Footnote 1: Kant--who carried his demands of unconditional veracity to so
extravagant a length as to affirm, that, if a man were to see an innocent
person escape from a murderer, it would be his duty, on being questioned
by the murderer, to tell the truth, and to point out the retreat of the
innocent person, under any certainty of causing murder. Lest this doctrine
should be supposed to have escaped him in any heat of dispute, on being
taxed with it by a celebrated French writer, he solemnly reaffirmed it,
with his reasons.]

To illustrate this, I will urge the authority of three eminent persons,
viz., S.T. Coleridge, Aristotle, and Mr. Howship the surgeon. To begin with
S.T.C. One night, many years ago, I was drinking tea with him in Berners'
Street, (which, by the way, for a short street, has been uncommonly
fruitful in men of genius.) Others were there besides myself; and amidst
some carnal considerations of tea and toast, we were all imbibing a
dissertation on Plotinus from the attic lips of S.T.C. Suddenly a cry arose
of "_Fire--fire_!" upon which all of us, master and disciples, Plato and
[Greek: hoi peri ton Platona], rushed out, eager for the spectacle. The
fire was in Oxford Street, at a piano-forte maker's; and, as it promised to
be a conflagration of merit, I was sorry that my engagements forced me away
from Mr. Coleridge's party before matters were come to a crisis. Some days
after, meeting with my Platonic host, I reminded him of the case, and
begged to know how that very promising exhibition had terminated. "Oh,
sir," said he, "it turned out so ill, that we damned it unanimously." Now,
does any man suppose that Mr. Coleridge,--who, for all he is too fat to be
a person of active virtue, is undoubtedly a worthy Christian,--that this
good S. T. C., I say, was an incendiary, or capable of wishing any ill
to the poor man and his piano-fortes (many of them, doubtless, with the
additional keys)? On the contrary, I know him to be that sort of man, that
I durst stake my life upon it he would have worked an engine in a case of
necessity, although rather of the fattest for such fiery trials of his
virtue. But how stood the case? Virtue was in no request. On the arrival
of the fire-engines, morality had devolved wholly on the insurance office.
This being the case, he had a right to gratify his taste. He had left his
tea. Was he to have nothing in return?

I contend that the most virtuous man, under the premises stated, was
entitled to make a luxury of the fire, and to hiss it, as he would any
other performance that raised expectations in the public mind, which
afterwards it disappointed. Again, to cite another great authority,
what says the Stagyrite? He (in the Fifth Book, I think it is, of his
Metaphysics) describes what he calls [Greek: kleptaen teleion], i.e., _a
perfect thief_; and, as to Mr. Howship, in a work of his on Indigestion, he
makes no scruple to talk with admiration of a certain ulcer which he had
seen, and which he styles "a beautiful ulcer." Now will any man pretend,
that, abstractedly considered, a thief could appear to Aristotle a perfect
character, or that Mr. Howship could be enamored of an ulcer? Aristotle,
it is well known, was himself so very moral a character, that, not content
with writing his Nichomachean Ethics, in one volume octavo, he also
wrote another system, called _Magna Moralia_, or Big Ethics. Now, it is
impossible that a man who composes any ethics at all, big or little, should
admire a thief _per se_, and, as to Mr. Howship, it is well known that he
makes war upon all ulcers; and, without suffering himself to be seduced by
their charms, endeavors to banish them from the county of Middlesex. But
the truth is, that, however objectionable _per se_, yet, relatively to
others of their class, both a thief and an ulcer may have infinite degrees
of merit. They are both imperfections, it is true; but to be imperfect
being their essence, the very greatness of their imperfection becomes their
perfection. _Spartam nactus es, hunc exorna_. A thief like Autolycus or
Mr. Barrington, and a grim phagedænic ulcer, superbly defined, and running
regularly through all its natural stages, may no less justly be regarded
as ideals after _their_ kind, than the most faultless moss-rose amongst
flowers, in its progress from bud to "bright consummate flower;" or,
amongst human flowers, the most magnificent young female, apparelled in
the pomp of womanhood. And thus not only the ideal of an inkstand may be
imagined, (as Mr. Coleridge demonstrated in his celebrated correspondence
with Mr. Blackwood,) in which, by the way, there is not so much, because an
inkstand is a laudable sort of thing, and a valuable member of society; but
even imperfection itself may have its ideal or perfect state.

Really, gentlemen, I beg pardon for so much philosophy at one time, and now
let me apply it. When a murder is in the paulo-post-futurum tense, and a
rumor of it comes to our ears, by all means let us treat it morally. But
suppose it over and done, and that you can say of it,[Greek: Tetelesai],
or (in that adamantine molossus of Medea) [Greek: eirzasai]; suppose the
poor murdered man to be out of his pain, and the rascal that did it off
like a shot, nobody knows whither; suppose, lastly, that we have done our
best, by putting out our legs to trip up the fellow in his flight, but all
to no purpose--"abiit, evasit," &c.--why, then, I say, what's the use of
any more virtue? Enough has been given to morality; now comes the turn of
Taste and the Fine Arts. A sad thing it was, no doubt, very sad; but _we_
can't mend it. Therefore let us make the best of a bad matter; and, as it
is impossible to hammer anything out of it for moral purposes, let us treat
it æsthetically, and see if it will turn to account in that way. Such is
the logic of a sensible man, and what follows? We dry up our tears, and
have the satisfaction, perhaps, to discover that a transaction, which,
morally considered, was shocking, and without a leg to stand upon,
when tried by principles of Taste, turns out to be a very meritorious
performance. Thus all the world is pleased; the old proverb is justified,
that it is an ill wind which blows nobody good; the amateur, from looking
bilious and sulky, by too close an attention to virtue, begins to pick up
his crumbs, and general hilarity prevails. Virtue has had her day; and
henceforward, _Vertu_ and Connoisseurship have leave to provide for
themselves. Upon this principle, gentlemen, I propose to guide your
studies, from Cain to Mr. Thurtell. Through this great gallery of murder,
therefore, together let us wander hand in hand, in delighted admiration,
while I endeavor to point your attention to the objects of profitable
criticism.

       *       *       *       *       *

The first murder is familiar to you all. As the inventor of murder, and the
father of the art, Cain must have been a man of first-rate genius. All the
Cains were men of genius. Tubal Cain invented tubes, I think, or some such
thing. But, whatever were the originality and genius of the artist, every
art was then in its infancy, and the works must be criticised with a
recollection of that fact. Even Tubal's work would probably be little
approved at this day in Sheffield; and therefore of Cain (Cain senior, I
mean,) it is no disparagement to say, that his performance was but so so.
Milton, however, is supposed to have thought differently. By his way of
relating the case, it should seem to have been rather a pet murder with
him, for he retouches it with an apparent anxiety for its picturesque
effect:

  Whereat he inly raged; and, as they talk'd,
  Smote him into the midriff with a stone
  That beat out life: he fell; and, deadly pale,
  Groan'd out his soul _with gushing blood effus'd_.
  _Par. Lost, B. XI_.

Upon this, Richardson, the painter, who had an eye for effect, remarks as
follows, in his Notes on Paradise Lost, p. 497: "It has been thought,"
says he, "that Cain beat (as the common saying is) the breath out of his
brother's body with a great stone; Milton gives in to this, with the
addition, however, of a large wound." In this place it was a judicious
addition; for the rudeness of the weapon, unless raised and enriched by
a warm, sanguinary coloring, has too much of the naked air of the savage
school; as if the deed were perpetrated by a Polypheme without science,
premeditation, or anything but a mutton bone. However, I am chiefly pleased
with the improvement, as it implies that Milton was an amateur. As to
Shakspeare, there never was a better; as his description of the murdered
Duke of Gloucester, in Henry VI., of Duncan's, Banquo's, &c., sufficiently
proves.

The foundation of the art having been once laid, it is pitiable to see how
it slumbered without improvement for ages. In fact, I shall now be obliged
to leap over all murders, sacred and profane, as utterly unworthy of
notice, until long after the Christian era. Greece, even in the age of
Pericles, produced no murder of the slightest merit; and Rome had too
little originality of genius in any of the arts to succeed, where her
model failed her. In fact, the Latin language sinks under the very idea of
murder. "The man was murdered;"--how will this sound in Latin? _Interfectus
est, interemptus est_--which simply expresses a homicide; and hence the
Christian Latinity of the middle ages was obliged to introduce a new word,
such as the feebleness of classic conceptions never ascended to. _Murdratus
est_, says the sublimer dialect of Gothic ages. Meantime, the Jewish,
school of murder kept alive whatever was yet known in the art, and
gradually transferred it to the Western World. Indeed the Jewish school was
always respectable, even in the dark ages, as the case of Hugh of Lincoln
shows, which was honored with the approbation of Chaucer, on occasion of
another performance from the same school, which he puts into the mouth of
the Lady Abbess.

Recurring, however, for one moment to classical antiquity, I cannot but
think that Catiline, Clodius, and some of that coterie, would have made
first-rate artists; and it is on all accounts to be regretted, that the
priggism of Cicero robbed his country of the only chance she had for
distinction in this line. As the _subject_ of a murder, no person could
have answered better than himself. Lord! how he would have howled with
panic, if he had heard Cethegus under his bed. It would have been truly
diverting to have listened to him; and satisfied I am, gentlemen, that he
would have preferred the _utile_ of creeping into a closet, or even into a
_cloaca_, to the _honestum_ of facing the bold artist.

To come now to the dark ages--(by which we, that speak with precision,
mean, _par excellence_, the tenth century, and the times immediately before
and after)--these ages ought naturally to be favorable to the art of
murder, as they were to church architecture, to stained glass, &c.; and,
accordingly, about the latter end of this period, there arose a great
character in our art, I mean the Old Man of the Mountains. He was a shining
light, indeed, and I need not tell you, that the very word "assassin" is
deduced from him. So keen an amateur was he, that on one occasion, when his
own life was attempted by a favorite assassin, he was so much pleased
with the talent shown, that notwithstanding the failure of the artist, he
created him a duke upon the spot, with remainder to the female line, and
settled a pension on him for three lives. Assassination is a branch of the
art which demands a separate notice; and I shall devote an entire lecture
to it. Meantime, I shall only observe how odd it is, that this branch of
the art has flourished by fits. It never rains, but it pours. Our own age
can boast of some fine specimens; and, about two centuries ago, there was a
most brilliant constellation of murders in this class. I need hardly say,
that I allude especially to those five splendid works,--the assassinations
of William I, of Orange, of Henry IV., of France, of the Duke of
Buckingham, (which you will find excellently described in the letters
published by Mr. Ellis, of the British Museum,) of Gustavus Adolphus, and
of Wallenstein. The King of Sweden's assassination, by the by, is doubted
by many writers, Harte amongst others; but they are wrong. He was murdered;
and I consider his murder unique in its excellence; for he was murdered at
noon-day, and on the field of battle,--a feature of original conception,
which occurs in no other work of art that I remember. Indeed, all of these
assassinations may be studied with profit by the advanced connoisseur. They
are all of them _exemplaria_, of which one may say,--

  Nociurnâ versatâ manu, versate diurne;

Especially _nocturnâ_.

In these assassinations of princes and statesmen, there is nothing to
excite our wonder; important changes often depend on their deaths; and,
from the eminence on which they stand, they are peculiarly exposed to the
aim of every artist who happens to be possessed by the craving for scenical
effect. But there is another class of assassinations, which has prevailed
from an early period of the seventeenth century, that really _does_
surprise me; I mean the assassination of philosophers. For, gentlemen, it
is a fact, that every philosopher of eminence for the two last centuries
has either been murdered, or, at the least, been very near it; insomuch,
that if a man calls himself a philosopher, and never had his life
attempted, rest assured there is nothing in him; and against Locke's
philosophy in particular, I think it an unanswerable objection (if we
needed any), that, although he carried his throat about with him in this
world for seventy-two years, no man ever condescended to cut it. As these
cases of philosophers are not much known, and are generally good and well
composed in their circumstances, I shall here read an excursus on that
subject, chiefly by way of showing my own learning.

The first great philosopher of the seventeenth century (if we except
Galileo) was Des Cartes; and if ever one could say of a man that he was all
_but_ murdered--murdered within an inch--one must say it of him. The case
was this, as reported by Baillet in his _Vie De M. Des Cartes_, tom. I. p.
102-3. In the year 1621, when Des Cartes might be about twenty-six years
old, he was touring about as usual, (for he was as restless as a hyæna,)
and, coming to the Elbe, either at Gluckstadt or at Hamburgh, he took
shipping for East Friezland: what he could want in East Friezland no man
has ever discovered; and perhaps he took this into consideration himself;
for, on reaching Embden, he resolved to sail instantly for _West_
Friezland; and being very impatient of delay, he hired a bark, with a few
mariners to navigate it. No sooner had he got out to sea than he made a
pleasing discovery, viz. that he had shut himself up in a den of murderers.
His crew, says M. Baillet, he soon found out to be "des scélérats,"--not
_amateurs_, gentlemen, as we are, but professional men--the height of
whose ambition at that moment was to cut his throat. But the story is too
pleasing to be abridged; I shall give it, therefore, accurately, from the
French of his biographer: "M. Des Cartes had no company but that of his
servant, with whom he was conversing in French. The sailors, who took him
for a foreign merchant, rather than a cavalier, concluded that he must
have money about him. Accordingly they came to a resolution by no means
advantageous to his purse. There is this difference, however, between
sea-robbers and the robbers in forests, that the latter may, without
hazard, spare the lives of their victims; whereas the other cannot put
a passenger on shore in such a case without running the risk of being
apprehended. The crew of M. Des Cartes arranged their measures with a view
to evade any danger of that sort. They observed that he was a stranger from
a distance, without acquaintance in the country, and that nobody would take
any trouble to inquire about him, in case he should never come to hand,
(_quand il viendroit à manquer_.") Think, gentlemen, of these Friezland
dogs discussing a philosopher as if he were a puncheon of rum. "His temper,
they remarked, was very mild and patient; and, judging from the gentleness
of his deportment, and the courtesy with which he treated themselves, that
he could be nothing more than some green young man, they concluded that
they should have all the easier task in disposing of his life. They made no
scruple to discuss the whole matter in his presence, as not supposing that
he understood any other language than that in which he conversed with his
servant; and the amount of their deliberation was--to murder him, then to
throw him into the sea, and to divide his spoils."

Excuse my laughing, gentlemen, but the fact is, I always _do_ laugh when I
think of this case--two things about it seem so droll. One, is, the horrid
panic or "funk," (as the men of Eton call it,) in which Des Cartes must
have found himself upon hearing this regular drama sketched for his own
death--funeral--succession and administration to his effects. But another
thing, which seems to me still more funny about this affair is, that
if these Friezland hounds had been "game," we should have no Cartesian
philosophy; and how we could have done without _that_, considering the
worlds of books it has produced, I leave to any respectable trunk-maker to
declare.

However, to go on; spite of his enormous funk, Des Cartes showed fight,
and by that means awed these Anti-Cartesian rascals. "Finding," says M.
Baillet, "that the matter was no joke, M. Des Cartes leaped upon his feet
in a trice, assumed a stern countenance that these cravens had never looked
for, and addressing them in their own language, threatened to run them
through on the spot if they dared to offer him any insult." Certainly,
gentlemen, this would have been an honor far above the merits of such
inconsiderable rascals--to be spitted like larks upon a Cartesian sword;
and therefore I am glad M. Des Cartes did not rob the gallows by executing
his threat, especially as he could not possibly have brought his vessel to
port, after he had murdered his crew; so that he must have continued to
cruise for ever in the Zuyder Zee, and would probably have been mistaken by
sailors for the _Flying Dutchman_, homeward bound. "The spirit which M. Des
Cartes manifested," says his biographer, "had the effect of magic on these
wretches. The suddenness of their consternation struck their minds with a
confusion which blinded them to their advantage, and they conveyed him to
his destination as peaceably as he could desire."

Possibly, gentlemen, you may fancy that, on the model of Cæsar's address
to his poor ferryman,--"_Cæsarem vehis et fortunas ejus_"--M. Des Cartes
needed only to have said,--"Dogs, you cannot cut my throat, for you carry
Des Cartes and his philosophy," and might safely have defied them to do
their worst. A German emperor had the same notion, when, being cautioned to
keep out of the way of a cannonading, he replied, "Tut! man. Did you ever
hear of a cannon-ball that killed an emperor?" As to an emperor I cannot
say, but a less thing has sufficed to smash a philosoper; and the next
great philosopher of Europe undoubtedly _was_ murdered. This was Spinosa.

I know very well the common opinion about him is, that he died in his bed.
Perhaps he did, but he was murdered for all that; and this I shall prove
by a book published at Brussels, in the year 1731, entitled, _La Via de
Spinosa; Par M. Jean Colerus_, with many additions, from a MS. life, by one
of his friends. Spinosa died on the 21st February, 1677, being then little
more than forty-four years old. This of itself looks suspicious; and M.
Jean admits, that a certain expression in the MS. life of him would warrant
the conclusion, "que sa mort n'a pas été tout-à-fait naturelle." Living in
a damp country, and a sailor's country, like Holland, he may be thought to
have indulged a good deal in grog, especially in punch,[1] which was then
newly discovered. Undoubtedly he might have done so; but the fact is that
he did not. M. Jean calls him "extrêmement sobre en son boire et en son
manger." And though some wild stories were afloat about his using the juice
of mandragora (p. 140,) and opium, (p. 144,) yet neither of these articles
appeared in his druggist's bill. Living, therefore, with such sobriety, how
was it possible that he should die a natural death at forty-four? Hear his
biographer's account:--"Sunday morning the 21st of February, before it was
church time, Spinosa came down stairs and conversed with the master and
mistress of the house." At this time, therefore, perhaps ten o'clock on
Sunday morning, you see that Spinosa was alive, and pretty well. But it
seems "he had summoned from Amsterdam a certain physician, whom," says the
biographer, "I shall not otherwise point out to notice than by these two
letters, L.M. This L.M. had directed the people of the house to purchase an
ancient cock, and to have him boiled forthwith, in order that Spinosa might
take some broth about noon, which in fact he did, and ate some of the _old
cock_ with a good appetite, after the landlord and his wife had returned
from church.

[Footnote 1: "June 1, 1675.--Drinke part of 3 boules of punch, (a liquor
very strainge to me,)" says the Rev. Mr. Henry Teonge, in his Diary lately
published. In a note on this passage, a reference is made to Fryer's
Travels to the East Indies, 1672, who speaks of "that enervating liquor
called _Paunch_, (which is Indostan for five,) from five ingredients."
Made thus, it seems the medical men called it Diapente; if with four only,
Diatessaron. No doubt, it was its Evangelical name that recommended it to
the Rev. Mr. Teonge.]

"In the afternoon, L.M. staid alone with Spinosa, the people of the house
having returned to church; on coming out from which they learnt, with much
surprise, that Spinosa had died about three o'clock, in the presence
of L.M., who took his departure for Amsterdam the same evening, by the
night-boat, without paying the least attention to the deceased. No doubt he
was the readier to dispense with these duties, as he had possessed himself
of a ducatoon and a small quantity of silver, together with a silver-hafted
knife, and had absconded with his pillage." Here you see, gentlemen, the
murder is plain, and the manner of it. It was L.M. who murdered Spinosa
for his money. Poor S. was an invalid, meagre, and weak: as no blood
was observed, L.M., no doubt, threw him down and smothered him with
pillows,--the poor man being already half suffocated by his infernal
dinner. But who was L.M.? It surely never could be Lindley Murray; for I
saw him at York in 1825; and besides, I do not think he Would do such a
thing; at least, not to a brother grammarian: for you know, gentlemen, that
Spinosa wrote a very respectable Hebrew grammar.

Hobbes, but why, or on what principle, I never could understand, was not
murdered. This was a capital oversight of the professional men in the
seventeenth century; because in every light he was a fine subject for
murder, except, indeed, that he was lean and skinny; for I can prove that
he had money, and (what is very funny,) he had no right to make the least
resistance; for, according to himself, irresistible power creates the very
highest species of right, so that it is rebellion of the blackest die
to refuse to be murdered, when a competent force appears to murder you.
However, gentlemen, though he was not murdered, I am happy to assure you
that (by his own account) he was three times very near being murdered. The
first time was in the spring of 1640, when he pretends to have circulated
a little MS. on the king's behalf, against the Parliament; he never could
produce this MS., by the by; but he says that, "Had not his Majesty
dissolved the Parliament," (in May,) "it had brought him into danger of his
life." Dissolving the Parliament, however, was of no use; for, in November
of the same year, the Long Parliament assembled, and Hobbes, a second time,
fearing he should be murdered, ran away to France. This looks like the
madness of John Dennis, who thought that Louis XIV. would never make peace
with Queen Anne, unless he were given up to his vengeance; and actually ran
away from the sea-coast in that belief. In France, Hobbes managed to take
care of his throat pretty well for ten years; but at the end of that time,
by way of paying court to Cromwell, he published his Leviathan. The old
coward now began to "funk" horribly for the third time; he fancied the
swords of the cavaliers were constantly at his throat, recollecting how
they had served the Parliament ambassadors at the Hague and Madrid. "Turn,"
says he, in his dog-Latin life of himself,

  "Tum venit in mentem mihi Dorislaus et Ascham;
  Tanquam proscripto terror ubique aderat."

And accordingly he ran home to England. Now, certainly, it is very true
that a man deserved a cudgelling for writing Leviathan; and two or three
cudgellings for writing a pentameter ending so villanously as--"terror
ubique aderat!" But no man ever thought him worthy of anything beyond
cudgelling. And, in fact, the whole story is a bounce of his own. For, in a
most abusive letter which he wrote "to a learned person," (meaning Wallis
the mathematician,) he gives quite another account of the matter, and says
(p. 8,) he ran home "because he would not trust his safety with the French
clergy;" insinuating that he was likely to be murdered for his religion,
which would have been a high joke indeed--Tom's being brought to the stake
for religion.

Bounce or not bounce, however, certain it is, that Hobbes, to the end of
his life, feared that somebody would murder him. This is proved by the
story I am going to tell you: it is not from a manuscript, but, (as Mr.
Coleridge says,) it is as good as manuscript; for it comes from a book
now entirely forgotten, viz., "The Creed of Mr. Hobbes Examined; in a
Conference between him and a Student in Divinity," (published about ten
years before Hobbes's death.) The book is anonymous, but it was written by
Tennison, the same who, about thirty years after, succeeded Tillotson as
Archbishop of Canterbury. The introductory anecdote is as follows: "A
certain divine, it seems, (no doubt Tennison himself,) took an annual tour
of one month to different parts of the island. In one of these excursions
(1670) he visited the Peak in Derbyshire, partly in consequence of Hobbes's
description of it. Being in that neighborhood, he could not but pay a visit
to Buxton; and at the very moment of his arrival, he was fortunate enough
to find a party of gentlemen dismounting at the inn door, amongst whom was
a long thin fellow, who turned out to be no less a person than Mr. Hobbes,
who probably had ridden over from Chattsworth. Meeting so great a lion,--a
tourist, in search of the picturesque, could do no less than present
himself in the character of bore. And luckily for this scheme, two of Mr.
Hobbes's companions were suddenly summoned away by express; so that, for
the rest of his stay at Buxton, he had Leviathan entirely to himself, and
had the honor of bowsing with him in the evening. Hobbes, it seems, at
first showed a good deal of stiffness, for he was shy of divines; but this
wore off, and he became very sociable and funny, and they agreed to go into
the bath together. How Tennison could venture to gambol in the same water
with Leviathan, I cannot explain; but so it was: they frolicked about like
two dolphins, though Hobbes must have been as old as the hills; and
"in those intervals wherein they abstained from swimming and plunging
themselves," [i.e., diving,] "they discoursed of many things relating to
the Baths of the Ancients, and the Origine of Springs. When they had in
this manner passed away an hour, they stepped out of the bath; and, having
dried and cloathed themselves, they sate down in expectation of such a
supper as the place afforded; designing to refresh themselves like the
_Deipnosophilæ_, and rather to reason than to drink profoundly. But in this
innocent intention they were interrupted by the disturbance arising from a
little quarrel, in which some of the ruder people in the house were for a
short time engaged. At this Mr. Hobbes seemed much concerned, though he was
at some distance from the persons." And why was he concerned, gentlemen?
No doubt you fancy, from, some benign and disinterested love of peace and
harmony, worthy of an old man and a philosopher. But listen--"For a while
he was not composed, but related it once or twice as to himself, with a
low and careful tone, how Sextus Roscius was murthered after supper by
the Balneæ Palatinæ. Of such general extent is that remark of Cicero, in
relation to Epicurus the Atheist, of whom he observed that he of all men
dreaded most those things which he contemned--Death and the Gods." Merely
because it was supper time, and in the neighborhood of a bath, Mr. Hobbes
must have the fate of Sextus Roscius. What logic was there in this, unless
to a man who was always dreaming of murder? Here was Leviathan, no
longer afraid of the daggers of English cavaliers or French clergy, but
"frightened from his propriety" by a row in an ale-house between some
honest clod-hoppers of Derbyshire, whom his own gaunt scare-crow of a
person that belonged to quite another century, would have frightened out of
their wits.

Malebranche, it will give you pleasure to hear, was murdered. The man who
murdered him is well known: it was Bishop Berkeley. The story is familiar,
though hitherto not put in a proper light. Berkeley, when a young man, went
to Paris and called on Père Malebranche. He found him in his cell cooking.
Cooks have ever been a _genus irritabile_; authors still more so:
Malebranche was both: a dispute arose; the old father, warm already, became
warmer; culinary and metaphysical irritations united to derange his liver:
he took to his bed, and died. Such is the common version of the story:
"So the whole ear of Denmark is abused." The fact is, that the matter was
hushed up, out of consideration for Berkeley, who (as Pope remarked) had
"every virtue under heaven:" else it was well known that Berkeley, feeling
himself nettled by the waspishness of the old Frenchman, squared at him; a
_turn-up_ was the consequence: Malebranche was floored in the first round;
the conceit was wholly taken out of him; and he would perhaps have given
in; but Berkeley's blood was now up, and he insisted on the old Frenchman's
retracting his doctrine of Occasional Causes. The vanity of the man was too
great for this; and he fell a sacrifice to the impetuosity of Irish youth,
combined with his own absurd obstinacy.

Leibnitz, being every way superior to Malebranche, one might, _a fortiori_,
have counted on _his_ being murdered; which, however, was not the case. I
believe he was nettled at this neglect, and felt himself insulted by the
security in which he passed his days. In no other way can I explain
his conduct at the latter end of his life, when he chose to grow very
avaricious, and to hoard up large sums of gold, which he kept in his
own house. This was at Vienna, where he died; and letters are still in
existence, describing the immeasurable anxiety which he entertained for his
throat. Still his ambition, for being _attempted_ at least, was so
great, that he would not forego the danger. A late English pedagogue, of
Birmingham manufacture, viz., Dr. Parr, took a more selfish course, under
the same circumstances. He had amassed a considerable quantity of gold and
silver plate, which was for some time deposited in his bed-room at his
parsonage house, Hatton. But growing every day more afraid of being
murdered, which he knew that he could not stand, (and to which, indeed, he
never had the slightest pretension,) he transferred the whole to the Hatton
blacksmith; conceiving, no doubt, that the murder of a blacksmith would
fall more lightly on the _salus reipublicæ_, than that of a pedagogue. But
I have heard this greatly disputed; and it seems now generally agreed, that
one good horse-shoe is worth about 2 1/4 Spital sermons.

As Leibnitz, though not murdered, may be said to have died, partly of
the fear that he should be murdered, and partly of vexation that he was
not,--Kant, on the other hand--who had no ambition in that way--had a
narrower escape from a murderer than any man we read of, except Des Cartes.
So absurdly does fortune throw about her favors! The case is told, I think,
in an anonymous life of this very great man. For health's sake, Kant
imposed upon himself, at one time, a walk of six miles every day along a
highroad. This fact becoming known to a man who had his private reasons for
committing murder, at the third milestone from Königsberg, he waited for
his "intended," who came up to time as duly as a mail-coach. But for an
accident, Kant was a dead man. However, on considerations of "morality," it
happened that the murderer preferred a little child, whom he saw playing in
the road, to the old transcendentalist: this child he murdered; and thus it
happened that Kant escaped. Such is the German account of the matter; but
my opinion is--that the murderer was an amateur, who felt how little would
be gained to the cause of good taste by murdering an old, arid, and adust
metaphysician; there was no room for display, as the man could not possibly
look more like a mummy when dead, than he had done alive.

Thus, gentlemen, I have traced the connection between philosophy and our
art, until insensibly I find that I have wandered into our own era. This I
shall not take any pains to characterize apart from that which preceded
it, for, in fact, they have no distinct character. The seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, together with so much of the nineteenth as we have
yet seen, jointly compose the Augustan age of murder. The finest work of
the seventeenth century is, unquestionably, the murder of Sir Edmondbury
Godfrey, which has my entire approbation. At the same time, it must be
observed, that the quantity of murder was not great in this century, at
least amongst our own artists; which, perhaps, is attributable to the want
of enlightened patronage. _Sint Mæcenates, non deerunt, Flacce, Marones_.
Consulting Grant's "Observations on the Bills of Mortality," (4th edition,
Oxford, 1665,) I find, that out of 229,250, who died in London during one
period of twenty years in the seventeenth century, not more than eighty-six
were murdered; that is, about four three-tenths per annum. A small number
this, gentlemen, to found an academy upon; and certainly, where the
quantity is so small, we have a right to expect that the quality should be
first-rate. Perhaps it was; yet, still I am of opinion that the best artist
in this century was not equal to the best in that which followed. For
instance, however praiseworthy the case of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey may be
(and nobody can be more sensible of its merits than I am), still I cannot
consent to place it on a level with that of Mrs. Ruscombe of Bristol,
either as to originality of design, or boldness and breadth of style. This
good lady's murder took place early in the reign of George III., a reign
which was notoriously favorable to the arts generally. She lived in College
Green, with a single maid-servant, neither of them having any pretension
to the notice of history but what they derived from the great artist whose
workmanship I am recording. One fine morning, when all Bristol was alive
and in motion, some suspicion arising, the neighbors forced an entrance
into the house, and found Mrs. Ruscombe murdered in her bed-room, and the
servant murdered on the stairs: this was at noon; and, not more than two
hours before, both mistress and servant had been seen alive. To the best of
my remembrance, this was in 1764; upwards of sixty years, therefore, have
now elapsed, and yet the artist is still undiscovered. The suspicions of
posterity have settled upon two pretenders--a baker and a chimney-sweeper.
But posterity is wrong; no unpractised artist could have conceived so bold
an idea as that of a noon-day murder in the heart of a great city. It was
no obscure baker, gentlemen, or anonymous chimney-sweeper, be assured, that
executed this work. I know who it was. (_Here there was a general buzz,
which at length broke out into open applause; upon which the lecturer
blushed, and went on with much earnestness_.) For Heaven's sake, gentlemen,
do not mistake me; it was not I that did it. I have not the vanity to think
myself equal to any such achievement; be assured that you greatly overrate
my poor talents; Mrs. Ruscombe's affair was far beyond my slender
abilities. But I came to know who the artist was, from a celebrated
surgeon, who assisted at his dissection. This gentleman had a private
museum in the way of his profession, one corner of which was occupied by a
cast from a man of remarkably fine proportions.

"That," said the surgeon, "is a cast from the celebrated Lancashire
highwayman, who concealed his profession for some time from his neighbors,
by drawing woollen stockings over his horse's legs, and in that way
muffling the clatter which he must else have made in riding up a flagged
alley that led to his stable. At the time of his execution for highway
robbery, I was studying under Cruickshank: and the man's figure was
so uncommonly fine, that no money or exertion was spared to get into
possession of him with the least possible delay. By the connivance of the
under-sheriff he was cut down within the legal time, and instantly put into
a chaise and four; so that, when he reached Cruickshank's he was positively
not dead. Mr. ----, a young student at that time, had the honor of giving
him the _coup de grâce_, and finishing the sentence of the law." This
remarkable anecdote, which seemed to imply that all the gentlemen in the
dissecting-room were amateurs of our class, struck me a good deal; and I
was repeating it one day to a Lancashire lady, who thereupon informed me,
that she had herself lived in the neighborhood of that highwayman, and well
remembered two circumstances, which combined, in the opinion of all his
neighbors, to fix upon him the credit of Mrs. Ruscombe's affair. One was,
the fact of his absence for a whole fortnight at the period of that murder:
the other, that, within a very little time after, the neighborhood of this
highwayman was deluged with dollars: now Mrs. Ruscombe was known to have
hoarded about two thousand of that coin. Be the artist, however, who he
might, the affair remains a durable monument of his genius; for such was
the impression of awe, and the sense of power left behind, by the strength
of conception manifested in this murder, that no tenant (as I was told in
1810) had been found up to that time for Mrs. Ruscombe's house.

But, whilst I thus eulogize the Ruscombian case, let me not be supposed to
overlook the many other specimens of extraordinary merit spread over the
face of this century. Such cases, indeed, as that of Miss Bland, or of
Captain Donnellan, and Sir Theophilus Boughton, shall never have any
countenance from me. Fie on these dealers in poison, say I: can they not
keep to the old honest way of cutting throats, without introducing such
abominable innovations from Italy? I consider all these poisoning cases,
compared with the legitimate style, as no better than wax-work by the side
of sculpture, or a lithographic print by the side of a fine Volpato. But,
dismissing these, there remain many excellent works of art in a pure style,
such as nobody need be ashamed to own, as every candid connoisseur will
admit. _Candid_, observe, I say; for great allowances must be made in
these cases; no artist can ever be sure of carrying through his own fine
preconception. Awkward disturbances will arise; people will not submit to
have their throats cut quietly; they will run, they will kick, they will
bite; and whilst the portrait painter often has to complain of too much
torpor in his subject, the artist, in our line, is generally embarrassed by
too much animation. At the same time, however disagreeable to the artist,
this tendency in murder to excite and irritate the subject, is certainly
one of its advantages to the world in general, which we ought not to
overlook, since it favors the development of latent talent. Jeremy Taylor
notices with admiration, the extraordinary leaps which people will take
under the influence of fear. There was a striking instance of this in the
recent case of the M'Keands; the boy cleared a height, such as he will
never clear again to his dying day. Talents also of the most brilliant
description for thumping, and indeed for all the gymnastic exercises,
have sometimes been developed by the panic which accompanies our artists;
talents else buried and hid under a bushel to the possessors, as much as to
their friends. I remember an interesting illustration of this fact, in a
case which I learned in Germany.

Riding one day in the neighborhood of Munich, I overtook a distinguished
amateur of our society, whose name I shall conceal. This gentleman informed
me that, finding himself wearied with the frigid pleasures (so he
called them) of mere amateurship, he had quitted England for the
continent--meaning to practise a little professionally. For this purpose
he resorted to Germany, conceiving the police in that part of Europe to be
more heavy and drowsy than elsewhere. His _debut_ as a practitioner took
place at Mannheim; and, knowing me to be a brother amateur, he freely
communicated the whole of his maiden adventure. "Opposite to my lodging,"
said he, "lived a baker: he was somewhat of a miser, and lived quite alone.
Whether it were his great expanse of chalky face, or what else, I know
not--but the fact was, I 'fancied' him, and resolved to commence business
upon his throat, which by the way he always carried bare--a fashion which
is very irritating to my desires. Precisely at eight o'clock in the
evening, I observed that he regularly shut up his windows. One night I
watched him when thus engaged--bolted in after him--locked the door--and,
addressing him with great suavity, acquainted him with the nature of my
errand; at the same time advising him to make no resistance, which would be
mutually unpleasant. So saying, I drew out my tools; and was proceeding to
operate. But at this spectacle, the baker, who seemed to have been struck
by catalepsy at my first announce, awoke into tremendous agitation. 'I will
_not_ be murdered!' he shrieked aloud; 'what for will I lose my precious
throat?' 'What for?' said I; 'if for no other reason, for this--that you
put alum into your bread. But no matter, alum or no alum, (for I was
resolved to forestall any argument on that point,) know that I am a
virtuoso in the art of murder--am desirous of improving myself in its
details--and am enamored of your vast surface of throat, to which I am
determined to be a customer.' 'Is it so?' said he, 'but I'll find you
custom in another line;' and so saying, he threw himself into a boxing
attitude. The very idea of his boxing struck me as ludicrous. It is true,
a London baker had distinguished himself in the ring, and became known
to fame under the title of the Master of the Rolls; but he was young and
unspoiled: whereas this man was a monstrous feather-bed in person, fifty
years old, and totally out of condition. Spite of all this, however, and
contending against me, who am a master in the art, he made so desperate a
defence, that many times I feared he might turn the tables upon me;
and that I, an amateur, might be murdered by a rascally baker. What a
situation! Minds of sensibility will sympathize with my anxiety. How severe
it was, you may understand by this, that for the first thirteen rounds the
baker had the advantage. Round the fourteenth, I received a blow on
the right eye, which closed it up; in the end, I believe, this was my
salvation: for the anger it roused in me was so great that, in this and
every one of the three following rounds, I floored the baker.

"Round 18th. The baker came up piping, and manifestly the worse for wear.
His geometrical exploits in the four last rounds had done him no good.
However, he showed some skill in stopping a message which I was sending to
his cadaverous mug; in delivering which, my foot slipped, and I went down.

"Round 19th. Surveying the baker, I became ashamed of having been so
much bothered by a shapeless mass of dough; and I went in fiercely,
and administered some severe punishment. A rally took place--both went
down--baker undermost--ten to three on amateur.

"Round 20th. The baker jumped up with surprising agility; indeed, he
managed his pins capitally, and fought wonderfully, considering that he was
drenched in perspiration; but the shine was now taken out of him, and his
game was the mere effect of panic. It was now clear that he could not last
much longer. In the course of this round we tried the weaving system, in
which I had greatly the advantage, and hit him repeatedly on the conk.
My reason for this was, that his conk was covered with carbuncles; and I
thought I should vex him by taking such liberties with his conk, which in
fact I did.

"The three next rounds, the master of the rolls staggered about like a cow
on the ice. Seeing how matters stood, in round twenty-fourth I whispered
something into his ear, which sent him down like a shot. It was nothing
more than my private opinion of the value of his throat at an annuity
office. This little confidential whisper affected him greatly; the very
perspiration was frozen on his face, and for the next two rounds I had it
all my own way. And when I called _time_ for the twenty-seventh round, he
lay like a log on the floor."

After which, said I to the amateur, "It may be presumed that you
accomplished your purpose." "You are right," said he mildly, "I did; and a
great satisfaction, you know, it was to my mind, for by this means I killed
two birds with one stone;" meaning that he had both thumped the baker and
murdered him. Now, for the life of me, I could not see _that_; for, on the
contrary, to my mind it appeared that he had taken two stones to kill one
bird, having been obliged to take the conceit out of him first with his
fist, and then with his tools. But no matter for his logic. The moral of
his story was good, for it showed what an astonishing stimulus to latent
talent is contained in any reasonable prospect of being murdered. A
pursy, unwieldy, half cataleptic baker of Mannheim had absolutely fought
six-and-twenty rounds with an accomplished English boxer merely upon this
inspiration; so greatly was natural genius exalted and sublimed by the
genial presence of his murderer.

Really, gentlemen, when one hears of such things as these, it becomes a
duty, perhaps, a little to soften that extreme asperity with which most
men speak of murder. To hear people talk, you would suppose that all the
disadvantages and inconveniences were on the side of being murdered, and
that there were none at all in _not_ being murdered. But considerate men
think otherwise. "Certainly," says Jeremy Taylor, "it is a less temporal
evil to fall by the rudeness of a sword than the violence of a fever: and
the axe" (to which he might have added the ship-carpenter's mallet and the
crow-bar) "a much less affliction than a strangury." Very true; the
bishop talks like a wise man and an amateur, as he is; and another great
philosopher, Marcus Aurelius, was equally above the vulgar prejudices on
this subject. He declares it to be one of "the noblest functions of reason
to know whether it is time to walk out of the world or not." (Book III.,
Collers' Translation.) No sort of knowledge being rarer than this, surely
_that_ man must be a most philanthropic character, who undertakes to
instruct people in this branch of knowledge gratis, and at no little hazard
to himself. All this, however, I throw out only in the way of speculation
to future moralists; declaring in the meantime my own private conviction,
that very few men commit murder upon philanthropic or patriotic principles,
and repeating what I have already said once at least--that, as to the
majority of murderers, they are very incorrect characters.

With respect to Williams's murders, the sublimest and most entire in their
excellence that ever were committed, I shall not allow myself to speak
incidentally. Nothing less than an entire lecture, or even an entire course
of lectures, would suffice to expound their merits. But one curious fact,
connected with his case, I shall mention, because it seems to imply that
the blaze of his genius absolutely dazzled the eye of criminal justice. You
all remember, I doubt not, that the instruments with which he executed his
first great work, (the murder of the Marrs,) were a ship-carpenter's mallet
and a knife. Now the mallet belonged to an old Swede, one John Petersen,
and bore his initials. This instrument Williams left behind him, in Marr's
house, and it fell into the hands of the magistrates. Now, gentlemen, it
is a fact that the publication of this circumstance of the initials led
immediately to the apprehension of Williams, and, if made earlier, would
have prevented his second great work, (the murder of the Williamsons,)
which took place precisely twelve days after. But the magistrates kept back
this fact from the public for the entire twelve days, and until that second
work was accomplished. That finished, they published it, apparently feeling
that Williams had now done enough for his fame, and that his glory was at
length placed beyond the reach of accident.

As to Mr. Thurtell's case, I know not what to say. Naturally, I have every
disposition to think highly of my predecessor in the chair of this society;
and I acknowledge that his lectures were unexceptionable. But, speaking
ingenuously, I do really think that his principal performance, as an
artist, has been much overrated. I admit that at first I was myself carried
away by the general enthusiasm. On the morning when the murder was made
known in London, there was the fullest meeting of amateurs that I have ever
known since the days of Williams; old bed-ridden connoisseurs, who had got
into a peevish way of sneering and complaining "that there was nothing
doing," now hobbled down to our club-room: such hilarity, such benign
expression of general satisfaction, I have rarely witnessed. On every side
you saw people shaking hands, congratulating each other, and forming
dinner parties for the evening; and nothing was to be heard but triumphant
challenges of--"Well! will _this_ do?" "Is _this_ the right thing?" "Are
you satisfied at last?" But, in the midst of this, I remember we all
grew silent on hearing the old cynical amateur, L. S----, that _laudator
temporis acti_, stumping along with his wooden leg; he entered the room
with his usual scowl, and, as he advanced, he continued to growl and
stutter the whole way--"Not an original idea in the whole piece--mere
plagiarism,--base plagiarism from hints that I threw out! Besides, his
style is as hard as Albert Durer, and as coarse as Fuseli." Many thought
that this was mere jealousy, and general waspishness; but I confess that,
when the first glow of enthusiasm had subsided, I have found most judicious
critics to agree that there was something _falsetto_ in the style of
Thurtell. The fact is, he was a member of our society, which naturally gave
a friendly bias to our judgments; and his person was universally familiar
to the cockneys, which gave him, with the whole London public, a temporary
popularity, that his pretensions are not capable of supporting; for
_opinionum commenta delet dies, naturæ judicia confirmat_. There was,
however, an unfinished design of Thurtell's for the murder of a man with a
pair of dumb-bells, which I admired greatly; it was a mere outline, that he
never completed; but to my mind it seemed every way superior to his chief
work. I remember that there was great regret expressed by some amateurs
that this sketch should have been left in an unfinished state: but there
I cannot agree with them; for the fragments and first bold outlines of
original artists have often a felicity about them which is apt to vanish in
the management of the details.

The case of the M'Keands I consider far beyond the vaunted performance of
Thurtell,--indeed above all praise; and bearing that relation, in fact, to
the immortal works of Williams, which the Æneid bears to the Iliad.

But it is now time that I should say a few words about the principles of
murder, not with a view to regulate your practice, but your judgment: as
to old women, and the mob of newspaper readers, they are pleased with
anything, provided it is bloody enough. But the mind of sensibility
requires something more. _First_, then, let us speak of the kind of person
who is adapted to the purpose of the murderer; _secondly_, of the place
where; _thirdly_, of the time when, and other little circumstances.

As to the person, I suppose it is evident that he ought to be a good man;
because, if he were not, he might himself, by possibility, be contemplating
murder at the very time; and such "diamond-cut-diamond" tussles, though
pleasant enough where nothing better is stirring, are really not what a
critic can allow himself to call murders. I could mention some people (I
name no names) who have been murdered by other people in a dark lane; and
so far all seemed correct enough; but, on looking farther into the matter,
the public have become aware that the murdered party was himself, at the
moment, planning to rob his murderer, at the least, and possibly to murder
him, if he had been strong enough. Whenever that is the case, or may be
thought to be the case, farewell to all the genuine effects of the art. For
the final purpose of murder, considered as a fine art, is precisely the
same as that of tragedy, in Aristotle's account of it, viz., "to cleanse
the heart by means of pity and terror." Now, terror there may be, but how
can there be any pity for one tiger destroyed by another tiger?

It is also evident that the person selected ought not to be a public
character. For instance, no judicious artist would have attempted to murder
Abraham Newland. For the case was this; everybody read so much about
Abraham Newland, and so few people ever saw him, that there was a fixed
belief that he was an abstract idea. And I remember that once, when I
happened to mention that I had dined at a coffee-house in company with
Abraham Newland, everybody looked scornfully at me, as though I had
pretended to have played at billiards with Prester John, or to have had an
affair of honor with the Pope. And, by the way, the Pope would be a very
improper person to murder: for he has such a virtual ubiquity as the father
of Christendom, and, like the cuckoo, is so often heard but never seen,
that I suspect most people regard _him_ also as an abstract idea. Where,
indeed, a public character is in the habit of giving dinners, "with every
delicacy of the season," the case is very different: every person is
satisfied that _he_ is no abstract idea; and, therefore, there can be no
impropriety in murdering him; only that his murder will fall into the class
of assassinations, which I have not yet treated.

_Thirdly_. The subject chosen ought to be in good health: for it is
absolutely barbarous to murder a sick person, who is usually quite unable
to bear it. On this principle, no cockney ought to be chosen who is above
twenty-five, for after that age he is sure to be dyspeptic. Or at least, if
a man will hunt in that warren, he ought to murder a couple at one time; if
the cockneys chosen should be tailors, he will of course think it his duty,
on the old established equation, to murder eighteen. And, here, in this
attention to the comfort of sick people, you will observe the usual effect
of a fine art to soften and refine the feelings. The world in general,
gentlemen, are very bloody-minded; and all they want in a murder is a
copious effusion of blood; gaudy display in this point is enough for
_them_. But the enlightened connoisseur is more refined in his taste;
and from our art, as from all the other liberal arts when thoroughly
cultivated, the result is--to improve and to humanize the heart; so true is
it, that--

  ----"Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes,
  Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros."

A philosophic friend, well known for his philanthropy and general
benignity, suggests that the subject chosen ought also to have a family of
young children wholly dependent on his exertions, by way of deepening the
pathos. And, undoubtedly, this is a judicious caution. Yet I would not
insist too keenly on this condition. Severe good taste unquestionably
demands it; but still, where the man was otherwise unobjectionable in point
of morals and health, I would not look with too curious a jealousy to a
restriction which might have the effect of narrowing the artist's sphere.

So much for the person. As to the time, the place, and the tools, I have
many things to say, which at present I have no room for. The good sense of
the practitioner has usually directed him to night and privacy. Yet
there have not been wanting cases where this rule was departed from with
excellent effect. In respect to time, Mrs. Ruscombe's case is a beautiful
exception, which I have already noticed; and in respect both to time and
place, there is a fine exception in the annals of Edinburgh, (year 1805,)
familiar to every child in Edinburgh, but which has unaccountably been
defrauded of its due portion of fame amongst English amateurs. The case
I mean is that of a porter to one of the banks, who was murdered whilst
carrying a bag of money, in broad daylight, on turning out of the High
Street, one of the most public streets in Europe, and the murderer is to
this hour undiscovered.

  "Sed fugit interea, fugit irreparabile tcmpus,
  Singula dum capti circumvectamur amore."

And now, gentlemen, in conclusion, let me again solemnly disclaim all
pretensions on my own part to the character of a professional man. I never
attempted any murder in my life, except in the year 1801, upon the body of
a tom-cat; and _that_ turned out differently from my intention. My
purpose, I own, was downright murder. "Semper ego auditor tantum?" said I,
"nunquamne reponam?" And I went down stairs in search of Tom at one o'clock
on a dark night, with the "animus," and no doubt with the fiendish looks,
of a murderer. But when I found him, he was in the act of plundering the
pantry of bread and other things. Now this gave a new turn to the affair;
for the time being one of general scarcity, when even Christians were
reduced to the use of potato-bread, rice-bread, and all sorts of things, it
was downright treason in a tom-cat to be wasting good wheaten-bread in the
way he was doing. It instantly became a patriotic duty to put him to death;
and as I raised aloft and shook the glittering steel, I fancied myself
rising like Brutus, effulgent from a crowd of patriots, and, as I stabbed
him, I

  "called aloud on Tully's name,
  And bade the father of his country hail!"

Since then, what wandering thoughts I may have had of attempting the life
of an ancient ewe, of a superannuated hen, and such "small deer," are
locked up in the secrets of my own breast; but for the higher departments
of the art, I confess myself to be utterly unfit. My ambition does not rise
so high. No, gentlemen, in the words of Horace,

  "---fungos vice cotis, excutum
  Reddere ere quæ ferrum valet, exsors ipsa secandi."




SECOND PAPER ON MURDER,

CONSIDERED AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS.


DOCTOR NORTH: You are a liberal man: liberal in the true classical sense,
not in the slang sense of modern politicians and education-mongers. Being
so, I am sure that you will sympathize with my case. I am an ill-used man,
Dr. North--particularly ill used; and, with your permission, I will briefly
explain how. A black scene of calumny will be laid open; but you, Doctor,
will make all things square again. One frown from you, directed to the
proper quarter, or a warning shake of the crutch, will set me right in
public opinion, which at present, I am sorry to say, is rather hostile to
me and mine--all owing to the wicked arts of slanderers. But you shall
hear.

A good many years ago you may remember that I came forward in the character
of a _dilettante_ in murder. Perhaps _dilettante_ may be too strong a word.
_Connoisseur_ is better suited to the scruples and infirmity of public
taste. I suppose there is no harm in _that_ at least. A man is not bound
to put his eyes, ears, and understanding into his breeches pocket when he
meets with a murder. If he is not in a downright comatose state, I suppose
he must see that one murder is better or worse than another in point of
good taste. Murders have their little differences and shades of merit as
well as statues, pictures, oratorios, cameos, intaglios, or what not. You
may be angry with the man for talking too much, or too publicly, (as to the
too much, that I deny--a man can never cultivate his taste too highly;) but
you must allow him to think, at any rate; and you, Doctor, you think, I am
sure, both deeply and correctly on the subject. Well, would you believe it?
all my neighbors came to hear of that little æsthetic essay which you had
published; and, unfortunately, hearing at the very same time of a club that
I as connected with, and a dinner at which I presided--both tending to the
same little object as the essay, viz., the diffusion of a just taste among
her majesty's subjects, they got up the most barbarous calumnies against
me. In particular, they said that I, or that the club, which comes to the
same thing, had offered bounties on well conducted homicides--with a scale
of drawbacks, in case of any one defect or flaw, according to a table
issued to private friends. Now, Doctor, I'll tell you the whole truth about
the dinner and the club, and you'll see how malicious the world is. But
first let me tell you, confidentially, what my real principles are upon the
matters in question.

As to murder, I never committed one in my life. It's a well known thing
amongst all my friends. I can get a paper to certify as much, signed by
lots of people. Indeed, if you come to that, I doubt whether many
people could produce as strong a certificate. Mine would be as big as a
table-cloth. There is indeed one member of the club, who pretends to say
that he caught me once making too free with his throat on a club night,
after every body else had retired. But, observe, he shuffles in his story
according to his state of civilation. When not far gone, he contents
himself with saying that he caught me ogling his throat; and that I was
melancholy for some weeks after, and that my voice sounded in a way
expressing, to the nice ear of a connoisseur, _the sense of opportunities
lost_--but the club all know that he's a disappointed man himself, and that
he speaks querulously at times about the fatal neglect of a man's coming
abroad without his tools. Besides, all this is an affair between two
amateurs, and every body makes allowances for little asperities
and sorenesses in such a case. "But," say you, "If no murderer, my
correspondent may have encouraged, or even have bespoke a murder." No, upon
my honor--nothing of the kind. And that was the very point I wished to
argue for your satisfaction. The truth is, I am a very particular man in
everything relating to murder; and perhaps I carry my delicacy too far. The
Stagyrite most justly, and possibly with a view to my case, placed virtue
in the [Greek: to meson] or middle point between two extremes. A golden
mean is certainly what every man should aim at. But it is easier talking
than doing; and, my infirmity being notoriously too much milkiness of
heart, I find it difficult to maintain that steady equatorial line between
the two poles of too much murder on the one hand, and too little on the
other. I am too soft--Doctor, too soft; and people get excused through
me--nay, go through life without an attempt made upon them, that ought not
to be excused. I believe if I had the management of things, there would
hardly be a murder from year's end to year's end. In fact I'm for virtue,
and goodness, and all that sort of thing. And two instances I'll give you
to what an extremity I carry my virtue. The first may seem a trifle; but
not if you knew my nephew, who was certainly born to be hanged, and would
have been so long ago, but for my restraining voice. He is horribly
ambitious, and thinks himself a man of cultivated taste in most branches of
murder, whereas, in fact, he has not one idea on the subject, but such
as he has stolen from me. This is so well known, that the club has twice
blackballed him, though every indulgence was shown to him as my relative.
People came to me and said--"Now really, President, we would do much to
serve a relative of yours. But still, what can be said? You know yourself
that he'll disgrace us. If we were to elect him, why, the next thing we
should hear of would be some vile butcherly murder, by way of justifying
our choice. And what sort of a concern would it be? You know, as well as we
do, that it would be a disgraceful affair, more worthy of the shambles than
of an artist's _attelier_. He would fall upon some great big man, some huge
farmer returning drunk from a fair. There would be plenty of blood, and
_that_ he would expect us to take in lieu of taste, finish, scenical
grouping. Then, again, how would he tool? Why, most probably with a cleaver
and a couple of paving stones: so that the whole _coup d'oeil_ would remind
you rather of some hideous ogre or cyclops, than of the delicate operator
of the nineteenth century." The picture was drawn with the hand of truth;
_that_ I could not but allow, and, as to personal feelings in the matter, I
dismissed them from the first. The next morning I spoke to my nephew--I was
delicately situated, as you see, but I determined that no consideration
should induce me to flinch from my duty. "John," said I, "you seem to me to
have taken an erroneous view of life and its duties. Pushed on by ambition,
you are dreaming rather of what it might be glorious to attempt, than what
it would be possible for you to accomplish. Believe me, it is not necessary
to a man's respectability that he should commit a murder. Many a man has
passed through life most respectably, without attempting any species of
homicide--good, bad, or indifferent. It is your first duty to ask yourself,
_quid valeant humeri, quid ferre recusent_? we cannot all be brilliant men
in this life. And it is for your interest to be contented rather with a
humble station well filled, than to shock every body with failures, the
more conspicuous by contrast with the ostentation of their promises." John
made no answer, he looked very sulky at the moment, and I am in high
hopes that I have saved a near relation from making a fool of himself by
attempting what is as much beyond his capacity as an epic poem. Others,
however, tell me that he is meditating a revenge upon me and the whole
club. But let this be as it may, _liberavi animam meam_; and, as you see,
have run some risk with a wish to diminish the amount of homicide. But the
other case still more forcibly illustrates my virtue. A man came to me as
a candidate for the place of my servant, just then vacant. He had the
reputation of having dabbled a little in our art; some said not without
merit. What startled me, however, was, that he supposed this art to be
part of his regular duties in my service. Now that was a thing I would not
allow; so I said at once, "Richard (or James, as the case might be,) you
misunderstand my character. If a man will and must practise this difficult
(and allow me to add, dangerous) branch of art--if he has an overruling
genius for it, why, he might as well pursue his studies whilst living in my
service as in another's. And also, I may observe, that it can do no harm
either to himself or to the subject on whom he operates, that he should
be guided by men of more taste than himself. Genius may do much, but long
study of the art must always entitle a man to offer advice. So far I will
go--general principles I will suggest. But as to any particular case, once
for all I will have nothing to do with it. Never tell me of any special
work of art you are meditating--I set my face against it _in toto_. For if
once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think
little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and
Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once
begin upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many
a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought
little of at the time. _Principiis obsta_--that's my rule." Such was my
speech, and I have always acted up to it; so if that is not being virtuous,
I should be glad to know what is. But now about the dinner and the club.
The club was not particularly of my creation; it arose pretty much as other
similar associations, for the propagation of truth and the communication of
new ideas, rather from the necessities of things than upon any one man's
suggestion. As to the dinner, if any man more than another could be held
responsible for that, it was a member known amongst us by the name of
_Toad-in-the-hole_. He was so called from his gloomy misanthropical
disposition, which led him into constant disparagements of all modern
murders as vicious abortions, belonging to no authentic school of art. The
finest performances of our own age he snarled at cynically; and at length
this querulous humor grew upon him so much, and he became so notorious as a
_laudator tentporis acti_, that few people cared to seek his society. This
made him still more fierce and truculent. He went about muttering and
growling; wherever you met him he was soliloquizing and saying, "despicable
pretender--without grouping--without two ideas upon handling--without"--and
there you lost him. At length existence seemed to be painful to him;
he rarely spoke, he seemed conversing with phantoms in the air, his
housekeeper informed us that his reading was nearly confined to _God's
Revenge upon Murder_, by Reynolds, and a more ancient book of the same
title, noticed by Sir Walter Scott in his _Fortunes of Nigel_. Sometimes,
perhaps, he might read in the Newgate Calendar down to the year 1788, but
he never looked into a book more recent. In fact, he had a theory with
regard to the French Revolution, as having been the great cause of
degeneration in murder. "Very soon, sir," he used to say, "men will have
lost the art of killing poultry: the very rudiments of the art will
have perished!" In the year 1811 he retired from general society.
Toad-in-the-hole was no more seen in any public resort. We missed him from
his wonted haunts--nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he. By the side of
the main conduit his listless length at noontide he would stretch, and pore
upon the filth that muddled by. "Even dogs are not what they were, sir--not
what they should be. I remember in my grandfather's time that some dogs had
an idea of murder. I have known a mastiff lie in ambush for a rival, sir,
and murder him with pleasing circumstances of good taste. Yes, sir, I knew
a tom-cat that was an assassin. But now"--and then, the subject growing too
painful, he dashed his hand to his forehead, and went off abruptly in a
homeward direction towards his favorite conduit, where he was seen by an
amateur in such a state that he thought it dangerous to address him. Soon
after he shut himself entirely up; it was understood that he had resigned
himself to melancholy; and at length the prevailing notion was, that
Toad-in-the-hole had hanged himself.

The world was wrong _there_, as it has been on some other questions.
Toad-in-the-hole might be sleeping, but dead he was not; and of that we
soon had ocular proof. One morning in 1812, an amateur surprised us with
the news that he had seen Toad-in-the-hole brushing with hasty steps the
dews away to meet the postman by the conduit side. Even that was something:
how much more, to hear that he had shaved his beard--had laid aside his
sad-colored clothes, and was adorned like a bridegroom of ancient days.
What could be the meaning of all this? Was Toad-in-the-hole mad? or how?
Soon after the secret was explained--in more than a figurative sense
"the murder was out." For in came the London morning papers, by which
it appeared that but three days before a murder, the most superb of the
century by many degrees had occurred in the heart of London. I need hardly
say, that this was the great exterminating _chef-d'oeuvre_ of Williams at
Mr. Marr's, No. 29, Ratcliffe Highway. That was the _début_ of the artist;
at least for anything the public knew. What occurred at Mr. Williamson's
twelve nights afterwards--the second work turned out from the same
chisel--some people pronounced even superior. But Toad-in-the-hole always
"reclaimed"--he was even angry at comparisons. "This vulgar _gout de
comparaison_, as La Bruyère calls it," he would often remark, "will be
our ruin; each work has its own separate characteristics--each in and for
itself is incomparable. One, perhaps, might suggest the _Iliad_--the other
the _Odyssey_: what do you get by such comparisons? Neither ever was, or
will be surpassed; and when you've talked for hours, you must still come
back to that." Vain, however, as all criticism might be, he often said that
volumes might be written on each case for itself; and he even proposed to
publish in quarto on the subject.

Meantime, how had Toad-in-the-hole happened to hear of this great work
of art so early in the morning? He had received an account by express,
dispatched by a correspondent in London, who watched the progress of art On
_Toady's_ behalf, with a general commission to send off a special express,
at whatever cost, in the event of any estimable works appearing--how much
more upon occasion of a _ne plus ultra_ in art! The express arrived in the
night-time; Toad-in-the-hole was then gone to bed; he had been muttering
and grumbling for hours, but of course he was called up. On reading the
account, he threw his arms round the express, called him his brother and
his preserver; settled a pension upon him for three lives, and expressed
his regret at not having it in his power to knight him. We, on our part--we
amateurs, I mean--having heard that he was abroad, and therefore had _not_
hanged himself, made sure of soon seeing him amongst us. Accordingly he
soon arrived, knocked over the porter on his road to the reading-room; he
seized every man's hand as he passed him--wrung it almost frantically, and
kept ejaculating, "Why, now here's something like a murder!--this is the
real thing--this is genuine--this is what you can approve, can recommend to
a friend: this--says every man, on reflection--this is the thing that ought
to be!" Then, looking at particular friends, he said--"Why, Jack, how are
you? Why, Tom, how are you? Bless me, you look ten years younger than
when I last saw you." "No, sir," I replied, "It is you who look ten years
younger." "Do I? well, I should'nt wonder if I did; such works are
enough to make us all young." And in fact the general opinion is, that
Toad-in-the-hole would have died but for this regeneration of art, which
he called a second age of Leo the Tenth; and it was our duty, he said
solemnly, to commemorate it. At present, and _en attendant_--rather as an
occasion for a public participation in public sympathy, than as in itself
any commensurate testimony of our interest--he proposed that the club
should meet and dine together. A splendid public dinner, therefore, was
given by the club; to which all amateurs were invited from a distance of
one hundred miles.

Of this dinner there are ample short-hand notes amongst the archives of
the club. But they are not "extended," to speak diplomatically; and the
reporter is missing--I believe, murdered. Meantime, in years long after
that day, and on an occasion perhaps equally interesting, viz., the turning
up of Thugs and Thuggism, another dinner was given. Of this I myself kept
notes, for fear of another accident to the short-hand reporter. And I here
subjoin them. Toad-in-the-hole, I must mention, was present at this dinner.
In fact, it was one of its sentimental incidents. Being as old as the
valleys at the dinner of 1812, naturally he was as old as the hills at the
Thug dinner of 1838. He had taken to wearing his beard again; why, or with
what view, it passes my persimmon to tell you. But so it was. And his
appearance was most benign and venerable. Nothing could equal the angelic
radiance of his smile as he inquired after the unfortunate reporter, (whom,
as a piece of private scandal, I should tell you that he was himself
supposed to have murdered, in a rapture of creative art:) the answer was,
with roars of laughter, from the under-sheriff of our county--"Non est
inventus." Toad-in-the-hole laughed outrageously at this: in fact, we all
thought he was choking; and, at the earnest request of the company, a
musical composer furnished a most beautiful glee upon the occasion,
which was sung five times after dinner, with universal applause and
inextinguishable laughter, the words being these, (and the chorus
so contrived, as most beautifully to mimic the peculiar laughter of
Toad-in-the-hole:)--

  "Et interrogatum est à Toad-in-the hole--Ubi est ille reporter?
  Et responsum est cum cachinno--Non est inventus."


CHORUS.

  "Deinde iteratum est ab omnibus, cum cachinnatione undulante--
  Non est inventus."

Toad-in-the-hole, I ought to mention, about nine years before, when an
express from Edinburgh brought him the earliest intelligence of the
Burke-and-Hare revolution in the art, went mad upon the spot; and, instead
of a pension to the express for even one life, or a knighthood, endeavored
to burke him; in consequence of which he was put into a strait waistcoat.
And that was the reason we had no dinner then. But now all of us were alive
and kicking, strait-waistcoaters and others; in fact, not one absentee
was reported upon the entire roll. There were also many foreign amateurs
present.

Dinner being over, and the cloth drawn, there was a general call made for
the new glee of _Non est inventus_; but, as this would have interfered with
the requisite gravity of the company during the earlier toasts, I overruled
the call. After the national toasts had been given, the first official
toast of the day was, _The Old Man of the Mountains_--drunk in solemn
silence.

Toad-in-the-hole returned thanks in a neat speech. He likened himself to
the Old Man of the Mountains, in a few brief allusions, that made the
company absolutely yell with laughter; and he concluded with giving the
health of

_Mr. Von Hammer_, with many thanks to him for his learned History of the
Old Man and his subjects the assassins.

Upon this I rose and said, that doubtless most of the company were aware
of the distinguished place assigned by orientalists to the very learned
Turkish scholar Von Hammer the Austrian; that he had made the profoundest
researches into our art as connected with those early and eminent artists
the Syrian assassins in the period of the Crusaders; that his work had been
for several years deposited, as a rare treasure of art, in the library
of the club. Even the author's name, gentlemen, pointed him out as the
historian of our art--Von Hammer--

"Yes, yes," interrupted Toad-in-the-hole, who never can sit still--"Yes,
yes, Von Hammer--he's the man for a _malleus hæreticorum_: think rightly
of our art, or he's the man to tickle your catastrophes. You all know what
consideration Williams bestowed on the hammer, or the ship carpenter's
mallet, which is the same thing. Gentlemen, I give you another great
hammer--Charles the Hammer, the Marteau, or, in old French, the Martel--he
hammered the Saracens till they were all as dead as door-nails--he did,
believe me."

"_Charles Martel_, with all the honors."

But the explosion of Toad-in-the-hole, together with the uproarious cheers
for the grandpapa of Charlemagne, had now made the company unmanageable.
The orchestra was again challenged with shouts the stormiest for the new
glee. I made again a powerful effort to overrule the challenge. I might
as well have talked to the winds. I foresaw a tempestuous evening; and I
ordered myself to be strengthened with three waiters on each side; the
vice-president with as many. Symptoms of unruly enthusiasm were beginning
to show out; and I own that I myself was considerably excited as the
orchestra opened with its storm of music, and the impassioned glee
began--"_Et interrogatum est à Toad-in-the-hole--Ubi est ille Reporter_?"
And the frenzy of the passion became absolutely convulsing, as the full
chorus fell in--"_Et iteratum est ab omnibus--Non est inventus_"

By this time I saw how things were going: wine and music were making most
of the amateurs wild. Particularly Toad-in-the-hole, though considerably
above a hundred years old, was getting as vicious as a young leopard. It
was a fixed impression with the company that he had murdered the reporter
in the year 1812; since which time (viz. twenty-six years) "ille reporter"
had been constantly reported "Non est inventus." Consequently, the glee
about himself, which of itself was most tumultuous and jubilant, carried
him off his feet. Like the famous choral songs amongst the citizens of
Abdera, nobody could hear it without a contagious desire for falling back
into the agitating music of "Et interrogatum est à Toad-in-the-hole," &c.
I enjoined vigilance upon my assessors, and the business of the evening
proceeded.

The next toast was--_The Jewish Sicarii_.

Upon which I made the following explanation to the company:--"Gentlemen,
I am sure it will interest you all to hear that the assassins, ancient as
they were, had a race of predecessors in the very same country. All over
Syria, but particularly in Palestine, during the early years of the Emperor
Nero, there was a band of murderers, who prosecuted their studies in a very
novel manner. They did not practise in the night-time, or in lonely places;
but justly considering that great crowds are in themselves a sort of
darkness by means of the dense pressure and the impossibility of finding
out who it was that gave the blow, they mingled with mobs everywhere;
particularly at the great paschal feast in Jerusalem; where they actually
had the audacity, as Josephus assures us, to press into the temple,--and
whom should they choose for operating upon but Jonathan himself, the
Pontifex Maximus? They murdered him, gentlemen, as beautifully as if they
had had him alone on a moonless night in a dark lane. And when it was
asked, who was the murderer, and where he was"--

"Why, then, it was answered," interrupted Toad-in-the-hole, "_Non est
inventus_." And then, in spite of all I could do or say, the
orchestra opened, and the whole company began--"Et interrogatum est à
Toad-in-the-hole--Ubi est ille Sicarius? Et responsum est ab omnibus--_Non
est inventus_."

When the tempestuous chorus had subsided, I began again:--"Gentlemen, you
will find a very circumstantial account of the Sicarii in at least three
different parts of Josephus; once in Book XX. sect. v. c. 8, of his
_Antiquities_; once in Book I. of his _Wars_: but in sect. 10 of the
chapter first cited you will find a particular description of their
tooling. This is what he says--'They tooled with small scymetars not much
different from the Persian _acinacæ_, but more curved, and for all the
world most like the Roman sickles or _sicæ_.' It is perfectly magnificent,
gentlemen, to hear the sequel of their history. Perhaps the only case
on record where a regular army of murderers was assembled, a _justus
exercitus_, was in the case of these _Sicarii_. They mustered in such
strength in the wilderness, that Festus himself was obliged to march
against them with the Roman legionary force."

Upon which Toad-in-the-hole, that cursed interrupter, broke out
a-singing--"Et interrogatum est à Toad-in-the-hole--Ubi est ille exercitus?
Et responsum est ab omnibus--Non est inventus."

"No, no, Toad--you are wrong for once: that army _was_ found, and was all
cut to pieces in the desert. Heavens, gentlemen, what a sublime picture!
The Roman legions--the wilderness--Jerusalem in the distance--an army of
murderers in the foreground!"

Mr. R., a member, now gave the next toast--"To the further improvement of
Tooling, and thanks to the Committee for their services."

Mr. L., on behalf of the committee who had reported on that subject,
returned thanks. He made an interesting extract from the report, by which
it appeared how very much stress had been laid formerly on the mode of
tooling, by the fathers, both Greek and Latin. In confirmation of this
pleasing fact, he made a very striking statement in reference to the
earliest work of antediluvian art. Father Mersenne, that learned Roman
Catholic, in page one thousand four hundred and thirty-one[1] of his
operose Commentary on Genesis, mentions, on the authority of several
rabbis, that the quarrel of Cain with Abel was about a young woman; that,
by various accounts, Cain had tooled with his teeth, [Abelem fuisse
_morsibus_ dilaceratum à Cain;] by many others, with the jaw-bone of an
ass; which is the tooling adopted by most painters. But it is pleasing to
the mind of sensibility to know that, as science expanded, sounder views
were adopted. One author contends for a pitchfork, St. Chrysostom for a
sword, Irenæus for a scythe, and Prudentius for a hedging-bill. This last
writer delivers his opinion thus:--

  "Frater, probatæ sanctitatis æmulus,
  Germana curvo colla frangit sarculo:"

_i.e_. his brother, jealous of his attested sanctity, fractures his
brotherly throat with a curved hedging-bill. "All which is respectfully
submitted by your committee, not so much as decisive of the question, (for
it is not,) but in order to impress upon the youthful mind the importance
which has ever been attached to the quality of the tooling by such men as
Chrysostom and Irenæus."

[Footnote 1: "Page one thousand four hundred and thirty-one"--_literally_,
good reader, and no joke at all.]

"Dang Irenæus!" said Toad-in-the-hole, who now rose impatiently to give the
next toast:--"Our Irish friends; and a speedy revolution in their mode of
tooling, as well as everything else connected with the art!"

"Gentlemen, I'll tell you the plain truth. Every day of the year we take
up a paper, we read the opening of a murder. We say, this is good, this
is charming, this is excellent! But, behold you! scarcely have we read a
little farther, before the word Tipperary or Ballina-something betrays the
Irish manufacture. Instantly we loath it; we call to the waiter; we say,
Waiter, take away this paper; send it out of the house; it is absolutely
offensive to all just taste.' I appeal to every man whether, on finding a
murder (otherwise perhaps promising enough) to be Irish, he does not feel
himself as much insulted as when Madeira being ordered, he finds it to be
Cape; or when, taking up what he takes to be a mushroom, it turns out
what children call a toad-stool. Tithes, politics, or something wrong in
principle, vitiate every Irish murder. Gentlemen, this must be reformed, or
Ireland will not be a land to live in; at least, if we do live there, we
must import all our murders, that's clear." Toad-in-the-hole sat
down growling with suppressed wrath, and the universal "Hear, hear!"
sufficiently showed that he spoke the general feeling.

The next toast was--"The sublime epoch of Burkism and Harism!"

This was drunk with enthusiasm; and one of the members, who spoke to the
question, made a very curious communication to the company:--"Gentlemen,
we fancy Burkism to be a pure invention of our own times: and in fact no
Pancirollus has ever enumerated this branch of art when writing _de rebus
deperditis_. Still I have ascertained that the essential principle of the
art _was_ known to the ancients, although like the art of painting upon
glass, of making the myrrhine cups, &c., it was lost in the dark ages for
want of encouragement. In the famous collection of Greek epigrams made
by Planudes is one upon a very charming little case of Burkism: it is a
perfect little gem of art. The epigram itself I cannot lay my hand upon at
this moment, but the following is an abstract of it by Salmasius, as I find
it in his notes on Vopiscus: 'Est et elegans epigramma Lucilii, (well
he might call it "elegans!") ubi medicus et pollinctor de compacto sic
egerunt, ut medicus ægros omnes curæ suæ commissos occideret:' this was
the basis of the contract, you see, that on the one part the doctor, for
himself and his assigns, doth undertake and contract duly and truly to
murder all the patients committed to his charge: but why? There lies the
beauty of the case--'Et ut pollinctori amico suo traderet pollingendos.'
The _pollinctor_, you are aware, was a person whose business it was to
dress and prepare dead bodies for burial. The original ground of the
transaction appears to have been sentimental: 'He was my friend,' says the
murderous doctor; 'he was dear to me,' in speaking of the pollinctor. But
the law, gentlemen, is stern and harsh: the law will not hear of these
tender motives: to sustain a contract of this nature in law, it is
essential that a 'consideration' should be given. Now what _was_ the
consideration? For thus far all is on the side of the pollinctor: he
will be well paid for his services; but, meantime, the generous, the
noble-minded doctor gets nothing. What _was_ the little consideration
again, I ask, which the law would insist on the doctor's taking? You shall
hear: 'Et ut pollinctor vicissim [Greek: telamonas] quos furabatur de
pollinctione mortuorum medico mitteret doni ad alliganda vulnera eorurn
quos curabat.' Now, the case is clear: the whole went on a principle of
reciprocity which would have kept up the trade for ever. The doctor was
also a surgeon: he could not murder _all_ his patients: some of the
surgical patients must be retained intact; _re infectâ_. For these he
wanted linen bandages. But, unhappily, the Romans wore woollen, on which
account they bathed so often. Meantime, there _was_ linen to be had in
Rome; but it was monstrously dear; and the [Greek: telamones] or linen
swathing bandages, in which superstition obliged them to bind up corpses,
would answer capitally for the surgeon. The doctor, therefore, contracts to
furnish his friend with a constant succession of corpses, provided, and be
it understood always, that his said friend in return should supply him with
one half of the articles he would receive from the friends of the parties
murdered or to be murdered. The doctor invariably recommended his
invaluable friend the pollinctor, (whom let us call the undertaker;) the
undertaker, with equal regard to the sacred rights of friendship, uniformly
recommended the doctor. Like Pylades and Orestes, they were models of a
perfect friendship: in their lives they were lovely, and on the gallows, it
is to be hoped, they were not divided.

"Gentlemen, it makes me laugh horribly, when I think of those two friends
drawing and redrawing on each other: 'Pollinctor in account with Doctor,
debtor by sixteen corpses; creditor by forty-five bandages, two of which
damaged.' Their names unfortunately are lost; but I conceive they must have
been Quintus Burkius and Publius Harius. By the way, gentlemen, has anybody
heard lately of Hare? I understand he is comfortably settled in Ireland,
considerably to the west, and does a little business now and then; but, as
he observes with a sigh, only as a retailer--nothing like the fine thriving
wholesale concern so carelessly blown up at Edinburgh. 'You see what comes
of neglecting business,'--is the chief moral, the [Greek: epimutheon],
as Æsop would say, which he draws from his past experience."

At length came the toast of the day--_Thugdom in all its branches_.

The speeches _attempted_ at this crisis of the dinner were past all
counting. But the applause was so furious, the music so stormy, and the
crashing of glasses so incessant, from the general resolution never again
to drink an inferior toast from the same glass, that my power is not equal
to the task of reporting. Besides which, Toad-in-the-hole now became quite
ungovernable. He kept firing pistols in every direction; sent his servant
for a blunderbuss, and talked of loading with ball-cartridge. We conceived
that his former madness had returned at the mention of Burke and Hare; or
that, being again weary of life, he had resolved to go off in a general
massacre. This we could not think of allowing: it became indispensable,
therefore, to kick him out, which we did with universal consent, the whole
company lending their toes _uno pede_, as I may say, though pitying his
gray hairs and his angelic smile. During the operation the orchestra poured
in their old chorus. The universal company sang, and (what surprised us
most of all) Toad-in-the-hole joined us furiously in singing--

  "Et interrogatum est ab omnibus--Ubi est ille Toad-in-the-hole
  Et responsum est ab omnibus--Non est inventus."




JOAN OF ARC[1]

IN REFERENCE TO M. MICHELET'S HISTORY OF FRANCE.


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 Judæa--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 splendor
and a noon-day prosperity, both personal and public, that rang through the
records of his people, and became a byeword amongst 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_ side,
that never once--no, not for a moment of weakness--didst thou revel in the
vision of coronets and honor from man. Coronets for thee! O no! Honors, if
they come when all is over, are for those that share thy blood.[2] 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 thy apparitors to come and receive a robe of honor,
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; to _do_--never for thyself, always for others;
to _suffer_--never in the persons of generous champions, always in thy
own--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 aërial 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
sate upon it: but well Joanna knew that not the throne, nor he that sate
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 stop. What reason is there for taking up this subject of Joanna
precisely in this 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, and sometimes (because it is not pleasant that people should
be too easy to understand) almost as obscure as if they had been suckled
by transcendental German nurses. But now, confining our attention to M.
Michelet--who is quite sufficient to lead a man into a gallop, requiring
two relays, at least, of fresh readers,--we in England--who know him best
by his worst book, the book against Priests, &c., which has been most
circulated--know him disadvantageously. That book is a rhapsody of
incoherence. M. Michelet was light-headed, I believe, when he wrote it:
and it is well that his keepers overtook him in time to intercept a second
part. 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 upwards 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
assault. If I, for instance, on the part of England, should happen to turn
my labors 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 for
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. 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 labor of sifting its perplexities--to the
magnanimity and justice of enemies. To this class belongs the Maid of Arc.
The 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 honor
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 far inferior son
Tippoo, and Napoleon, have all benefited by this disposition amongst
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. Suffrein, 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[3]) d'Arc, was born at
Domrémy, a village on the marshes 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 _Champenoise_. I am sure she did _not_: for
her father was a filthy old fellow, whom I shall soon teach the judicious
reader to hate. But, (says M. Michelet, arguing the case physiologically)
"she had none of the Lorrainian asperity;" no, it seems she had only "the
gentleness of Champagne, its simplicity mingled with sense and acuteness,
as you find it in Joinville." All these things she had; and she was worth a
thousand Joinvilles, meaning either the prince so called, or the fine old
crusader. But still, though I love Joanna dearly, I cannot shut my eyes
entirely to the Lorraine element of "asperity" in her nature. No; really
now, she must have had a shade of _that_, though very slightly developed--a
mere soupçon, as French cooks express it in speaking of cayenne pepper,
when she caused so many of our English throats to be cut. But could she do
less? No; I always say so; but still you never saw a person kill even a
trout with a perfectly "Champagne" face of "gentleness and simplicity,"
though, often, no doubt, with considerable "acuteness." All your cooks and
butchers wear a _Lorraine_ cast of expression.

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 high road 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 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,[4] and haunted for ever by wars or rumors of wars, decussated (for
anything I know to the contrary) absolutely under Joanna's bed-room window;
one rolling away to the right, past Monsieur D'Arc's old barn, and the
other unaccountably preferring (but there's no disputing about tastes) to
sweep round that odious man's odious pigstye to the left.

Things being situated as is here laid down, viz. in respect of the
decussation, and in respect of Joanna's bed-room; it follows that, if she
had dropped her glove by accident from her chamber window into the very
bull's eye of the target, in the centre of X, not one of several great
potentates could (though all animated by the sincerest desires for the
peace of Europe) have possibly come to any clear understanding on the
question of whom the glove was meant for. Whence the candid reader
perceives at once the necessity for at least four bloody wars. Falling
indeed a little farther, as, for instance, into the pigstye, the glove
could not have furnished to the most peppery prince any shadow of excuse
for arming: he would not have had a leg to stand upon in taking such a
perverse line of conduct. But, if it fell (as by the hypothesis it did)
into the one sole point of ground common to four kings, it is clear that,
instead of no leg to stand upon, eight separate legs would have had
no ground to stand upon unless by treading on each other's toes. The
philosopher, therefore, sees clearly the necessity of a war, and regrets
that sometimes nations do not wait for grounds of war so solid.

In the circumstances supposed, though the four kings might be unable to
see their way clearly without the help of gunpowder to any decision upon
Joanna's intention, she--poor thing!--never could mistake her intentions
for a moment. All her love was for France; and, therefore, any glove
she might drop into the _quadrivium_ must be wickedly missent by the
post-office, if it found its way to any king but the king of France.

On whatever 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
Franco be assailed by a formidable enemy, and instantly you saw a Duke of
Lorraine or Bar insisting on having his throat cut in support of France;
which favor accordingly was cheerfully granted to them in three great
successive battles by the English and by the Turkish sultan, viz., at
Crécy, at Nicopolis, and at Agincourt.

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
Flours 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 her breast, could not bin fan the zeal of the legitimate
daughter: whilst to occupy a post of honor on the frontiers against an old
hereditary enemy of France, would naturally have stimulated this zeal by a
sentiment of martial pride, had there even been no other stimulant to zeal
by a sense of danger always threatening, and of hatred always smouldering.
That great four-headed road was a perpetual memento to patriotic ardor.
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 high road itself, with its relations
to centres so remote, into a manual of patriotic enmity.

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
times, the burthen of the times, was far more so. The air overhead in its
upper chambers were _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 re-opened the
wounds of France. Crécy and Poictiers, those withering overthrows for the
chivalry of France, had been tranquillized 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 labored 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 laboring in childbirth 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 noon-day, 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 sonorous sound. The termination of the Crusades, the
destruction of the Templars, the Papal interdicts, the tragedies caused or
suffered by the House of Anjou, 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--she was already rehearsing, as
in still earlier forms she had rehearsed, the first rent in her foundations
(reserved for the coming century) 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 those that could not distinguish the altitudes 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 crisis after
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 the duty imposed upon herself, 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 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 chaunting; she rose to heaven with the glad triumphant _Gloria in
Excelcis_: she drew her comfort and her vital strength from the rites of
her 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 licensed victuallers. 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, dim and dimly seen--as 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, in no degree
to disturb the deep solitude of the region; 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, amongst other features--that they do not, like some
loftier ranges, repel woods: the forests and they are on sociable terms.
_Live and let live_ is their motto. For this reason, in part, these tracts
in Lorraine were a favorite 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
the race was not extinct) those mysterious fawns that tempted solitary
hunters into visionary and perilous pursuits. Here was seen, at intervals,
that ancient stag who was already nine hundred years old, at the least, 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 marquess.
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 becomes equal to anything that could be
desired. And I have heard candid sportsmen declare that, outside of these
very forests near the Vosges, 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 coloring 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 alone
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 four hundred and fifty years
old--she would admit the following comment upon her evidence to be right. A
Frenchman, about thirty years ago, M. Simond, in his _Travels_, mentioned
incidentally the following hideous scene as one steadily observed and
watched by himself in France at a period some trifle before the French
Revolution:--A peasant was ploughing; and the team that drew his plough 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 yoke-fellows 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 labor 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 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, Monsieur 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 certainly 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 stones 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.) amongst
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 admire not stage artifices, which not _La Pucelle_, but the
Court, must have arranged; nor can surrender myself a dupe to a conjuror's
_leger-de-main_, 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. 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 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 Domrémy, 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 he 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, but, at most, a _petit ecu_, worth thirty
pence; consequently none to lend, on any pretence whatever, until the
consecrated Maid should take him to Rheims. This was the _popular_ notion
in France. The same notion as to the indispensableness of a coronation
prevails widely in England. 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? 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. Trouble us not, lawyer, with your quillets. We are
illegal blockheads; so thoroughly without law, that we don't know even if
we have a right to be blockheads; and our mind is made up--that the first
man drawn from the oven of coronation at Rheims, is the man that is baked
into a king. All others are counterfeits, made of base Indian meal, damaged
by sea-water.

La Pucelle, before she could be allowed to practise as a warrior, was put
through her manual and platoon exercise, as a juvenile pupil in divinity,
before six eminent men in wigs. According to Southey (v. 393, Book III., in
the original edition of his "Joan of Arc") she "appall'd 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, B. III. It is a double impossibility; 1st, because a piracy from
Tindal's _Christianity as Old as the Creation:_ now a piracy _à parte post_
is common enough; but a piracy _à parte ante_, and by three centuries,
would (according to our old English phrase[5]) drive a coach-and-six
through any copyright act that man born of woman could frame. 2dly, it is
quite contrary to the evidence on Joanna's trial; for Southey's "Joan" of
A. Dom. 1796 (Cottle, Bristol), tells the doctors, amongst other secrets,
that she never in her life attended--1st, Mass; nor 2d, the Sacramental
table; nor 3d, Confession. Here's a precious windfall for the doctors;
they, by snaky tortuosities, had hoped, through the aid of a corkscrew,
(which every D. D. or S.T.P. is said to carry in his pocket,) for the
happiness of ultimately extracting from Joanna a few grains of heretical
powder or small shot, which might have justified their singeing her a
little. And just at such a crisis, expressly to justify their burning her
to a cinder, up gallops Joanna with a brigade of guns, unlimbers, and
serves them out with heretical grape and deistical round-shot enough to lay
a kingdom under interdict. Any miracles, to which Joanna might treat the
grim D. Ds. after _that_, would go to the wrong side of her little account
in the clerical books. Joanna would be created a _Dr_. herself, but not of
Divinity. For in the Joanna page of the ledger the entry would be--"Miss
Joanna, in acct. with the Church, _Dr._ by sundry diabolic miracles, she
having publicly preached heresy, shown herself a witch, and even tried hard
to corrupt the principles of six church pillars." In the mean time, 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 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.

It is not requisite, for the honor 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 intellectual 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;--this might have been done--it might have been communicated to a
fellow-prisoner, or a confessor, by Joanna herself, in the same way that
Virgil has contrived to acquaint 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 ihe 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, 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 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 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 labor of triumph. 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 labor. Henceforwards she was thwarted;
and the worst error, that she committed, was to lend the sanction of her
presence to counsels which she disapproved. But she had 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 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
forestall 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 pinnaclè 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 every where 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 onso 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 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 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 Compeigne, 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 favor 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 honor thy flashing intellect, quick as God's lightning,
and true as that 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 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_ or
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 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 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 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 these 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 faleshood, 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 meliús spirantia signa,
  Credo equidem vivos ducent de marmore vultus:
  Altius ascendent: at tu caput, Eva, memento
  Sandalo ut infringas referenti oracula tanta.[6]

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
us men--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 fair telescopic worlds, on any such morning, of those who
happen to find themselves occupying the right hemisphere for a peep
at _us_. Telescopes 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,
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 gray 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 re-appearing 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 sympathizing 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 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 candor.[7]

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 countryman, I shall, in
parting, allude to one or two traits in Joanna's demeanor on the scaffold,
and to one or two in that of the bystanders, which authorize 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_ 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 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 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 _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 demeanor, 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 faggot 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 upwards in billowing volumes. A Dominican monk was then standing
almost at her side. Wrapt 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 spring-time,
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, amidst the tears of ten thousand enemies--died, amidst the
drums and trumpets of armies--died, amidst peals redoubling upon peals,
volleys upon volleys, from the saluting clarions of martyrs.

Bishop of Beauvais! because the guilt-burthened 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 laboring 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 going to take 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 that cometh 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.


[NOTE 1.

_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
entrenched 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?
Beside the chances that M. Hordal might be a gigantic blockhead, it is
notorious that what small matter of spelling Providence had thought fit to
disburse amongst man in the seventeenth century, was all monopolized by
printers: in France, much more so.]

[NOTE 2.

_Those that share thy blood_:--a collateral relative of Joanna's was
subsequently ennobled by the title of _du Lys_.]

[NOTE 3.

"_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 to 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 relique, or a funeral ring. I presume, therefore, that _La
Pacelle_ must have borne the baptismal names of Jeanne Jean; the latter
with no reference to so sublime a person as St. John, but simply to some
relative.]

[NOTE 4.

And reminding one of that inscription, so justly admired by Paul Richtor,
which a Russian Czarina placed on a guide-post near Moscow--_This is the
road that leads to Constantinople_.]

[NOTE 5.

Yes, old--very old phrase: not as ignoramuses fancy, a phrase recently
minted by a Repealer in Ireland.]

[NOTE 6.

Our sisters are always rather uneasy when we say anything 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 a single word of Latin without instantly
translating it. But in this particular case, where I am only iterating a
disagreeable truth, they will please to recollect that the politeness lies
in _not_ translating. However, if they insist absolutely on knowing this
very night, before going to bed, what it is that those ill-looking lines
contain, I refer them to Dryden's Virgil, somewhere in the 6th Book of the
Æneid, except as to the closing line and a half, which contain a private
suggestion of my own to discontented nymphs anxious to see the equilibrium
of advantages re-established between the two sexes.]

[NOTE 7.

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, Anti-Christian." 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, 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 Shakspeare, 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 neighbor not
absolutely clear of an "immense profound vice," as like ours in color 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. Amongst 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 fervor; but much more from the savage delight I found in
laughing at Tom's Latinity. _That_, I freely grant to M. Michelet, is
inimitable; else, as regards substance, it strikes me that I could forge a
better _De Imitatione_ myself. But there is no knowing till one tries. 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[A] 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.

[Footnote A: "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 Scripture truth so passionately welcome.]

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, wore a male military
harness. That reason and that example authorized _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 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 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 pent_" 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. 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.



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH;

OR,

THE GLORY OF MOTION.


Some twenty or more years before I matriculated at Oxford, Mr. Palmer,
M.P. for Bath, had accomplished two things, very hard to do on our little
planet, the Earth, however cheap they may happen to be held by the
eccentric people in comets: he had invented mail-coaches, and he had
married the daughter[1] of a duke. He was, therefore, just twice as great a
man as Galileo, who certainly invented (or _discovered_) the satellites of
Jupiter, those very next things extant to mail-coaches in the two capital
points of speed and keeping time, but who did _not_ marry the daughter of a
duke.

These mail-coaches, as organized 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, first, through velocity, at that time unprecedented; they
first revealed the glory of motion: suggesting, at the same time, an
under-sense, not unpleasurable, of possible though indefinite danger;
secondly, through grand effects for the eye between lamp-light and the
darkness upon solitary roads; thirdly, through animal beauty and power so
often displayed in the class of horses selected for this mail service;
fourthly, through the conscious presence of a central intellect, that, in
the midst of vast distances,[2] of storms, of darkness, of night, overruled
all obstacles into one steady coöperation in a national result. To my own
feeling, this post-office service recalled 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, veins, and
arteries, in a healthy animal organization. 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 tyrannizes
by terror and terrific beauty over my dreams, lay in the awful political
mission which at that time it fulfilled. The mail-coaches 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 these battles, which were gradually moulding the destinies
of Christendom, with the vulgar conflicts of ordinary warfare, which are
oftentimes but 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, and to the nations of western and 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,
became itself a spiritualized and glorified object to an impassioned heart;
and naturally, in the Oxford of that day, all hearts were awakened. There
were, perhaps, of us gownsmen, two thousand _resident_[3] in Oxford, and
dispersed through five-and-twenty colleges. In some of these the custom
permitte

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/10708