243-244. P R A z Z >R^NARD'S ENGLISH 4 CLASSIC SERIES EXPLANATORY NOTES aOAN OF ARC gfe£3f AND THE \m ENGLISH /Ifj MAIL COACH DE qUINCEY as NEW YORK. MATfNARD,MERRILL,acCO Class Book Copyright N°. COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT :kMJ!IMmm THOMAS DE QUINCEY. MAYNAED'8 ENGLISH CLASSIC SERIES. - Nos. 000-000-000. JOAN OF ARC AND THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH CONTAINING ALSO LEV-ANA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY JULIAN W. ABERNETHY, Ph.D. PRINCIPAL OF THE BERKELEY INSTITUTE, BROOKLYN, N.Y. AUTHOR OF "ABERNETHY'S AMERICAN LITERATURE" NEW YORK MAYNARD, MERRILL, & CO. ^ 'V ^V LIBRARY of CONGRESS Two Oi APh 26 1906 H, 'fo(> CI/ASS GL. xkc. No COPY B. Copyright, 1906, By MAYKABD, MEKKILL, & CO. INTRODUCTION Thomas De Quincey, the "English Opium-Eater," was born in Manchester, August 15, 1785. The main facts of his life were recorded by himself in the most re- markable autobiography in the language. Every detail was colored and expanded into a poetic picture by his eccentric imagination, but the story has been found to be essentially correct. His father, a prosperous merchant engaged in foreign commerce, died in his thirty-ninth year, leaving a family of six children. The mother, a woman of unusual ability and culture, was enabled by means of an ample income to give to her children the best social and educational advantages. From 1792 to 1796 the home of the De Quinceys was at Greenhay, a large country house on the outskirts of Manchester. Here they were furnished, he says, "with all the nobler benefits of wealth, with extra means of health, of intellectual cul- ture, and of elegant enjoyment; and if (after the model of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius) I should return thanks to Providence for all the separate blessings of my early situation, these four I would single out as worthy of special commemoration — that I lived in a rustic solitude ; that this solitude was in England ; that my infant feelings were molded by the gentlest of sisters, and not by horrid, pugilistic brothers; finally, that I and they were dutiful and loving members of a pure, holy, and magnificent church." With the exception of the enforced adventures with one 3 4 INTRODUCTION "pugilistic " brother, "whose genius for mischief amounted to inspiration," the shy, sensitive, diminutive Thomas was occupied constantly during his early years with books and daydreams. "From my birth," he says, "I was made an intellectual creature, and intellectual in the high- est sense my pursuits and pleasures have been even from my schoolboy days." He first received instruction from a clergyman in Manchester; he spent two years at the Bath Grammar School, and a year at a private school in Wiltshire. Everywhere he was regarded as a prodigy in classical learning. Before he was fifteen he could write and speak Greek with ease, and compose lyric poems in both Latin and Greek. One of his masters said to a visitor : "That boy could harangue an Athenian mob better than you or I could address an English one." In his fifteenth year he was entered at the Manchester Grammar School for a term of three years, where it was expected he would obtain a university scholarship ; but at the end of a year and a half, the monotonous and uninspiring life of the school having become intolerable to him, he ran away, slipping out of the head master's house early one July morning, with an English poet in one pocket and Euripides in the other. His mother looked upon the act "much as she would have done upon the opening of the seventh seal in the Revelations"; but a lenient uncle arranged that he should have his liberty, with an allowance of a guinea a week. After a few months of vagrancy in North Wales, during which he "suffered grievously from want of books," with that strange perversion of common sense which char- acterized his actions through life, he abandoned friends and support and hid himself in the wilderness of London. His mysterious adventures and sufferings at this time constitute that "impassioned parenthesis" of his life, the description of which reads like one of his marvelous opium INTRODUCTION 5 dreams. After about a year of this penniless London life he was discovered by his friends and sent to Oxford, in the autumn of 1803. Of Do Quincey's university career little is known farther than that he won the reputation of being "a quiet and studious man, remarkable for his rare conversational powers, and for his extraordinary stock of information on every subject"; that he lead prodigiously, especially in German literature and philosophy; and that he left without taking a degree. He may have neglected much of the venerable lore of Oxford — "ancient mother, heavy witli ancestral honors, time-honored, and, haply it may be, time-shattered," as he calls her; but it was here that he laid the foundation of his literary fame, mainly by mastering the great English classics. The nobility of his stately prose and the fullness of his poetic thought bear ample evidence of the early influence of Milton, Shak- spere, Sir Thomas Browne, and Jeremy Taylor. De Quincey had been strongly attracted toward Words- worth through his poetry, and in 1809 he took possession of the little cottage at Grasmere that had recently been the poet's home. Here he lived about twenty years, in intimate relations with the famous "Lakists," Words- worth, Southey, Coleridge, Lloyd, and Wilson. Here occurred the long struggle with the opium habit, from the horrors of which arose the splended visions embodied in the poetic prose of his Confessions. He had experimented with the pernicious drug at Oxford while suffering from neuralgia, and from the moment that he first experienced its wonderful effects he was the slave of opium,- and was never afterwards without a supply of the " ruby-colored laudanum." During the years 1804-1818 the habit grew upon him until his daily allowance of laudanum was 8000 drops, increased often to 12,000, enough to fill nine 6 INTRODUCTION ordinary wineglasses. The result was a complete paraly- sis of the will ; reading and dreaming constituted his sole occupation during this period. He had married, in 1816, the daughter of a dalesman at the wayside cottage near by, known to tourists as "The Nab"; and aroused finally by domestic necessities, he partially subdued his enemy and engaged in productive literary work. In 1S21 his first paper appeared in the London Magazine, entitled Confessions of an Opium- Eater, being an Extract from the Life of a Scholar. It was widely read; the author was immediately in.-n It- famous; and for many years the public hailed with delight any article signed by the "English Opium-Eater." All his best work, comprising about one hundred and fifty articles, appeared in magazines, mainly in the London Magazine, Blackwood's, T a it's, and Hogg's Instructor. His connection with Blackwood's naturally led him to re- move, in 1830, to Edinburgh, where he died December 8, 1859. From 1840 his home was a secluded cottage at Lasswade, seven miles from town. The eccentric appearance and habits of De Quincey have always been a fertile theme for anecdote. His figure was small and fragile, with a fine intellectual head and lofty brow, "rising disproportionately high over his small, wrinkly visage and gentle, deep-set eyes." He says of himself: "A more worthless body than his own, the author is free to confess, cannot be. It is his pride to believe that it is the very ideal of a base, crazy, despica- ble human system that hardly ever could have been meant to be seaworthy for two days under the ordinary storms and wear and tear of life." He was as great a walker as Wordsworth, delighting especially in nocturnal rambles. He could keep no account of money or time, being, in the conduct of his finances, as picturesquely incompetent as INTRODUCTION 1 Goldsmith. It is said that he once stopped at Wilson's to escape a shower and remained nearly a year. He studiously avoided society, but when secured — usually by stratagem — for an evening at the tables of the great, his conversation was as brilliant as that of Macaulay. Those who heard him, speak with enthusiasm of "the magic of his talk, its sweet and subtle ripples of anecdote and suggestion, its witching splendor when he rose to his highest." "The talk might be of beeves, and he could grapple with them, if expected to do so; but his musical cadences were not in keeping with such work, and in a few minutes (not without some strictly logical sequence) he would escape at will from beeves to butterflies, and thence to the soul's immortality, to Plato, and Kant, and Schelling, and Fichte, to Milton's early years and Shakspere's sonnets, to Wordsworth and Coleridge, to Homer and /Eschylus, to St. Thomas of Aquino, St. Basil, and St. Chrysostom." "An obvious characteristic of De Quincey's writings, ,, says Professor Masson, "is their extreme multifariousness. They range over an extraordinary extent of ground, the subjects of which they principally treat being themselves of the most diverse kinds, while their illustrative refer- ences and allusions shoot through a perfect wilderness of miscellaneous scholarship." His essays upon meta- physical topics, theology, and political economy are chiefly interesting as examples of his speculative tendency and his remarkable power of analysis and illustration. His best biographical papers are the Recollections of the Lake Poets, Dr. Parr, Richard Bentley, Shakspere, and the Last Days of Immanuel Kant. Some of his finest work is contained in the papers on Rhetoric and Style. His pe- culiar descriptive powers are illustrated in the Revolt of the Tartars, The Spanish Nun, and Three Memorable 8 INTRODUCTION Murders, and the ghastly humor of his essay On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts is without a parallel. But probably the finest achievement of his genius is the descriptive writing, in " impassioned prose," as he him- self styled it, of the Confessions, Suspiria de Profundis, Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow, Vision of Sudden Death, and Dream Fugue. "The Dream Fugue is of no great compass," says Peter Bayne, "but we think that it would alone have been sufficient to secure a literary immortality." DE QUINCEY'S STYLE The peculiar eminence of De Quincey is due, not to the matter, but to the manner, of his writings. In his own period he was read as a brilliant, somewhat sensational, and altogether fascinating magazine writer ; to-day he is read and studied, never for his facts and seldom for his opinions, but as a master of English prose style. He was essentially a poet, who could best express himself in prose, and in that portion of his work that has become classic he sought to demonstrate that certain realms of literary expression usually conceded exclusively to verse can with ample justice be added to the domain of prose. This new form of poetic expression he described as a "mode of impassioned prose, ranging under no precedents that I am aware of in any literature." Such prose was not entirely new; Milton and Sir Thomas Browne had written passages of magnificent prose, rhythmical in its move- ment, and recording nobly imaginative and exalted states of mind; and these authors, together with Taylor and the German prose-poet, Jean Paul Richter, were strong influ- ences with De Quincey. It is therefore unfortunate that he did not explain the distinction which he had in mind when speaking of a special "mode" of poetic prose. His meaning, however, has been worked out inferentially by Professor Masson from those writings which were mani- festly intended to exemplify the theory. "Our interpretation of his meaning," says Masson, "is that, while he was willing to take his chance of being 9 10 INTRODUCTION reputed capable of eloquent or impassioned writing in the general sense, what he reserved as the 'mode of im- passioned prose' in which he could claim to be singular was a kind of new lyrical prose that could undertake the expression of feelings till then supposed unutterable ex- cept in verse. Oratory in some of its extremes — as when the feeling to be expressed is peculiarly keen and ecstatic — does tend to pass into song or metrical lyric ; and De Quincey, in order to extend the powers of prose in this extreme and difficult direction, proposed to institute, one may say, a new form of prose literature nameable as the prose-lyric." "All sound theorists are agreed in some variety or other of that definition of poetry which makes it to consist essen- tially in a particular kind of matter or mental product, — viz. the matter or product of the faculty or mood of mind called Imagination or Phantasy." But "there are peculiar kinds of phantasy for which prose in all ages has felt itself incompetent, or which it has been too shame- faced to attempt. Such, in especial, are the visionary phantasies that form themselves in the poetic mind in its most profound fits of solitary self-musing. . . . Now, as De Quincey had been a dreamer all his life, with an abnormal faculty of dreaming at work in him constitu- tionally from his earliest infancy, and with the qualifica- tion moreover that he had unlocked the terrific potencies of opium for the generation of dreams beyond the human, his idea seems to have been that, if prose would but exert itself, it could compass, almost equally with verse, or even better, the representation of some forms at least of dream-experience and dream-phantasmagory. Add this idea to that other of the possibility of a prose-lyric that should rival the verse-lyric in the ability to express the keenest and rarest forms of human feeling, or suppose the INTRODUCTION 11 two ideas combined, and De Quincey's conception of the exact nature of his service towards the extension of the liberties and powers of English prose will be fully appre- hended." De Quincey speaks incidentally of his style as "an elaborate and pompous sunset." This suggests the painter, but it was the musician whose art he chiefly emu- lated. Etuskin, the most eminent prose-poet after De Quincey, — and Pater must not l>e forgotten, — in his descriptions took account of all the material and visible effects of color in his subject; De Quincey, to a similarly extreme degree, took account of the musical possibilities of his theme. His color is tone color. For the descrip- tion of the gorgeous phantasies of dreams and of ecstatic emotion he would make good the inadequacies of ordinary word symbols by appropriating the utilities of sound symbols. If we call Ruskin's description "word-painting," we may perhaps call De Quincey's description word- music. He sought to identify poetic expression and musical expression — as Sidney Lanier did, in a more technical and exact way — or, by combining the modes of verse and music, to produce an entirely new vehicle of expression, a new "mode" of prose. The result of his experiment was a product of rhyth- mical harmonies, at times varied and broadened to symphonic proportions, of unparalleled beauty and effec- tiveness. Language was made to exercise a new function, to thrill the emotions by a direct sensuous appeal, like the appeal of harp strings or organ tubes. It was this peculiar, extraordinary power that so stirred Mrs. Brown- ing when reading one of the Blackwood papers, which, she says, "my heart trembled through from end to end." Let the mind of any reader be once caught by the musical scheme of the Dream Fugue, and it will be swept on from 12 INTRODUCTION movement to movement, thrilled and enraptured, with increasing and compelling intensity, until finally absorbed in the exaltation of the triumphal climax at the close, like the climacteric close of a magnificent orchestra. Naturally the vocabulary of De Quincey's poetic prose is largely Latinized. In no other way could he secure the sustained rhythms and stately cadences accessary to his purpose. Naturally, too, his sentence structure tends largely to the periodic form. Says Minto: " His sentences are stately, elaborate, crowded with qualifying clauses and parenthetical allusions, to a degree unparalleled among modern writers." In the revision of his work we find him constantly substituting for simple and col- loquial phrases more sonorous Latin equivalents. But in this, as in other respects, his impassioned prose is sharply distinguished from his ordinary prose. His work is full of stylistic extremes and contradictions; no author ever could descend so swiftly from the sublime to the ridiculous. In his use of common, vulgar, unwashed Saxon, current slang, and the argot of rascallions of every type, he could keep pace with the best roisterers of Shak- spere's street scenes; and the taste with which he intro- duced comic features is often so questionable as to be quite unaccountable. His humor was a wayward ten- dency over which he seemed unable to exercise any artistic restraint whatsoever; he could no more resist a joke, even of the extremest ineptitude, than Lowell could resist an impertinent pun. In one of his prefaces he acknowledges this bent for "unseasonable levity/' a term generously conceded, but all too mild to cover his many derelictions of taste in this respect. In one of the minor features of his style, however, De Quincey was masterly. The minuteness and circum- stantiality of detail with which he describes events, together INTRODUCTION 13 with a dramatic handling of his material, produce an illu- sion of reality quite as effective as that of Defoe. He is most painstaking and serious when perpetrating his most deliberate hoax, culling words from the vast re- sources of his vocabulary and weighing and discriminating them with scrupulous exactitude in respect to fine shades of meaning, giving to his descriptions a verisimilitude that baffles all attempts to disentangle his truth from his fiction. It was doubtless this peculiar effectiveness in narration and description, as in the Flight of a Tartar Tribe and the Three Memorable Murders, for example, that led Saintsbury to say: "Probably more boys have in the last forty years been brought to a love of literature proper by De Quincey than by any other writer whatever/' CRITICAL APPRECIATIONS De Quincey's fame, established in his lifetime, has been growing ever since, and is still growing. He has, one may say, a constituency of special admirers over all the English-speaking world; and, by very evident signs, the circle of this constituency is every year extending itself. And why ? Because every year it is more and more widely recognized that this strange man, dead now so many years ago, is one of the princes of English prose literature, and an almost unique personality in the whole history of English literature, whether in prose or in verse. . . . The English Mail-Coach and the Suspiria de Pro- fundis have a certain interconnection, and possess be- tween them the supreme interest in the class to which they belong. The first two sections of The English Mail- Coach are noble pieces of prose-poetry, and more success- ful, all in all, I think, than the appended Dream Fugue. Though that is an extraordinary piece of writing, too, and gains on one, perhaps, by repeated reading. The first three fragments of the Suspiria, besides being but a kind of wreckage from prior materials, are somewhat didactic in their tenor, and only prepare the way, and that rather raggedly, for the Memorial Suspiria, and the frag- ments called Savannah-la-Mar and Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow. Most memorable pieces of impassioned prose-phantasy are all these three ; but it is the last that is transcendent. Even alone, that would have made De Quincey immortal. — David Masson, Prefaces to De Quincey's Works. 14 INTRODUCTION 15 De Quincey is sometimes noisy and flatulent, sometimes trivial, sometimes unpardonably discursive. But when he is at his best, the rapidity of his mind, its lucidity, its humor and good sense, the writer's passionate loyalty to letters, and his organ-melody of style, command our deep respect. He does not, like the majority of his criti- cal colleagues, approach literature for purposes of research, but to obtain moral effects. De Quincey, a dreamer of beautiful dreams, disdained an obstinate vassalage to mere matters of fact, but sought with intense concen- tration of effort after a conscientious and profound psy- chology of letters. — Edmund Gosse's Modern English Literature. Even at his very best, he was not a writer who could be trusted to keep himself at that best. His reading was enormous — nearly as great, perhaps, as Southey's, though in still less popular directions — and he would sometimes drag it in rather inappropriately. He had an unconquerable and sometimes very irritating habit of digression, of divagation, of aside. And, worst of all, his humor, which in its own peculiar vein of imaginative grotesque has seldom been surpassed, was liable con- stantly to degenerate into a kind of labored trifling, inexpressibly exasperating to the nerves. He could be simply dull ; and he can seldom be credited with the possession of what may be called literary tact. Yet his merits were such as to give him no superior in his own manner among the essayists, and hardly any among the prose writers of the century. He, like Wilson, and probably before Wilson, deliberately aimed at a style of gorgeous elaboration, intended not exactly for com- mon use, but for use when required ; and he achieved it. Certain well-known passages in the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater , in the Autobiography, in the English 16 INTRODUCTION Mail-Coach, in Our Ladies of Sorrow, and elsewhere, are unsurpassed in English or out of it for imaginative splendor of imagery, suitably reproduced in words. Nor was this De Quincey's only, though it was his most precious gift. He had a singular, though, as has been said, a very un- trustworthy faculty of humor, both grim and quaint. He was possessed of extraordinary dialectic ingenuity, a little alloyed no doubt by a tendency to wire-drawn and over- subtle minuteness, such as besets the born logician who is not warned of his danger either by a strong vein of common sense or by constant sojourn in the world. He could expound and describe admirably; he had a thor- ough grasp of the most complicated subjects when he did not allow will-o'-the-wisps to lure him into letting it go, and could narrate the most diverse kinds of action. — George Saintsbury's History of Nineteenth Century Literature. One may fancy that if De Quincey's language were emptied of all meaning whatever, the mere sound of the words would move us, as the lovely word Mesopotamia moved Whitefield's hearers. The sentences are so deli- cately balanced, and so skillfully constructed, that his finer passages fix themselves in the memory without the aid of meter. Humbler writers are content if they can get through a single phrase without producing a jar. They aim at keeping up a steady jog-trot, which shall not give actual pain to the jaws of the readers. Even our great writers generally settle down to a stately but monotonous gait, after the fashion of Johnson or Gibbon, or are con- tent with adopting a style as transparent and inconspicu- ous as possible. Language, according to the common phrase, is the dress of thought; and that dress is best, according to modern canons of taste, which attracts least attention from its wearer. De Quincey scorns this sneer- ing maxim of prudence, and boldly challenges our admira- INTRODUCTION 17 tion by appearing in the richest coloring that can be got out of the dictionary. His language deserves a commenda- tion sometimes bestowed by ladies upon rich garments, that it is capable of standing up by itself. The form is so admirable that, for purposes of criticism, we must con- sider it as something apart from the substance. The most exquisite passages in De Quincey's writings are all more or less attempts to carry out the idea expressed in the title of the Dream Fugue. They are intended to be musical compositions, in which words have to play the part of notes. They are impassioned, not in the sense of expressing any definite sentiment, but because, from the structure and combination of the sentences, they harmonize with certain phases of emotion. It is in the success with which he produces such effects as these that De Quincey may fairly claim to be almost, if not quite, unrivaled in our language. Melancholy and an awe- stricken sense of the vast and vague are the emotions which he communicates with the greatest power ; though the melancholy is too dreamy to deserve the name of passion, and the terror of the infinite is not explicitly connected with any religious emotion. It is a proof of the fineness of his taste that he scarcely ever falls into bombast. We tremble at his audacity in accumulating gorgeous phrases; but we confess that he is justified by the result. I know of no other modern writer who has soared into the same regions with so uniform and easy a flight. — Leslie Stephen's Hours in a Library. De Quincey ranges with great freedom over the ac- cumulated wealth of the language, his capacious memory giving him a prodigious command of words. His range is perhaps wider than either Macaulay's or Carlyle's. From various causes he makes an excessive use of Latinized phraseology. First, his ear was deeply enamored of a c 18 INTRODUCTION dignified rhythm; none but long words of Latin origin / were equal to the lofty march of his periods. Secondly, by the use of Latinized and gwasi-technical terms, he gained greater precision than by the use of homely words of looser signification. And thirdly, it was part of his peculiar humor to write concerning common objects, in unfamiliar language. . . . Explicitness of connection is the chief merit of De Quincey's paragraphs. He cannot be said to observe any other principle. He is carried into violation of all the other rules by his inveterate habit of digression. Often upon a mere casual suggestion he branches off into a digression of several pages, sometimes even digressing from the subject of his first digression. His general structure is not simple. Long periods, each embodying a flock of clauses, are abstruse reading. Even his explicitness of connection has not its full natural effect of making the effort of comprehension easy. . . . His prevailing characteristic is elaborate stateliness. He finds the happiest exercise of his powers in sustained flights through the region of the sublime. He takes rank with Milton as one of our greatest masters of stately cadence, as well as of sublime composition. If one may trust one's ear for a general impression, Milton's melody is sweeter and more varied ; but for magnificent effects, at least in prose, the palm must probably be assigned to De Quincey. — Minto's Manual of English Prose Literature. BIBLIOGKAPHY The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey : Edited by David Masson. 14 vols. New York, Macmillan & Co., 1889- 1890. This is the standard edition ; each volume contains a preface and notes by the editor. The Uncollected Writings of Thomas De Quincey : Edited by James Hogg. 2 vols. London, 1890. The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey : Edited by A. H. Japp. [H. A. Page] 2 vols. London, 1891-1893. Selections from De Quincey : Edited by M. II. Turk (Athe- nseum Press Series). Boston, 1902. David Masson's Thomas De Quincey (English Men of Letters Series). The most serviceable biography. A. H. Japp's [H. A. Page] Thomas De Quincey : His Life and Writings. London, 1890. The standard biography. H. S. Salt's De Quincey (Bell's Miniature Series of Great Writers). J. Hogg's De Quincey and his Friends, Personal Recollections, Souvenirs, and Anecdotes. London, 1895. Leslie Stephen's Hours in a Library. Vol. I, 1892. George Saintsbury's Essays in English Literature, First Series. Augustine Birrell's Essays about Men, Women, and Books. William Minto's Manual of English Prose Literature. T. W. Hunt's English Prose and Prose Writers. H. S. Salt's Literary Sketches. London, 1888. E. T. Mason's Personal Traits of British Authors. New York, 1885. David Masson's Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, etc. London, 1881. G. P. Lathrop's Some Aspects of De Quincey. Atlantic Monthly, November, 1877. 19 20 INTRODUCTION E. B. Chancellor's Literary Types. New York, 1896. Chambers's Cyclopaedia of English Literature : Article by G. Gregory Smith. Library of the World's Best Literature : Article by George R. Carpenter. Encyclopaedia Britannica : Article by J. R. Findlay. Henry Craik's English Prose Selections : Critical article by R. Brimley Johnson. Peter Bayne's Essays in Biography and Criticism. First Series. J. Scott Clark's A Study of English Prose Writers. New York, 1898. SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY 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 shep- herd boy from the hills and forests of Judea — rose suddenly out of the quiet, out of the safety, out of 5 the religious inspiration, rooted in deep pastoral i tt j^ rc ".- — Modern France, that should know a great deal hetter than myself, insists that the name is not D' Arc — i.e., of Arc — but Dare. Now it happens sometimes that, if a person whose position guarantees his access to the best information will content himself with gloomy dogmatism, striking the table with his fist, and saying in a terrific voice, "It is so, and there's an end of it," one bows deferentially, and submits. But, if, unhappily for himself, won by this docility, he relents too amiably into reasons and arguments, probably one raises an insurrection against him that may never be crushed; for in the fields of logic one can skirmish, perhaps, as well as he. Had he confined himself to dogmatism, he would have intrenched his position in darkness, and have hidden his own vul- nerable 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 Dare in 1612. But what of that? It is notorious that what small matter of spelling Providence had thought fit to disburse among man in the seventeenth century was all monopolized by printers ; now, M. Hordal was not a printer. 21 22 JOAN OF ARC solitudes, to a station in the van of armies, and to t lie more perilous station at the right hand of kings? The Hebrew hoy inaugurated his patriotic mission by an act, by a victorious act, such as do man could sdeny. But so did the girl of Lorraine, if we read her story as it was read by those who -aw her nearest. Adverse armies bore witness to the hoy as do pre- tender; hut bo they did to the gentle girl. Judged by the voices of all who saw them from Oh, no! Honors, if they come when all is over, are for those that share thy blood. 1 Daughter of Domremv. 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. 5 ( Jite Iter by the apparitors to come and receive a robe of honor, but she will be found en contumace. When the thunders of universal Prance, as even yet may happen, shall proclaim the grandeur of the poor shepherd girl that gave up all for her country, thy 10 ear. young shepherd girl, will have been deaf for live centuries. To Buffer and to do. that was thy por- tion in this life; that was thy destiny ; and not for a moment was it hidden from thyself. Life, thou saidst, is short; and the sleep which is in the grave 15 is long; let me use that lite, 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 20 — never once (lid this holy child, as regarded herself, relax from her belief in the darkness that was travel- ing to meet her. She might not prefigure the very manner of her death ; she saw not in vision, perhaps, the aerial altitude of the fiery scaffold, the spectator- 25 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 imperish- 1 " 77jo.se that share thy blood" : — A collateral relative of Joanna's was subsequently ennobled by the title of Du Lys. 24 JOAN OF ARC able 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, thai she heard forever. 5 Great was the throne of France even in those days, and great was he that sat upon it; but well Joanna knew that n >t the throne, nor he that sat upon it, was for her ; but, on the contrary, that she was for them : not she by them, but they by her, should rise from 10 the dust. Gorgeous were the lilies of France, and for centuries had the privilege to spread their beauty over land and sea, until, in another century, the wrath of God and man combined to wither them; but well Joanna knew, early at Domremy she had 16 read that bitter truth, that tin 4 lilies of Prance would decorate no garland for her. Flower nor bud, bell nor blossom, would ever bloom for her! But stay. What reason is there for taking up this subject of Joanna precisely in the spring of 1S47? 20 Might it not have been left till the spring of 1947, or, perhaps, left till called for? Yes. but it is railed for, and clamorously. You are aware, reader, that amongst the many original thinkers whom modern France has produced, one of the reputed leaders is 2.-) 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, 30 whinnying, throwing up their heels, like wild horses JOAN OF ARC 25 in the boundless pampas, and running races of de- fiance with snipes, or with the winds, or with their own shadows, if they can find nothing else to chal- lenge. Some time or other, I, that have leisure to read, may introduce you, that have not, to two or 5 three dozen of these writers; of whom I can assure you beforehand that they are often profound, and at intervals are even as impassioned as if they were come of our best English blood. But now, confining our attention to M. Michelet, we in England — who 10 know him best by his worst book, the book against priests, etc. — know him disadvantageously. That book is a rhapsody of incoherence. But his "His- tory of France" is quite another thing. A man, in whatsoever craft he sails, cannot stretch away out 15 of sight when he is linked to the windings of the shore by towing-ropes of History. Facts, and the conse- quences of facts, draw the writer back to the fal- coner's lure from the giddiest heights of speculation. Here, therefore — in his "France" — if not always 20 free from flightiness, if now and then off like a rocket for an airy wheel in the clouds, M. Michelet, with natural politeness, never forgets that he has left a large audience waiting for him on earth, and gazing upward in anxiety for his return; return, therefore, 25 he does. But History, though clear of certain temp- tat ions 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 30 day — without perilous openings for error. If I, 26 JOAN OF ARC 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 5 My pleasure iu th% Michelet woods Three summer days to take," probably, from simple delirium, I might hunt M. Michelet into delirium tremens. Two Btrong angels stand by the side of History, whether French his- lotory 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 15 draperies of asbestos were cleansed, and must quicken them into regenerated life. Willingly 1 acknowl- edge that no man will ever avoid innumerable errors of detail; with bo vast a compass of ground to trav- erse, this is impossible; but such errors (though I 20 have a bushel on hand, at M. Michelet 's service) are not the game 1 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'< hleans herself. 25 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 30 the documents, and therefore the collection only now JOAN OF ARC 27 forthcoming in Paris. 1 But my purpose is narrower. There have been great thinkers, disdaining the care- less judgments of contemporaries, who have thrown themselves boldly od the judgmenl of a far posterity, thai should have had time to review, to ponder, to 5 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 com- patriot friends — too heartless for the sublime inter- est of their story, and too impatient for the laborio of sifting its perplexities — to the magnanimity and justice of enemies. To this class belongs the Maid of Are. The ancient Romans were too faithful to the ideal of grandeur in themselves not to relent, after a generation or two. before the grandeur of Hannibal. 15 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 rec< ived on earth. And we English have ever shown the same homage to stubborn 20 enmity. To work unflinchingly for the ruin of England : to say through life, by word and by deed, Ddenda ■ st Anglia Victrix! — that one purpose of malice, faithfully pursued, has quartered some people upon our national funds of homage as by a perpetual 25 annuity. Better than an inheritance of service rendered to England herself has sometimes proved the most insane hatred to England. Hyder Ali, 1 " Only now forthcoming" : — In 1847 began the publication (from official records) of Joanna's trial. It was interrupted, I fear, by the convulsions of 1848 ; and whether even yet finished I do not know. 28 JOAN OF ARC even his son Tippoo, though so far inferior, and Napoleon, have all benefited by this disposition among ourselves to exaggerate the merit of diabolic enmity. Not one of these men was ever capable, in 5 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. loSuffren, 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 15 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. 20 Michelet asserts, Jean 1 ) D'Arc was born at Domremy, !" 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 evan- gelist, 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 pre- vailed of giving a hoy his mother's name — preceded and strengthened by a male name, as Charles Anne, Victor Victoire. In cases where a mother's memory has been unusually dear to a son, this vocal memento of her, locked into the circle of his own name, gives to it the tenderness of a testamentary relic, or a funeral ring. I pre- sume, therefore, that La Pucelle must have borne the baptismal JOAN OF ARC 29 a village on the marches of Lorraine and Champagne, and dependent upon the town of Vaucouleurs. I have called her a Lorrainer, not simply because the word is prettier, but because Champagne too odiously reminds us English of what are for us imaginary 5 wines — which, undoubtedly, La Pucelle tasted as rarely as we English : we English, because the cham- pagne of London is chiefly grown in Devonshire; La Pucelle, because the champagne of Champagne never, by any chance, flowed into the fountain of 10 Domremy, from which only she drank. M. Miche- let will have her to be a Champenoise, and for no better reason than that she "took after her father," who happened to be a Champenois. These disputes, however, turn on refinements too 15 nice. Domremy stood upon the frontiers, and, like other frontiers, produced a mixed race, represent- ing 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 popula- 20 tions; 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 travelers that were few, as for armies that were too many by half. These two 25 roads, one of which was the great highroad between France and Germany, decussated at this very point; which is a learned way of saying that they formed a St. Andrew's Cross, or letter X. I hope the corn- name of Jeanne Jean ; the latter with no reference, perhaps, to so sublime a person as St. John, but simply to some relative. 30 JOAN OF ARC positor will choose a good large X ; in which case the point of intersection, the locus of conflux and inter- section for these four diverging arms, will finish the reader's geographical education, by showing him 5 to a hair's-breadth where it was that Domremy stood. These roads, so grandly situated, as great trunk arteries between two mighty realms, 1 and haunted forever by wars or rumors of wars, de- cussated (for anything I know to the contrary) 10 absolutely under Joanna's bedroom window; one rolling away to the right, past M. D' Arc's old barn, and the other unaccountably preferring to sweep round that odious man's pigsty to the left. On whichever side of the border chance had 15 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, 20 yet also of eternal amity and league with France in case anybody else presumed to attack her. Let peace settle upon France, and before long you might rely upon seeing the little vixen Lorraine flying at the throat of France. Let France be assailed by a for- 25midable enemy, and instantly you saw a Duke of Lorraine insisting on having his own throat cut in support of France; which favor accordingly was cheerfully granted to him in three great successive 1 And reminding one of that inscription, so justly admired by Paul Riehter, which a Russian Czarina placed on a guide-post near Moscow : This is the road that leads to Constantinople. JOAN OF AUG 31 battles: twice by the English, viz., at Crecy and Agincourt, once by the Sultan at Nicopolis. This sympathy with France during great eclipses, in ihose that during ordinary seasons were always teas- ing her with brawls and guerrilla inroads, strength- 5 ened the natural piety to France of those that were confessedly the children of her own house. The out- posts of France, as one may call the great frontier provinces, were of all localities the most devoted to the Fleurs de Lys. To witness, at any great 10 crisis, the generous devotion to these lilies of the little fiery cousin that in gentler weather was forever tilting at the breast of France, could not but fan the zeal of France's legitimate daughters; while to occupy a post of honor on the frontiers against an 15 old hereditary enemy of France would naturally stimulate this zeal by a sentiment of martial pride, by a sense of danger always threatening, and of hatred always smoldering. That great four-headed road was a perpetual memento to patriotic ardor. 20 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 25 frontier, the ear that listened for the groaning of wheels, made the highroad itself, with its relations to centers so remote, into a manual of patriotic duty. The situation, therefore, locally, of Joanna was full of profound suggestions to a heart that listened for 30 the stealthy steps of change and fear that too surely 32 JOAN OF ARC were in motion. But, if the place were grand, the time, the burden of the time, was far more so. The air overhead in its upper chambers was hurtling with the obscure sound ; was dark with sullen fermenting 5 of storms that had been gathering for a hundred and thirty years. The battle of Agincourt in Joanna's childhood had reopened the wounds of France. Crecy and Poictiers, those withering overthrows for the chivalry of France, had, before Agincourt 10 occurred, been tranquilized by more than half a century ; but this resurrection of their trumpet wails made the whole series of battles and endless skir- mishes take their stations as parts in one drama. The graves that had closed sixty years ago seemed 15 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 20 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 imme- diately occasioned the explosion of this madness — the case of a man unknown, gloomy, and perhaps 25 maniacal himself, coming out of a forest at noonday, laying his hand upon the bridle of the king's horse, checking him for a moment to say, "Oh, king, thou art betrayed," and then vanishing, no man knew whither, as he had appeared for no man knew what so — fell in with the universal prostration of mind that laid France on her knees, as before the slow unweav- JOAN OF ARC 33 ing 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 5 deeper and more ominous sound. The termination of the Crusades, the destruction of the Templars, the Papal interdicts, the tragedies caused or suffered by the house of Anjou, and by the Emperor — these were full of a more permanent significance. But, 10 since then, the colossal figure of feudalism was seen standing, as it were on tiptoe, at Crecy, for flight from earth : that was a revolution unparalleled ; yet that was a trifle by comparison with the more fearful revolutions that were mining below the Church. 15 By her own internal schisms, by the abominable spectacle of a double Pope — so that no man, except through political bias, could even guess which was Heaven's vicegerent, and which the creature of Hell — the Church was rehearsing, as in still earlier forms 20 she had already rehearsed, those vast rents in her foundations which no man should ever heal. These were the loftiest peaks of the cloudland in the skies that to the scientific gazer first caught the colors of the new morning in advance. But the 25 whole vast range alike of sweeping glooms overhead dwelt upon all meditative minds, even upon those that could not distinguish the tendencies nor de- cipher the forms. It was, therefore, not her own age alone, as affected by its immediate calamities, 30 that lay with such weight upon Joanna's mind, but 34 JOAN OF ARC her own age as one section in a vast mysterious drama, unweaving through a century back, and drawing nearer continually to some dreadful crisis. Cataracts and rapids were heard roaring ahead ; and 5 signs were seen far back, by help of old men's memo- ries, 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 10 visions, and hear angelic voices. These voices whispered to her forever the duty, self-imposed, of delivering France. Five years she listened to these monitory voices with internal struggles. At length she could resist no longer. Doubt gave way; and 15 she left her home forever in order to present herself at the dauphin's court. The education of this poor girl was mean accord- ing to the present standard : was ineffably grand, according to a purer philosophic standard : and only 20 not good for our age because for us it would be unat- tainable. She read nothing, for she could not read; but she had heard others read parts of the Roman martyrology. She wept in sympathy with the sad " Misereres" of the Romish Church; she rose to 25 heaven with the glad triumphant "Te Deums" of Rome; she drew her comfort and her vital strength from the rites of the same Church. But, next after these spiritual advantages, she owed most to the ad- vantages of her situation. The fountain of Dom- 3oremy was on the brink of a boundless forest; and it was haunted to that degree by fairies that the parish JOAN OF ARC 35 priest (cure) was obliged to read mass there once a year, in order to keep them in any decent bounds. Fairies are important, even in a statistical view: certain weeds mark poverty in the soil ; fairies mark its solitude. As surely as the wolf retires before 5 cities does the fairy sequester herself from the haunts of the licensed victualer. A village is too much for her nervous delicacy; at most, she can tolerate a distant view of a hamlet. We may judge, therefore, by the uneasiness and extra trouble which they gave 10 to the parson, in what strength the fairies mustered at Domremy, and, by a satisfactory consequence, how thinly sown with men and women must have been that region even in its inhabited spots. But the forests of Domremy — those were the glories of 15 the land: for in them abode mysterious powers and ancient secrets that towered into tragic strength. "Abbeys there were, and abbey windows" — "like Moorish temples of the Hindoos" — that exercised even princely power both in Lorraine and in the 20 German Diets. These had their sweet bells that pierced the forests for many a league at matins or vespers, and each its own dreamy legend. Few enough, and scattered enough, were these abbeys, so as in no degree to disturb the deep solitude of the 25 region; yet many enough to spread a network or awning of Christian sanctity over what else might have seemed a heathen wilderness. This sort of religious talisman being secured, a man the most afraid of ghosts (like myself, suppose, or the reader) 30 becomes armed into courage to wander for days in 36 JOAN OF ARC 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 Na- 5 poleon's line of defense against the Allies. But they are interesting for this among other features, that they do not, like some loftier ranges, repel woods; the forests and the hills are on sociable terms. " Live and let live " is their motto. For this reason, 10 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 15 of a forest or a chase. In these vast forests, also, were to be found (if anywhere to be found) those mysterious fawns that tempted solitary hunters into visionary and perilous pursuits. Here was seen (if any where seen) that ancient stag who was already 20 nine hundred years old, but possibly a hundred or two more, when met by Charlemagne; and the thing was put beyond doubt by the inscription upon his golden collar. I believe Charlemagne knighted the stag; and, if ever he is met again by a king, he ought 2.->to be made an earl, or, being upon the marches of France, a marquis. Observe, I don't absolutely vouch for all these things: my own opinion varies. On a fine breezy afternoon I am audaciously skepti- cal; but as twilight sets in my credulity grows 30 steadily, till it becomes equal to anything that could be desired. And I have heard candid sportsmen JOAN OF ARC 37 declare that, outside of these very forests, they laughed loudly at all the dim tales connected with their haunted solitudes, but, on reaching a spot notoriously eighteen miles deep within them, they agreed with Sir Roger de Coverley that a good deal 5 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 shad- owy, connected with such appearances that reveal 10 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 — 15 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 soli- tudes with phantom images of powers that were of old so vast. Joanna, therefore, in her quiet occupa-20 tion 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 25 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 naturals and affectionate report of Joanna's ordinary life. 38 JOAN OF ARC 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 Bergen I la. Even Haumette confesses that Joanna tended sheep 5 in her girlhood. And I believe that, if Miss Hau- mette were taking coffee along with me this very evening (February 12, 1S47) — in which there would be no subject for scandal or for maiden blushes, be- cause I am an intense philosopher, and Miss H. would 10 be hard upon 450 years old — she would admit the following comment upon her evidence to be right. A Frenchman, about forty years ago — M. Simond, in his "Travels" — mentions accidentally the fol- lowing hideous scene as one steadily observed and 15 watched by himself in chivalrous France not very long before the French Revolution: A peasant was plowing; and the team that drew his plow was a donkey and a woman. Both were regularly har- nessed; both pulled alike. This is bad enough; 20 but the Frenchman adds that, in distributing his lashes, the peasant was obviously desirous of being impartial ; or, if either of the yokefellows had a right to complain, certainly it was not the donkey. Now, in any country where such degradation of females 25 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 praedial servant, 30 she would be sensible that this confession extended by probability in the hearer's thoughts to the having JOAN OF ARC 39 incurred indignities of this horrible kind. Hau- mette clearly thinks it more dignified for Joanna to have been darning the stockings of her horny-hoofed father, M. D'Arc, than keeping sheep, lest she might then be suspected of having ever done something 5 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 owe stockings, Bince probably he was the party to make the holes in them, as many a better man than D'Arc does — 10 meaning by that not myself, because, though prob- ably 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 15 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? 20 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 25 house, dating from the Crusades, w r as overheard say- ing to his son, a Chevalier of St. Louis, " Chevalier, as-tu donne au cochon a manger ?" Now, it is clearly made out by the surviving evidence that D'Arc would much have preferred continuing to say, "Ma 30 fille, as-tu donne au cochon a manger?" to saying, 40 JOAN OF ARC " Pucelle d 'Orleans, as-tu sauve les fleurs-de-lys?" There is an old English copy of verses which argues thus: u If the man that turnips cries 5 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 10 through it as clearly as could be wished. But I see my way most clearly through D'Arc; and the re- sult 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 Orinamme of France. 15 It is probable (as M. Michelet suggests) that the title of Virgin or Pucelle had in itself, and apart from the miraculous stories about her, a secret power over the rude soldiery and partisan chiefs of that period ; for in such a person they saw a rep- 20 resentative manifestation of the Virgin Mary, who, in a course of centuries, had grown steadily upon the popular heart. As to Joanna's supernatural detection of the dauphin (Charles VII) among three hundred lords 25 and knights, I am surprised at the credulity which could ever lend itself to that theatrical juggle. Who admires more than myself the sublime enthusiasm, the rapturous faith in herself, of this pure creature? But I am far from admiring stage artifices which not 30 La Pucelle, but the court, must have arranged; nor can surrender myself to the conjurer's legerdemain, JOAN OF ARC 41 such as may be seen every day for a shilling. South- ey'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, 5 for the benefit of the reader new to the case, was this : La Pucelle was first made known to the dauphin, and presented to his court, at Chinon; and here came her first trial. By way of testing hor supernatural pretensions, she was to find out the royal personage io amongst the whole ark of clean and unclean crea- tures. Failing in this coup d'essai, she would not >i in ply disappoint many a beating heart in the glit- tering crowd that on different motives yearned for her success, but she would ruin herself, and, as thei:> oracle within had told her, would, by ruining herself, ruin France. Our own Sovereign Lady Victoria rehearses annually a trial not so severe in degree, but the same in kind. She " pricks" for sheriffs. Joanna pricked for a king. But observe the differ- 20 ence : 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 25 right. And yet, even with these tight limits to the misery of a boundless discretion, permit me, Liege Lady, with all loyalty, to submit that now and then you prick with your pin the wrong man. But the poor child from Domremy, shrinking under the gaze 30 of a dazzling court — not because dazzling (for in 42 JOAN OF ARC 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 5 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 vir- gin's magnetic sympathy with royalty, 10 " On the throne, I the while mingling: with the menial throng, Some courtier shall be seated." This usurper is even crowned: "the jeweled crown shines on a menial's head." But, really, that is 15" un peu jort" ; 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. Accord- 20ing to the popular notion, he had no crown for him- self; consequently none to lend, on any pretense whatever, until the consecrated Maid should take him to Rheims. This was the popular notion in France. But certainly it was the dauphin's interest 25 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 Or- leans? That is to say, what more than a merely military service could she render him? And, above 30 all, if he were king without a coronation, and with- JOAN OF ARC 43 out 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 coro- nation: he that should win that race carried the superstition of France along with him: he that 5 should first be drawn from the ovens of Rheims was under that superstition baked into a king. La Pucelle, before she could be allowed to practice as a warrior, was put through her manual and platoon exercise, as a pupil in divinity, at the bar of 10 six eminent men in wigs. According to Southey (v. 393, bk. hi., in the original edition of his " Joan of Arc,") she " appalled the doctors." It's not easy to do that: but they had some reason to feel both- ered, as that surgeon would assuredly feel bothered 15 who, upon proceeding to dissect a subject, should find the subject retaliating as a dissector upon him- self, especially if Joanna ever made the speech to them which occupies v. 354-391, bk. hi. It is a double impossibility: 1st, because a piracy from 20 Tindal's "Christianity as old as the Creation" — a piracy a parte ante, and by three centuries; 2d, it is quite contrary to the evidence on Joanna's trial. Southey's "Joan" of a.d. 1796 (Cottle, Bristol) tells the doctors, among other secrets, that 25 she never in her life attended — 1st, Mass; nor 2d, the Sacramental Table; nor 3d, Confession. In the meantime, all this deistical confession of Joanna's, besides being suicidal for the interest of her cause, is opposed to the depositions upon both trials. The 30 very best witness called from first to last deposes that 44 . JOAN OF ARC 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 5 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" 10 which Milton has put into the mouth of our Saviour when first entering the wilderness, and musing upon the tendency of those great impulses growing within himself " Oh, what a multitude of thoughts at once 15 Awakened in me swarm, while I consider What from within I feel myself, and hear What from without comes often to my ears, 111 sorting with my present state compared ! When I was yet a child, no childish play 20 To me was pleasing ; all my mind was set Serious to learn and know, and thence to do, What might be public good ; myself I thought Born to that end " he will have some notion of the vast reveries which 25 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 char- iot was dimly revealing itself that should carry her from the kingdom of France Delivered to the Eternal 30 Kingdom. It is not requisite for the honor of Joanna, nor is there in this place room, to pursue her brief career JOAN OF ARC 45 of action. That, though wonderful, forms the earthly part of her story; the spiritual part is the saintly passion of her imprisonment, trial, and execu- tion. It is unfortunate, therefore, for Southey's "Joan of Arc" (which, however, should always be 5 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 hemi-io spheres, and both could not have been presented to the eye in one poem, unless by sacrificing all unity of theme, or else by involving the earlier half, as a narrative episode, in the latter; which, however, might have been done, for it might have been com- 15 municated to a fellow-prisoner, or a confessor, by Joanna herself. It is sufficient, as concerns this section of Joanna's life, to say that she fulfilled, to the height of her promises, the restoration of the prostrate throne. France had become a province 20 of England, and for the ruin of both, if such a yoke could be maintained. Dreadful pecuniary exhaus- tion caused the English energy to droop; and that critical opening La Pucelle used with a corresponding felicity of audacity and suddenness (that were in 25 themselves portentous) for introducing the wedge of French native resources, for rekindling the na- tional 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 Eng- 30 lish, distressed as they were, and of flying to the 46 JOAN OF ARC 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 elabo- 5 rate application of engineering skill unprecedented in Europe. Entering the city after sunset on the 29th of April, she sang mass on Sun-lav, May 8th, for the entire disappearance of the besieging force. On the 29th of June she fought and gained over the 10 English the decisive battle of 1'atay; on the 9th of July she took Troves by a coup-de-main from a mixed garrison of English and Burgundians; on the 15th of that month she carried the dauphin into Kheims; on Sunday the 17th .-he crowned him ; and 15 there she rested from her labor of triumph. All that was to be done she had now accomplished; what remained was — t<> suffer. All this forward movement was her own: except- ing one man, the whole council was against her. 20 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. Hence- ■_':» forward she was thwarted; and the worst error that she committed was to lend the -auction of her presence to counsels which she had ceased to ap- prove. But she had now accomplished the capital objects which her own visions had dictated. These so involved all the rest. Errors were now less impor- tant; and doubtless it had now become more diffi- JOAN OF ARC 47 cult 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, 5 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 10 in an irretrievable blunder, owing partly to discord among the uncles of Henry VI, partly to a want of funds, but partly to the very impossibility which they believed to press with tenfold force upon any French attempt to forestall theirs. They laughed 15 at such a thought : and. while they laughed, she did it. Henceforth the single redress for the English of this capita] 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. 20 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 un- hinged the force of the first coronation in the popular mind by associating it with power given from hell, 25 they felt that the scepter of the invader was broken. But she, the child that, at nineteen, had wrought wonders so great for France, was she not elated? Did she not lose, as men so often have lost, all sobriety of mind when standing upon the pinnacle 30 of success so giddy? Let her enemies declare. 48 JOAN OF ARC During the progress of her movement, and in the center of ferocious struggles, she had manifested the temper of her feelings by the pity which she had everywhere expressed for the suffering enemy. 5 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 pro- tect the captive or the wounded ; she mourned over 10 the excesses of her countrymen ; she threw herself off her horse to kneel by the dying English soldier and to comfort him with such ministrations, physical or spiritual, as his situation allowed. "Nolebat," says the evidence, "uti ense suo, aut quemquam 15 interficere." She sheltered the English that in- voked 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 it- 20 self thus : on the day when she had finished her work, she wept; for she knew that, when her triumphal task was done, her end must be approaching. Her aspirations pointed only to a place which seemed to her more than usually full of natural piety, as one 25 in which it would give her pleasure to die. And she uttered, between smiles and tears, as a wish that in- expressibly 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, 30 and suffer her to become a shepherdess once more. It was a natural prayer, because nature has laid a JOAN OF ARC 49 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 up- ward, visions that she had no power to mistrust; and the voices which sounded in her ear forever, 5 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 10 out of which the French restoration should grow; but she was not suffered to witness their develop- ment or their prosperous application. More than one military plan was entered upon which she did not approve. But she still continued to expose her 15 person as before. Severe wounds had not taught her caution. And at length, in a sortie from Com- piegne (whether through treacherous collusion on the part of her own friends is doubtful to this day), she was made prisoner by the Burgundians, and 20 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 25 English leaders, to reach the highest preferment. " Bishop that art, Archbishop that shalt be, Cardinal that mayest be," were the words that sounded con- tinually in his ear; and doubtless a whisper of vis- ions still higher, of a triple crown, and feet upon 30 the necks of kings, sometimes stole into his heart. 50 JOAN OF ARC 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 5 the leader in the persecution against the helpless girl, he was willing to be all this in the spirit, and with the conscious vileness of a cat's-paw. Never from the foundations of the earth was there such a trial as this, if it were laid open in all its beauty of defense and 1 oall 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 God's lightning to its mark, that ran before France and laggard Jo 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 humiliat- ing to civilization, that, even at this day, France exhibits the horrid spectacle of judges examining 20 the prisoner against himself; seducing him, by fraud, into treacherous conclusions against his own head; using the terrors of their power for extorting confes- sions from the frailty of hope; nay (which is worse), using the blandishments of condescension and snaky 25 kindness for thawing into compliances of gratitude those whom they had failed to freeze into terror? Wicked judges ! barbarian jurisprudence i — that, sitting in your own conceit on the summits of social wisdom, have yet failed to learn the first principles 30 of criminal justice — sit ye humbly and with docility at the feet of this girl from Domremy, that tore your JOAN OF ARC 51 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, c or that entered into the ridiculous charges against her. General questions were proposed to her on points of casuistical divinity; two-edged ques- tions, which not one of themselves could have an- swered, without, on the one side, landing himself 10 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. 15 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 Mahome- 20 tan metaphysics. Her answer to this, if there were room to place the whole in a clear light, was as shat- tering as it was rapid. Another thought to entrap her by asking what language the angelic visitors of her solitude had talked — as though heavenly 2." counsels could want polyglot interpreters for every word, or that God needed language at all in whis- pering thoughts to a human heart. Then came a worse devil, who asked her whether the Archangel Michael had appeared naked. Not comprehending 30 the vile insinuation, Joanna, whose poverty sug- 52 JOAN OF ARC gested to her simplicity that it might be the costli- ness of suitable robes which caused the demur, asked them if they fancied God, who clothed the flowers of the valleys, unable to find raiment for his servants. 5 The answer of Joanna moves a smile of tenderness, but the disappointment of her judges makes one laugh exultingly. Others succeeded by troops, who upbraided her with leaving her father; as if that greater Father, whom she believed herself 10 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 15 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 20 always as justly directed, reads the case most truly. Joanna had a twofold malady. She was visited by a paroxysm of the complaint called homesickness. The cruel nature of her imprisonment, and its length, could not but point her solitary thoughts, in darkness 25 and in chains (for chained she was), to Domremy. And the season, which was the most heavenly period of the spring, added stings to this yearning. That was one of her maladies — nostalgia, as medi- cine calls it; the other was weariness and exhaus- 30 tion from daily combats with malice. She saw that everybody hated her and thirsted for her blood; JOAN OF ARC 53 nay, ma,ny 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 ! 5 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 wore dreaming for a moment of escaping the inevitable. Why, then, didio she contend? Knowing that she would reap noth- ing 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 15 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 punish- ment, but taught her not to submit — no, not for a 20 moment — to calumny as to facts, or to misconstruc- tion 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 25 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 justi- fication." Yes, Joanna, they are rising even now in Paris, and for more than justification ! 30 Woman, sister, there are some things which you do 54 JOAN OF ARC 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 5 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 10 else were dust from dead men's bones, into the unity of breathing life. If you can create yourselves into any of these great creators, why have you not? Yet, sister woman, though 1 cannot consent to find a Mo/art or a Michael Angelo in your Bex, 15 cheerfully, and with the love that burns in depths of admiration, I acknowledge that you can do one thing as well as the best of us men — a greater thing than even Milton is known to have done, or Michael Angelo; you can (lie grandly, and asgod- aodesses would die. were goddesses mortal. If any distant worlds (which may be the case) are so far ahead of us Tellurians in optical resources as to see distinctly through their telescopes all that we do on earth, what is the grandest sighl to which we 25 ever treat them? St. Peter's at Rome, do you fancy, on Easter Sunday, or Luxor, or perhaps the Himalayas? Oh, no! my friend; suggest some- thing better; these are baubles to them; they see in other worlds, in their own, far better toys of the 30 same kind. These, take my word for it, are nothing. Do you give it up ? The finest thing, then, we have JOAN OF ARC 55 to show them is a scaffold on tho morning of execu- tion. I assure you there is a strong muster in those far telescopic worlds, on any such morning, of those who happen to find themselves occupying the right hemisphere for a peep at us. How, then, 5 if it be announced in some such telescopic world by those who make a livelihood of catching glimpses al our newspapers, whose language they have long since deciphered, that the poor victim in the morn- ing's sacrifice is a woman? How, if it be published 10 in that distant world that the sufferer wears upon her head in the eyes of many, the garlands of mar- tyrdom? How, if it should be some Marie Antoi- nette, the widowed queen, coming forward on the scaffold, and presenting to the morning air her 15 head, turned gray by sorrow — (hum liter of Caesars kneeling down humbly to kiss the guillotine, as one that worships death? How, if it were the noble Charlotte Corday, that in the bloom of youth, that with the loveliest of persons, that with homage 20 waiting upon her smiles wherever she turned her face to scatter them — homage that followed those smiles as surely as the carols of birds, after showers in spring, follow the reappearing sun and the racing of sunbeams over the hills — yet thought all these 25 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 martyr- 30 dom themselves, because they could not testify 56 JOAN OF ARC 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 5 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 con- ducted before mid-day, guarded by eight hundred 10 spearmen, to a platform of prodigious height, con- structed 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. Miche- 15 let, "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. 20 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 inter- ested in Joanna's personal appearance, it is really edifying to notice the ingenuity by which he draws 2.") into light from a dark corner a very unjust account of it, and neglects, though lying upon the highroad, a very pleasing one. Both are from English pens. Grafton, a chronicler, but little read, being a stiff- necked John Bull, thought fit to say that no wonder 30 Joanna should be a virgin, since her "foule face" was a satisfactory solution of that particular merit. JOAN OF ARC 57 Holinshead, on the other hand, a chronicler some- what later, every way more important, and at one time universally read, has given a very pleasing testimony to the interesting character of Joanna's person and engaging manners. Neither of theses 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; Holins- head took pains to inquire, and reports undoubtedly the general impression of France. But I cite theio case as illustrating M. Michelet's candor. 1 1 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 somber," but, I lament to add, "skeptical, Judaic, Satanic — in a word, antichristian." That Lord Byron should figure as a member of this diabolical corpora- tion will not surprise men. It will surprise them tc hear that Milton is one of its Satanic leaders. Many are the generous and eloquent Frenchmen, besides Chateaubriand, who have, in the course of the last thirty years, nobly suspended their own burning nationality, in order to render a more rapturous homage at the feet of Milton ; and some of them have raised Milton almost to a level with angelic natures. Not one of them has thought of looking for him below the earth. As to Shakspere, M. Michelet detects in him a most extraordinary mare's nest. It is this: he does "not recol- lect 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 u la gloire" never occurs in any Parisian journal. "The great English nation," says M. Michelet, "has one immense pro- found vice" — to wit, "pride." Why, really, that may be true ; but we have a neighbor not absolutely clear of an " immense pro- found vice," as like ours in color and shape as cherry to cherry. In short, M. Michelet thinks us, by fits and starts, admirable — 58 JOAN OF ARC 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 5 to myself appears so unspeakably grand. Yet, for a purpose, pointing not at Joanna, but at M. Michelet — viz., to convince him that an English- only that we are detestable ; and he would adore some of our authors, were it not that so intensely he could have wished to kick them. 2. M. Michelet thinks to lodge an arrow in our sides by a very odd remark upon Thomas a Kempis : which is, that a man of any conceivable European bl I -a ^inlander, suppose, or a Zantiote — might have written Tom ; only not an Englishman. Whether an Englishman could have forged Tom must remain a matter oi doubt, unless the thing had been tried long ago. Thai problem was intercepted forever by Tom's perverseness in choosing to manufacture himself. Vet, since nobody is better aware than M. Michelet that this very point of Kempis having manufactured Kempis is furiously ami 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 — whet her this forger, who rests in so much darkness, might not. after all, be of English blood. Tom, it may he feared, is known to modern English literature chiefly by an irreverenl 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 ver- sion of John Wesley. Anions those few. however, happens to be myself ; which arose from the accident of having, when a hoy of eleven, received a copy of the " De Imitatione Christi " as a bequest from a relation who died very young : from which eause, and from the external pret t ineSS of the hook — being a Glasgow reprint by the celebrated Foulis. and gayly bound — I was induced to look into it, and finally read it many times over, partly out of some sym- pathy which, even in those days. 1 had with its simplicity and de- votional fervor, hut mueh more from the Bavage delight I found in laughing at Tom's Latinity. That, I freely grant to M. Michelet JOAN OF ARC 59 man is capable of thinking more highly of La Pucelle than even her admiring countrymen — I shall, in parting, allude to one or two traits in Joanna's demeanor on the scaffold, and to one or two in that of the bystanders, which authorize 5 me in questioning- an opinion of his upon this mar- tyr's firmness. The reader ought to be reminded is inimitable. Yet, after all, it is not certain whether the original was Latin. But, however tlmt may have been, if it is possible that M. Michelel *can be accurate in Baying that there are no less than sixty French versions (not edition-, observe, bu1 separate versions) existing of the"De hnitatione," how prodigious must have heen the adaptation <>f the book to the religions heart of the fifteenth century I Exceptingthe Bible, but excepting tlmi only in Protes- tant lands, no l.ook known to man has had the same distinction. It is the most marvelous bibliographical fact on record. :;. our English girls, it Beems, are aa faulty in one way as we English males in another. None of us men could have written the Opera Omnia ot Mr. a Cempis ; aeither could any of our girls have assumed male attire like La Pncelle. But why? Because, says Michelet, English girls and German think so much of an indecorum. Well, thai is a good fault, generally speaking. But M. Michelet oughl to have remembered a fan in the ma rtvrologies which justi- fies both parties— the French heroine for doing, and the general choir of English sirls for not doing. A female saint, specially renowned in France, had, for a reason as weighty as Joanna's — viz., expressly to shield her modesty among men — worn a male military harness. That reason and that example authorized La Pucelle ; hut our English girls, as a body, have seldom any such * u If V Michelet 6cm bt accurate":— However, on consideration, this statement does doI depend on Michelet. The bibliographer Barbier has abso- lutely specified sixty in a Beparate dissertation, eoiwanU traductions, among those .v.n that have nol escaped the search. The Italian translations are said to be thirty. As t<> mere editions, not counting the early MSS. for half a century before printing was Introduced, tln.se in Latin amount to 2000, and those in French to loOO. 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, Blender rill of Scripture truth so passionately welcome, 60 JOAN OF ARC 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 5 Caesar; at times, also, where any knowledge of reason, and certainly no such saintly example, to plead. This excuses thou. Yet, still, if it is Indispensable to the national character that onr young women Bhould now and then trespass over the frontier of decorum, it then becomes ■ patriotic duty in me to assure M. Michelet that we have such anient females among as, and in a long scries; some detected in naval hospitals when too sick to remember their disguise; some on fields of battle; multi- tudes never detected a1 all ; some only suspected ; and others dis- charged without noise by war officers and other absurd people, in our navy, both royal and commercial, and generally from deep remembrances ol slighted love, women have sometimes served in disguise for many years, taking contentedly their daily allowance of burgoo, biscuit, or cannon-hulls — anything, in short, digestible or indigestible, that it mighl 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/ 1 Bo, for once. If. Michelet has an erratum to enter upon the fly-leaf of his hook in presentation copies. 4. But the lasl of these elm 1 1 it ions is the most lively. We Eng- lish, at Orleans, and after Orleans (which is not quite so extraordi- nary, if all were told), tied before the Maid of Arc. Yes. Bays M. Michelet, you did : deny it, if you can. Deny it, mon chert I don't mean to deny it. Running away, in many cases, is a thing so ex- cellent 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 li qui ne se rendeni pas" have deigned both to run and to shout, "Stinrf quipent!" 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. Bui 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 •• thowed their backs," did these English. (Hip, hip, hurrah ! three times three !) " Behind good walls they let themselves be taken," JOAN OF ARC 61 the Christian faith and morals existed, with the enmity that arises spontaneously in the world against the spiritual. But the martyr, though disloyal, was not supposed to be therefore anti- national; and still less was individually hateful. 5 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 na- tional grounds. Hence there would be a certainty * of calumny arising against her such as would notio 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 inno- cence could escape that. Now, had she really testi- fied this willingness on the scaffold, it would have is argued nothing at all but the weakness of a genial nature shrinking from the instant approach of tor- ment. And those will often pity that weakness mosl who, in their own persons, would yield to it least. Meantime, there never was a calumny 20 (Hip, Up ! nine times nine !) They " ran 08 fast us their leas could carry them," (Hurrah I twenty-seven times twenty-seven !) They •' ran before a girl '»; they did. (Hurrah ! eighty-one times eighty- out-:) This reminds one of criminal indictments on the old model in English courts, where (for fear the prisoner should escape) the crown lawyer varied the charge perhaps through forty counts. The law laid its guns so as to rake the accused at every possible angle. While the indictment was reading, he seemed a monster of crime in his own eyes ; and yet, after all, the poor fellow had, but committed one offence, and not always that. N.B. — Not having the French original at hand, I make my quotations from a friend's copy of Mr. Walter Kelly's translation ; which seems to me faith- ful, spirited, and idiomatically English — liable, in fact, only to the single reproach of occasional provincialisms. 62 JOAN OF ARC 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 5 at times seems to admire the Maid of Arc as much as I do, is the one sole writer among her friends who lends some countenance to this odious slander. His words are that, if she did not utter this word recant with her lips, she uttered it in her heart. in" 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 15 defending her. M. Michelet can only mean that, on a priori principles, every woman must be pre- sumed liable to such a weakness; that Joanna was a woman; ergo, that she was liable to such a weak- ness. That is, he only supposes her to have ut tered •jot he word by an argument which presumes it impos- sible for anybody 1<> 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 re- 25 corded by multitudes. What else, I demand, than mere weight of metal, absolute nobility of deport- ment, 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 :\o believed her a witch, tears of rapturous admiration ? "Ten thousand men," says M. Michelet himself — JOAN OF ARC 63 "ten thousand men wept"; and of these ten thou- sand the majority were political enemies knitted together by cords of superstition. What else was it but her constancy, united with her angelic gentle- ness, that drove the fanatic English soldier — who 5 had sworn to throw a fagot on her scaffold as his tribute of abhorrence, that did so, that fulfilled his vow — suddenly to turn away a penitent for life, saying everywhere that he had seen a dove rising upon wings to heaven from the ashes where she had LO 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 . t hen I cite the clos- ing act of her lite as valid on her behalf, were all other testimonies against her. The executioner had been IB directed to apply his torch from below. He did so. The fiery smoke rose upward in billowing volumes. A Dominican monk was then standing almost at her side. Wrapped up in his sublime office, he saw not the danger, but still persisted in his prayers. Even -jo 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; bid- ding him with her last breath to care for his own 25 preservation, but to leave her to God. That girl, whose latest breath ascended in this sublime expres- sion 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. 30 64 JOAN OF ARC 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 to- gether into sleep; together both sometimes kindle into dreams. When the mortal mists were gather- loing 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. 15 The shepherd girl that had delivered France — she, from her dungeon, she, from her baiting at the stake, she, from her duel with fire, as she entered her last dream — saw Domremy, saw the fountain of Domremy, saw the pomp of the forests in which 20 her childhood had wandered. That Easter festival which man had denied to her languishing heart — that resurrection of springtime, which the dark- ness of dungeons had intercepted from ho\ hunger- ing after the glorious liberty of forests — were by 25 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 30 created, in this farewell dream, a second childhood, innocent as the first; but not, like that, sad with the JOAN OF ARC 65 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 5 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; victori- ously she had tasted the stings of death. For all, 10 except this comfort from her farewell dream, she had died — died amid the tears of ten thousand enemies — died amid the drums and trumpets of armies — died amid peals redoubling upon peals, volleys upon volleys, from the saluting clarions of 15 martyrs. Bishop of Beauvais! because the guilt-burdened man is in dreams haunted and waylaid by the most frightful of his crimes, and because upon that fluc- tuating mirror — rising (like the mocking mirrors20 of mirage in Arabian deserts) from the fens of death — most of all are reflected the sweet countenances which the man has laid in ruins ; therefore I know, bishop, that you also, entering your final dream, saw Domremy. That fountain, of which the 25 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 foun- tain, bishop, you saw a woman seated, that hid her 30 face. But, as you draw near, the woman raises 66 JOAN OF ABC her wasted features. Would Domremy know them again for the features of her child? Ah, but you know them, bishop, well ! Oh, mercy ! what a groan was that which the servants, waiting outside 5 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 10 the forests to which he prays for pity, will he fino 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 15 to departed hours. There is the great English Prince, Regent of France. There is my Lord oi Winchester, the princely cardinal, that died and made no sign. There is the bishop of Beau va is, clinging to the shelter of the thickets. What build- 20ing is that which hands so rapid are raising? Is it a martyr's scaffold? Will they burn the child of Domremy a second time ? No ; it is a tribunal that rises to the clouds; and two nations stand around it, waiting for a trial. Shall my Lord of Beauvais 25 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 arrayejl, the trum- 30 pets are sounding, the judge is taking his place. Oh, but this is sudden! My lord, have you no counsel? JOAN OF ARC 67 " Counsel I have none ; in heaven above, or on earth beneath, counselor 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; 5 but yet I will search in it for somebody to take your brief; I know of somebody that will be your counsel. Who is this that cometh from Domremy? Who is she in bloody coronation robes from Rheims? Who is she that cometh with blackened flesh from 10 walking the furnaces of Rouen? This is she, the shepherd girl, counselor 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 15 — when heaven and earth are silent. THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH Section I — The Glory of Motion Some twenty or more years before I matriculated at Oxford, Mr. Palmer, at that time M.P. for Bath, had accomplished two things, very hard to do on our little planet, the Earth, however cheap they 5 may be held by eccentric people m comets: he had invented mail coaches, and he had married the daughter of a duke. Be was. therefore, jusl twice as great a man as Galileo, who did certainly invent (or, which is the same thing, 1 discover) the satellites 10 of Jupiter, those very next things extant to mail coaches in the two capital pretensions of speed and keeping time, hut, on the other hand, who did not marry the daughter of a duke. These mail coaches, as organized by Mr. Palmer, I5are entitled to a circumstantial notice from myself, having had so large a share in developing the an- archies of my subsequent dreams: an agency which they accomplished, 1st, through velocity at that time unprecedented — for they first revealed 20 the glory of motion; 2dly, through grand effects i " The tame thing":-' Thus, in the calendar of the Church Festivals, the discovery of the true cross (by Helen, the mother of Constantine) is recorded (and, one might think, with the express consciousness of sarcasm) as the Ttun ntton of the Cross. 68 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 69 for the eye between lamplight and the darkness upon solitary roads; 3dly, through animal beauty and power so often displayed in the class of horses selected for this mail service; 4thly, through the conscious presence of a central intellect, that, in 5 the midst of vast distances 1 — of storms, of dark- ness, of danger — overruled all obstacles into one steady cooperation to a national result. For my own feeling, this post-office service spoke as by some mighty orchestra, where a thousand instruments, 10 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 perfec- tion of harmony like that of heart, brain, and lungs in a healthy animal organization. But, finally, 15 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 over my dreams by terror and terrific beauty, lay in the awful political mission which at 20 that time it fulfilled. The mail coach it was that distributed over the face of the land, like the opening of apocalyptic vials, the heart-shaking news of Trafalgar, of Salamanca, of Vittoria, of Waterloo. These were the harvests that, in the grandeur of 25 their reaping, redeemed the tears and blood in which they had been sown. Neither was the mean- 1 " Vast distances" : — One case was familiar to mail-coach trav- elers where two mails in opposite directions, north and south, starting at the same minute from points six hundred miles apart, met almost constantly at a particular bridge which bisected the total distance. 70 THE ENGLISH MAIL LOACH est peasant so much below the grandeur and the sorrow of the times as to confound battles such as these, which wen- gradually molding; the des- tinies of Christendom, with the vulgar conflicts of 5 ordinary warfare, so often no more than gladiatorial trials of national prowess. The victories of England in this stupendous contest rose of themselves as natural Te Deums to heaven; and it was felt by the thoughtful that such victories, at such a crisis 10 of general prostration, were not more beneficial to ourselves than finally to France, our enemy, and to the nations of all western or central Europe, through whose pusillanimity it was that the French domination had prospered. 15 The mail coach, as the national organ for publish- ing these mighty events, thus diffusively influen- tial, became itself a spiritualized and glorified object to an impassioned heart; and naturally, in the Oxford of that day. nil hearts were impassioned, 20as being all (or nearly all) in early manhood. In most universities there is one single college; in Oxford there were f i \e-and-t wen t y . all of which were peopled by young men, the Mite of their own generation; not boys, but men: none under eight- 26een. In some of these many colleges the custom permitted the student to keep what are called "short terms"; that is, the four terms of Michaelmas, Lent. Easter, and Act, were kept by a residence'. in the aggregate, of ninety-one days, or thirteen 30 weeks. Under this interrupted residence, it was possible that a student might have a reason for THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 71 going down to his home four times in the year. This made eight journeys to and fro. But, as these homes lay dispersed through all the shires of the island, and most of us disdained all coaches except Majesty's mail, no city out of London could pre- 5 tend to so extensive a connection with Mr. Palmer's establishment as Oxford. Three mails, at the least, 1 remember as passing every day through Oxford, and benefiting by my personal patronage — viz., the Worcester, the Gloucester, and the 10 Holyhead mail. Naturally, therefore, it became a point of some interest with us, whose journeys revolved every six weeks on an average, to look a little into the executive details of the system. With some of these Mr. Palmer had no concern; 15 they rested upon by-laws enacted by posting-houses for their own benefit, and upon other by-laws, equally stern, enacted by the inside passengers for the illustration of their own haughty exclu- siveness. These last were of a nature to rouse 20 our scorn; from which the transition was not very long to systematic mutiny. Up to this time, say L804, or 1805 (the year of Trafalgar), it had been the fixed assumption of the four inside people (as an old tradition of all public carriages derived from 25 the reign of Charles II) that they, the illustrious quaternion, constituted a porcelain variety of the human race, whose dignity would have been com- promised by exchanging one word of civility with the three miserable delf-ware outsides. Even to 30 have kicked an outsider might have been held to 72 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH attaint the foot concerned in that operation, so that, perhaps, it would have required an act of Parliament to restore its purity of blood. What words, then, could express the horror, and the 5 sense of treason, in that case, which had happened, where all three outsides (the trinity of Pariahs) made a vain attempt t<> sit down at the same break- fast-table or dinner-table with the consecrated four? I myself witnessed such an attempt ; ami on that 10 occasion a benevolent old gentleman endeavored to soothe his three holy associates, by suggesting that, if the outsiders were indicted for this criminal attempt at the next assizes, the court would regard it as a case of lunacy or delirium tremens rather 15 than of treason. England owes much of her L r r:in- deur to the depth of the aristocratic element in her social composition, when pulling against her strong democracy. I am not the man to laugh at it. Hut sometimes, undoubtedly, it expressed itself 20 in comic shapes. The course taken with the in- fatuated outsiders, in the particular attempt which I have noticed, was that the waiter, beckoning them away from the privileged 8aUe-d^manger t Bang out. "This way. my good men." and then 25 enticed these good men away to the kitchen. But that plan had not always answered. Sometimes. though rarely, cases occurred where the intruders, being stronger than usual, or more vicious than usual, resolutely refused to budge, and bo far carried 30 their point as to have a separate table arranged for themselves in a corner of the general room. Yet, THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 73 if an Indian screen could be found ample enough to plant them out from the very eyes of the high table, or dais, it then became possible to assume as a fiction of law that the three delf fellows, after all, were not present. They could be ignored by 5 the porcelain men, under the maxim that objects not appearing and objects not existing are governed by the same logical construction. Such being, at that time, the usage of mail- coaches, what was to be done by us of young 10 Oxford? We, the most aristocratic of people, who were addicted to the practice of looking down superciliously even upon the Lnsides themselves as often very questionable characters — were we, by voluntarily going outside, to court indignities ? 15 It our dress and bearing sheltered us generallv from the suspicion of being "raff" (the name at that period f«»r " snobs " x ). we really were such con- structively by the place we assumed. If we did not submit to the deep shadow of eclipse, we entered20 at least the skirts of its penumbra. And the anal- ogy of theaters was valid against us, — where no man can complain of the annoyances incident to the pit or gallery, having his instant remedy in paying the higher price of the boxes. But the 25 soundness of this analogy we disputed. In the case of the theater, it cannot be pretended that i " Snob*:' and its antithesis, " nobs," arose among the internal factions of shoemakers perhaps ten years later. Possibly enough, the terms may have existed much earlier; but they were then first made known, picturesquely and effectively, by a trial at some assizes which happened to fix the public attention. 74 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH the inferior situation- have any separate attractions, unless the pit may be -apposed to have an advan- tage for the purposes of the critic or the dramatic reporter. But the critic or reporter is a rarity. 5 For most people, the sole benefit is in the price. Now, on the contrary, the outside of the mail had its own incommunicable advantages. These we could not forego. The higher price we would willingly have paid, but not the price connected with the 10 condition of riding inside; which condition we pro- nounced insufferable. The air, the freedom of prospect, the proximity to the horses, the elevation of seat: these were what we required; hut. above all, the certain anticipation of purchasing occasional 15 opportunities of driving. Such was the difficulty which pressed us; and under the coercion of this difficulty we instituted a searching inquiry into the true quality and valua- tion of the different apartments about the mail. 20 We conducted this inquiry on metaphysical prin- ciples; and it was ascertained satisfactorily that the roof of the coach, which by some weak men had been called the attics, and by some the garrets, was in reality the drawing-room; in which draw- 25ing-room the box was the chief ottoman or sofa; whilst it appeared that the inside, which had been traditionally regarded as the only room tenant- able by gentlemen, was. in fact, the coal cellar in disguise. -so Great wits jump. The very same idea had not long before struck the celestial intellect of China. THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 75 Amongst the presents carried out by our first em- bassy to that country was a state coach. It had been specially selected as a personal gift by George III; but the exact mode of using it was an intense mystery to Pekin. The ambassador, indeed (Lord 5 .Macartney), had made some imperfect explanations upon this point; but, as His Excellency commu- nicated these in a diplomatic whisper at the very moment of his departure, the celestial intellect was very feebly illuminated, and it became necessary 10 to call a cabinet council on the grand state question, "Where was the Emperor to sit?" The hammer- cloth happened to be unusually gorgeous; and, partly on that consideration, but partly also because the box offered the most elevated seat, was nearest 15 to the moon, and undeniably went foremost, it was resolved by acclamation that the box was the imperial throne, and, for the scoundrel who drove — he might sit where he could find a perch. The horses, therefore, being harnessed, solemnly his 20 imperial majesty ascended his new English throne under a flourish of trumpets, having the first lord of the treasury on his right hand, and the chief jester on his left. Pekin gloried in the spectacle; and in the whole flowery people, constructively 25 present by representation, there was but one dis- contented person, and that was the coachman. This mutinous individual audaciously shouted, " Where am / to sit?" But the privy council, incensed by his disloyalty, unanimously opened the 30 door, and kicked him into the inside. He had all 76 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH the inside places to himself; but such is the rapacity of ambition that he was still dissatisfied. "I say," he cried out in an extempore petition addressed to the Emperor through the window — "I say, how 5am I to catch hold of the reins?" — 'Anyhow." was the imperial answer; "don't trouble me, man, in my glory. How catch t he reins ? Why. through the windows, through the keyholes — anyhow." Finally this contumacious coachman lengthened 10 the checkstrings into a sort of jury rein- communi- cating with the horses; with these he drove as Bteadily as Pekin had any right to expect. The Emperor returned after the briefest of circuits; he descended in great pomp from his throne, with 15 the severest resolution never to remount it. A pub- lic thanksgiving was ordered for his majesty's happy escape from the disease of a broken neck; and the State coach was dedicated thenceforward as a votive offering to the god Fo Fo — whom the 20 learned more accurately called Fi Fi. A revolution of this same Chinese character did young Oxford of that era effect in the constitution of mail-coach society. It was a perfect French Revolution; and we had good reason to say. <; those of the public, were as five shillings to six- pence, here again young Oxford had the advantage. Bui the contest was ruinous to the principles of the Btables connected with the mails. This whole is corporation was constantly bribed, rebribed, and often BUr-rebribed : a mail-coach yard was like the hustings in a contested election; and a horsekeeper, OStler, or helper, was held by the philosophical at that time to be the most corrupt character in the 20 nation. There was an impression upon the public mind, natural enough from the continually augmenting velocity of the mail, but quite erroneous, that an outside seat on this class of carriages was a post of 25 danger. On the contrary, I maintained that, if a man had become nervous from some gypsy predic- tion in his childhood, allocating to a particular moon now approaching some unknown danger, and he should inquire earnestly, " Whither can 1 30 fly for shelter? Is a prison the safest retreat? or 78 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH a lunatic hospital? or the British Museum?" I should have replied, "Oh no; I'll tell you what to do. Take lodgings for the next forty days on the box of his Majesty's mail. Nobody can touch you 5 there. If it is by bills at ninety days after date that you are made unhappy — if noters and pro- testers are the sort of wretches whose astrological shadows darken the house of life — then note you what I vehemently protest: viz., that, no matter 10 though the sheriff and under-sheriff in every county should be running after you with his posse, touch a hair of your head ho cannot whilst you keep house and have your legal domicile on the box of the mail. It is felony to stop the mail; even the sheriff cannot 15 do that. And an extra touch of the whip to the leaders (no great matter if it grazes the sheriff) at any time guarantees your safety." In fact, a bedroom in a quiet house seems a safe enough re- treat; yet it is liable to its own notorious nuisances 20— to robbers by night, to rat-, to fire. But the mail laughs at these terrors. To robbers, the an- swer is packed up and ready for delivery in the barrel of the guard's blunderbuss. Rats again ! there are none about mail coaches any more than 25 snakes in Von Troil's Iceland; 1 except, indeed, now and then a parliamentary rat, who always hides his shame in what I have shown to be the "coal lii Von Troll's Iceland " ; — The allusion is to a well-known chapter in Von Troil's work, entitled, "Concerning the Snakes of Iceland." The entire chapter consists of these six words— " Thert are no snakes in Iceland." THE EXGLISII MAIL COACH 79 cellar." And, as to fire, I never knew but one in a mail coach; which was in the Exeter mail, and caused by an obstinate sailor bound to Devonport. Jack, making light of the law and the lawgiver that had set their faces against his offense, insisted on 5 taking up a forbidden scat ' in the rear of the roof, from which he could exchange his own yarns with those of the guard. No greater offense was then known to mail coaches; it was treason, it was Icesa majesta8, it was by tendency arson; and the ashes 10 of Jack's pipe, falling among the straw of the hinder boot, containing the mail bags, raised a flame which (aided by the wind of our motion) threatened a revolution in the republic of letters. Yet even this left the sanctity of the box un violated. In digni-15 1" Forbidden seat": — The very sternest code of rules was enforced upon the mail by the Post-office. Throughout England, only three ontsidea were allowed, of whom one was to sit on the box, and the other two immediately behind the box; none, under any pretext, to come near the guard; an indispensable caution; since else, under the guise of a passenger, a robber might by any one of a thousand advantages — which sometimes arc created, but always are favored, by the animation <»f frank social intercourse — have disarmed the guard. Beyond the Scottish border, the regula- tion was so far relaxed as to allow of four ontsides, but not relaxed at all as to the mode of placing them. One, as before, was seated on the box, and the other three on the front of the roof, with a determinate and ample separation from the little insulated chair of the gnard. This relaxation was conceded by way of compensating to Scotland her disadvantages in point of population. England, by the superior density of her population, might always count upon a large fund of profits in the fractional trips of chance passengers riding for short distances of two or three stages. In Scotland this chance counted for much less. And therefore, to make good the deficiency, Scotland was allowed a compensatory profit upon one extra passenger. 80 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH ficd repose, the coachman and myself sat on, resting with benign composure upon our knowledge that the fire would have burned Its way through four inside passengers before it could reach ourselves. 5 I remarked to the coachman, with a quotation from Virgil's "iEneid" really too hackneyed — "Jam proximus aidet Ucalegon." But, recollecting that the VirgiliaD pan ofthecoach- 10 man's education might have been neglected, I inter- preted so far as bo say thai perhaps at that moment the flame- were catching hold of our worthy brother and inside passenger, Ucalegon. The coachman made n«. answer. — which is my own way when a is stranger addresses me cither in Syriac or in Coptic; but by his faint skeptical smile he seemed to insinu- ate that he knew Letter. — for that Ucalegon, as it happened, was not in the waybill, and therefore COUld not have been hooked. 20 No dignity is perfect which doe- qoI at some point ally itself with the mysterious. The connection of the mail with the state and the executive govern- ment — a connection obvious, but yet not strictly defined — gave to the whole mail establishment 25 an official grandeur which did us service on the roads, and invested us with seasonable terrors. Not the less impressive were those terrors because their legal limits were imperfectly ascertained. Look at those turnpike gates: with what deferential 30 hurry, with what an obedient start, they fly open THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 81 at our approach] Look at that long line of carts and carters ahead, audaciously usurping the very crest of the road. Ah! the traitors, they do not hear us as yet ; but, as soon as the dreadful blast of our horn reaches them with proclamation of our ap- •'• proach, see with what frenzy of trepidation they fly to their horses' lead-, and deprecate our wrath by the precipitation of their crane-neck quarterings. Treason they feel to be their crime: each individual carter feels himself under the ban of confiscation 10 and attainder; his blood IS attainted through six generations; and nothing is wanting but the heads- man and his ax, the block and the sawdust, to close Up the vista of his horrors. What ! shall it be within benefit of clergy to delay the king's mes-15 sage on the high road? — to interrupt the great respirations, ebb and Hood, systole and diastole, of the national intercourse? — to endanger the safety of tidings running day and night between all nations and languages? Or can it be fancied, amongst the 20 weakest of men, that the bodies of the criminals will be given up to their widows for Christian burial? Now, the doubts which were raised as to our powers did more to wrap them in terror, by wrapping them in uncertainty, than could have been effected by 25 the sharpest definitions of the law from the Quarter Sessions. We, on our parts (we, the collective mail, I mean), did our utmost to exalt the idea of our privileges by the insolence with which we wielded them. Whether this insolence rested upon 30 law that gave it a sanction, or upon conscious power 82 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH that haughtily dispensed with that sanction, equally it spoke from a potential station; and the agent, in each particular insolence of the moment, was viewed reverentially, as one having authority. 5 Sometimes after breakfast his Majesty's mail would become frisky; and, in its difficult wheelings amongst the intricacies of early markets, it would upset an apple cart, a cart loaded with eggs, &c. Huge was the affliction and dismay, awful was the 10 smash. I, as far as possible, endeavored in such a case to represent the conscience and moral sensi- bilities of the mail; and. when wildernesses of eggs were lying poached under horses' hoofs, then would I stretch forth my hands in sorrow, saying (in words 15 too celebrated at that time, from the false echoes 1 of Marengo), "Ah! wherefore 1 have we not time to weep over you?" — which was evidently impos- sible, since, in fact, we had not time to Laugh over them. Tied to a post-office allowance in some cases 20 of fifty minutes for eleven miles, could the royal mail pretend to undertake the offices of sympathy and condolence? Could it be expected to provide tears for the accidents of the road? If even it seemed to trample on humanity, it did so. I felt, 25 in discharge of its own more peremptory duties. Upholding the morality of the mail, a fortiori I 1 "False echoes"": — Yes, false! for the words ascribed to Napoleon, as breathed to the memory <>f Desaix, never were ottered at all. They stand in the Bame category of theatrical fictions as the cry of the foundering line-of-battle ship Vengeur,a& the vaunt of General Cambronne at Waterloo, " La Garde meurt, rnais ne se rend pas," or as the repartees of Talleyrand. THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 83 upheld its rights; as a matter of duty, I stretched to the uttermost its privilege of imperial precedency, and astonished weak minds by the feudal powers which I hinted to be lurking constructively in the charters of this proud establishment. Once I re- 5 member being on the box of the Holyhead mail. between Shrewsbury and Oswestry, when a tawdry thing from Birmingham, some "Tallyho" or "High- flyer/ 1 all flaunting with green and gold, came up alongside of us. What a contrast to our royal 10 simplicity of form and color in this plebeian wretch ! The single ornament on our dark ground of chocolate color was the mighty shield of the imperial arms, but emblazoned in proportions as modest as a signet ring bears to a seal of office. Even this was dis-15 played only on a single panel, whispering, rather than proclaiming, our relations to the mighty state; whilst the beast from Birmingham, our green-and- gold friend from false, fleeting, perjured Brummagem, had as much writing and painting on its sprawling 20 flanks as would have puzzled a decipherer from the tombs of Luxor. For some time this Birmingham machine ran along by our side — a piece of famil- iarity that already of itself seemed to me sufficiently Jacobinical. But all at once a movement of the 25 horses announced a desperate intention of leaving us behind. " Do you see that?" I said to the coach- man. — "I see," was his short answer. He was wide awake, — yet he waited longer than seemed prudent; for the horses of our audacious opponent 30 had a disagreeable air of freshness and power. But 84 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH his motive was loyal; his wish was that the Bir- mingham conceit should he full-blown before he froze it. When thai seemed right, he unloosed, or, to speak by a stronger word, he sprang, his known 5 resources: he slipped our royal horses like cheetahs, or hunting leopards, after the affrighted game. How they could retain such a reserve of fiery power after the work they had accomplished seemed hard to explain. But on our side, besides the physical 10 superiority, was a tower of moral strength, namely the king's name, "which they upon the adverse faction wanted." Passing them without an effort, as it seemed, we threw them into the rear with so lengthening an interval between us as proved in i."> itself the bitterest mockery of their presumption; whilst our guard blew back a shattering blast of triumph that was really too painfully full of derision. I mention this little incident for its connection with what followed. A Welsh rustic. Bitting behind 20 me, asked if I had not felt my heart bum within me during the progress of the race'.' I said, with philosophic calmness, No; because we were not racing with a mail, so that no glory could be gained. In fact, it was sufficiently mortifying that such a •_'.". Birmingham thing should dare to challenge us. The Welshman replied that he didn't see that; for that a cat might look at a king, and a Brummagem coach might lawfully race the Holyhead mail. " Race us, if you like," I replied, "though even thai 30 has an air of sedition ; but not beat us. This would have been treason; and for its own sake I am glad THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 85 that the 'Tally ho' was disappointed." So dis- Batisfied did the Welshman seem with this opinion that at last I was obliged to tell him a very fine st<»rv from one of our elder dramatists: viz., that once, in some far Oriental kingdom, when the 5 sultan of all the land, with his princes, ladies, and chief omralis, were flying their falcons, a hawk suddenly flew at a majestic eagle, and. in defiance of the eagle's natural advantages, in contempt also of the eagle's traditional royalty, and before the 10 whole assembled field of astonished spectators from Agra and Lahore, killed the eagle on the spot. Amazement seize. I the sultan at the unequal con- test, and burning admiration for its unparalleled result. lie commanded that the hawk should bel6 brought before him; he caressed the bird with enthusiasm; and he ordered that, for the commemo- ration of his matchless couraire, a diadem of gold and rubies should be solemnly placed on the hawk's head, but then that, immediately after this solemn 20 coronation, the bird should be led off to execution, as the most valiant indeed of traitors, but not the less a traitor, as having dared to rise rebelliously against his liege lord and anointed sovereign, the eagle. "Now," said I to the Welshman, "to you25 and me, as men of refined sensibilities, how painful it would have been that this poor Brummagem brute, the 'Tallyho/ in the impossible case of a victory over us, should have been crowned with Birmingham tinsel, with paste diamonds and Roman 30 pearls, and then led off to instant execution.'' 86 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH The Welshman doubted if that could be warranted by law. And, when I hinted at the 6th of Edward Longshanks, chap. 18, for regulating the precedency of coaches, as being probably the statute relied on 5 for the capital punishment of such offenses, he re- plied dryly that, if the attempt to pass a mail really were treasonable, it was a pity that the "Tallyho" appeared to have so imperfect an acquaintance with law. io The modern modes of traveling cannot compare with the old mail-coach system in grandeur and power. They boast of more velocity. — not, how- ever, as a consciousness, but as a fact of our lifeless knowledge, resting upon alien evidence: as, for 15 instance, because somebody says that we have gone fifty miles in the hour, though we are far from feeling it as a personal experience; or upon the evidence of a result, as that actually we find our- selves in York four hours after leaving London. 20 Apart from such an assertion, or such a result. I myself am little aware of the pace. Hut, seated on the old mail coach, we needed no evidence out of ourselves to indicate the velocity. On this system the word was not magna loquimur, as upon 25 railways, but vivimus. Yes, "magna rin'mus"; we do not make verbal ostentation of our grandeur-, we realize our grandeurs in act, and in the very experience of life. The vital experience of the glad animal sensibilities made doubts impossible 30 on the question of our speed ; we heard our speed, we saw it, we felt it as a thrilling; and this speed THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 87 was not the product of blind insensate agencies, that had no sympathy to give, but was incarnated in the fiery eyeballs of the noblest amongst brutes, in his dilated nostril, spasmodic muscles, and thun- der-beating hoofs. The sensibility of the horse, 5 uttering itself in the maniac light of his eye, might be the last vibration of such a movement; the glory of Salamanca might be the first. But the intervening links that connected them, that spread the earthquake of battle into the eyeballs of the 10 horse, were the heart of man and its electric thrill- ings — kindling in the rapture of the fiery strife, and then propagating its own tumults by conta- gious shouts and gestures to the heart of his servant the horse. But now, on the new system of trav-15 eling, iron tubes and boilers have disconnected man's heart from the ministers of his locomotion. Nile nor Trafalgar has power to raise an extra bub- ble in a steam kettle. The galvanic cycle is broken up forever; man's imperial nature no longer sends 20 itself forward through the electric sensibility of the horse; the interagencies are gone in the mode of communication between the horse and his mas- ter out of which grew so many aspects of sublimity under accidents of mists that hid, or sudden blazes 25 that revealed, of mobs that agitated, or midnight solitudes that awed. Tidings fitted to convulse all nations must henceforwards travel by culinary process; and the trumpet that once announced from afar the laureled mail, heart-shaking when 30 heard screaming on the wind and proclaiming 88 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH itself through the darkness to every village or soli- tary house on its route, has now given way forever to the pot-wallopings of the boiler. Thus have perished multiform openings for public expressions 5 of interest, scenical yet natural, in great national tidings, — for revelations of faces and groups that could not offer themselves amongst the fluctuating mobs of a railway station. The gatherings of gazers about a laureled mail had one center, and acknowl- edged one sole interest. But the crowds attending at a railway station have as little unity as running water, and own as many centers as there are sepa- rate carriages in the train. How else, for example, than as a constant watcher i.-. for the dawn, and for the London mail that in sum- mer months entered about daybreak amongst the lawny thickets of Marlborough forest, couldst thou, sweet Fanny of the Bath road, have become the glorified inmate of my dream-'.' Yet Fanny, as 20 the loveliest young woman for face and person that perhaps in my whole life I have beheld, merited the station which even now. from a distance of forty years, she holds in my dreams; yes. though by links of natural association she brings along •_•;, with her a troop of dreadful creatures, fabulous and not fabulous, that are more abominable to the heart than Fanny and the dawn are delightful. Miss Fanny of the Hath road, strictly speaking. lived at a mile's distance from that road, but came 30 so continually to meet the mail that I on my frequent transits rarely missed her. and naturally connected THE ENGLISH MAIL CO Aril 89 her image with the great thoroughfare where only I had ever seen her. Why she came so punctually I do not exactly know; but I believe with some burden of commissions, to be executed in Bath, which had gathered to her own residence as a cen- 5 tral rendezvous for converging them. The mail coachman who drove the Bath mail and wore the royal livery 1 happened to be Fanny's grandfather. A good man he was. that loved his beautiful grand- daughter, and, loving her wisely, was vigilant over 10 her deportment in any ease where young Oxford might happen to be concerned. Did my vanity then BUggesI that I myself, individually, could fall within the line of his terrors? Certainly not, as regarded any physical pretensions that I could 15 plead; for Fanny (as a chance passenger from her own neighborhood once told me) counted in her train a hundred and ninety-nine professed admirers, if not open aspirants to her favor; and probably not one of the whole brigade but excelled myself 20 in personal advantages. Ulysses even, with the unfair advantage of his accursed bow, could hardly have undertaken that amount of suitors. So the i " Wore the muni livery " : — The general impression was that tin- royal livery belonged of right to the mail coachmen as their professional dress. But that was an error. To the guard it did belong, I believe, and was obviously essential as an official war- rant, and as a means of instant identification for his person, in the discharge of his important public duties. But the coachman, and especially if his place in the series did not connect him immedi- ately with London and the General Post-Office, obtained the scarlet coat only as an honorary distinction after long (or, if not long, trying and special) service. 90 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH danger might have seemed slight — only that woman is universally aristocratic; it is amongst her nobilities of heart that she is so. Now, the aristocratic distinctions in my favor might easily 5 with Miss Fanny have compensated my physical deficiencies. Did I then make love to Fanny? Why, yes; about as much love as one could make whilst the mail was changing horses — a process which, ten years later, did not occupy above eighty 10 seconds; but then, — viz., about Waterloo — it occupied five times eighty. Now, four hundred seconds offer a field quite ample enough for whisper- ing into a young woman's ear a greal deal of truth, and (by the way of parenthesis) some trifle of false- 15 hood. Grandpapa did right, therefore, to watch me. And yet, as happens too often to the grandpapas of earth in a contest with the admirers of grand- daughters, how vainly would he have watched me had I meditated any evil whisper to Fanny! 20 She, it is my belief, would have protected herself against any man's evil suggestions. But he, as the result showed, could not have intercepted the opportunities for such suggestions. Yet, why not? Was he not active ? Was he not blooming ? Bloom- 25ing he was as Fanny herself. " Say, all our praises why should lords " Stop, that's not the line. " Say, all our roses why should girls engross ? " The coachman showed rosy blossoms on his face 30 deeper even than his granddaughter's — his being THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 91 drawn from the ale cask, Fanny's from the fountains of the dawn. But, in spite of his blooming face, some infirmities he had; and one particularly in which he too much resembled a crocodile. This lay in a monstrous inaptitude for turning round. 5 The crocodile, I presume, owes that inaptitude to the absurd length of his back; but in our grand- papa it arose rather from the absurd breadth of his back, combined, possibly, with some growing stiff- ness in his legs. Now, upon this crocodile infirmity 10 of his I planted a human advantage for tendering my homage to Miss Fanny. In defiance of all his honorable vigilance, no sooner had he presented to us his mighty Jovian back (what a field for dis- playing to mankind his royal scarlet!), whilst in- 15 specting professionally the buckles, the straps, and the silvery turrets 1 of his harness, than I raised Miss Fanny's hand to my lips, and, by the mixed tender- ness and respectfulness of my manner, caused her easily to understand how happy it would make me 20 to rank upon her list as No. 10 or 12: in which case a few casualties amongst her lovers (and, observe, they hanged liberally in those days) might have promoted me speedily to the top of the tree; as, on the other hand, with how much loyalty of sub- 25 1 " Turrets: — As one who loves and venerates Chaucer for his unrivaled merits of tenderness, of picturesque characterization, and of narrative skill, I noticed with great pleasure that the word torrettes is used by him to designate the little devices through which the reins are made to pass. This same word, in the same exact sense, I heard uniformly used by many scores of illustrious mail coachmen to whose confidential friendship I had the honor of being admitted in my younger days, 92 THE EN Q LIS II MAIL COACH mission I acquiesced by anticipation in her award, supposing that she should plant me in the very rearward of her favor, as No. 199 + 1. Most truly I loved this beautiful and ingenuous girl; and, had 5 it not been for the Bath mail, timing all courtships by post-office allowance, heaven only knows what might have come of it. People talk of being over head and car- in love; now. the mail was the cause that I sank only over ears in love. — which, you in know, still left a trifle of brain to overlook the whole conduct of the affair. Ah. render! when I look back upon those days, it seems to me that all things change — all things perish. " Perish the roses and I he palms of kings " : 15 perish even the crowns and trophies of Waterloo: thunder and lightning are not the thunder and lightning which I remember. Roses are degener- ating. The Fannies of our island — though this I say with reluctance — are not visibly improving ; •jo and the Bath road is notoriously superannuated. Crocodiles, you will say. are stationary. Mr. Waterton tells me that the crocodile does not change, — that a cayman, in fact, or an alligator, is just as good for riding upon as he was in the time of the ■r. Pharaohs. Thai may be; but the reason is that the crocodile does not live fast — he is a slow coach. I believe it is generally understood among natu- ralists that the crocodile is a blockhead. It is my own impression that the Pharaohs were also bloek- 30 heads. Now, as the Pharaohs and the crocodile domineered over Egyptian society, this accounts THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 93 for a singular mistake that prevailed through in- numerable generations on the Nile. The crocodile made the ridiculous blunder of supposing man to be meant chiefly for his own eating. Man, taking a different view of the subject, naturally met that 5 mistake by another: he viewed the crocodile as a thing sometimes to worship, but always to run away from. And this continued till Mr. Waterton 1 changed the relations between the animals. The mode of escaping from the reptile he showed to be not byio running away, but by leaping on its back booted and spurred. The tw«» animals had misunderstood each other. The use of the crocodile has now been cleared up — viz., to be ridden ; and the final cause of man is that he may improve the health of their, crocodile by riding him a-fox-hunting before break- fast. And it is pretty certain that any crocodile who has been regularly hunted through the season, and is master of the weight he carries, will take a six-barred gate now as well as ever he would have 20 done in the infancy of the pyramids. If, therefore, the crocodile does not change, all things else undeniably do: even the shadow of the 1 "Mr. Waterton ": — Had the reader lived through the last gen- eration, he would Tint need to be told that, some thirty or thirty-live years back, Mr. Waterton, a distinguished country gentleman of ancient family in Northumberland, publicly mounted and rode in top boots a savage old crocodile, that was restive and very imperti- nent, but all to no purpose. The crocodile jibbed and tried to kick, but vainly. He was no more able to throw the squire than Sinbad was to throw the old scoundrel who used his back without paying for it, until he discovered a mode (slightly immoral, perhaps, though some think not) of murdering the old fraudulent jockey, and so circuitously of unhorsing him. 94 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH pyramids grows less. And often the restoration in vision of Fanny and the Bath road makes me too pathetically sensible of that truth. Out of the dark- ness, if I happen to call back the image of Fanny, 5 uprises suddenly from a gulf of forty years a rose in June ; or, if I think for an instant of the rose in June, uprises the heavenly face of Fanny. One after the other, like the antiphonies in the choral service, rise Fanny and the rose in June, then back again the 10 rose in June and Fanny. Then come both together, as in a chorus — roses and Fannies, Fannies and roses, without end, thick as blossoms in paradise. Then comes a venerable crocodile, in a royal livery of scarlet and gold, with sixteen capes; and the 15 crocodile is driving four-in-hand from the box of the Bath mail. And suddenly we upon the mail are pulled up by a mighty dial, sculptured with the hours, that mingle with the heavens and the heavenly host. Then all at once we are arrived at Marlbor- 20 ough forest, amongst the lovely households 1 of the roedeer; the deer and their fawns retire into the dewy thickets; the thickets are rich with roses; once again the roses call up the sweet countenance of Fanny ; and she, being the granddaughter of a croco- 25 clile, awakens a dreadful host of semi-legendary 1 " Households ": — Roedeer do not congregate in herds like the fallow or the red deer, hut by separate families, parents and children ; which feature of approximation to the sanctity of human hearths, added to their comparatively miniature and graceful pro- portions, conciliates to them an interest of peculiar tenderness, supposing even that this heautif ul creature is less characteristically impressed with the grandeurs of savage and forest life. THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 95 animals — griffins, dragons, basilisks, sphinxes — till at length the whole vision of fighting images crowds into one towering armorial shield, a vast em- blazonry of human charities and human loveliness that have perished, but quartered heraldically 5 with unutterable and demoniac natures, whilst over all rises, as a surmounting crest, one fair female hand, with the forefinger pointing, in sweet, sorrow- ful admonition, upwards to heaven, where is sculp- tured the eternal writing which proclaims the frailty 10 of earth and her children. Going Down with Victory But the grandest chapter of our experience within the whole mail-coach service was on those occasions when we went down from London with the news of victory. A period of about ten years stretched 15 from Trafalgar to Waterloo; the second and third years of which period (1806 and 1807) were com- paratively sterile; but the other nine (from 1805 to 1815 inclusively) furnished a long succession of vic- tories, the least of which, in such a contest of Titans, 20 had an inappreciable value of position: partly for its absolute interference with the plans of our enemy, but still more from its keeping alive through central Europe the sense of a deep-seated vulnerability in France. Even to tease the coasts of our enemy, 25 to mortify them by continual blockades, to insult them by capturing if it were but a baubling schooner under the eyes of their arrogant armies, repeated 96 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH from time to time a sullen proclamation of power lodged in one quarter to which the hopes of Christen- dom turned in secret. How much more loudly must this proclamation have spoken in the audacity * 5 of having bearded the elite of their troops, and hav- ing beaten them in pitched battles ! Five years of life it was worth paying down for the privilege of an out- side place on a mail coach, when carrying down the first tidings of any such event. And it is to be noted 10 that, from our insular situation, and the multitude of our frigates disposable for the rapid transmission of intelligence, rarely did any unauthorized rumor steal away a prelibation from the first aroma of the regular dispatches. The government news was 15 generally the earliest news. From eight p.m. to fifteen or twenty minutes later imagine the mails assembled on parade in Lombard Street ; where, at that time, 2 and not in St. Martin's- le-Grand, was seated the General Post-Office. In 1 " Audacity " : -»- Such the French accounted it ; and it has struck me that Soult would not have heen so popular in London, at the period of her present Majesty's coronation, or in Manchester, on occasion of his visit to that town, if they had been aware of the insolence with which he spoke of us in notes written at intervals from the field of Waterloo. As though it had heen mere felony in our army to look a French one in the face, he said in more notes than one, dated from two to four p.m. on the field of Waterloo, "Here are the English — we have them; they are caught en fla- grant delit." Yet no man should have known us better; no man had drunk deeper from the cup of humiliation than Soult had in 1809, when ejected by us with headlong violence from Oporto, and pursued through a long line of wrecks to the frontier of Spain ; and subsequently at Albuera, in the bloodiest of recorded battles, to say nothing of Toulouse, he should have learned our pretensions. 2 " At that time " ;— I speak of the era previous to Waterloo. THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 97 what exact strength we mustered I do not remember; but, from the length of each separate attelage, we filled the street, though a long one, and though we were drawn up in double file. On any night the spectacle was beautiful. The absolute perfection 5 of all the appointments about the carriages and the harness, their strength, their brilliant cleanliness, their beautiful simplicity — but, more than all, the royal magnificence of the horses — were what might first have fixed the attention. Every carriage 10 on every morning in the year was taken down to an official inspector for examination: wheels, axles, linchpins, pole, glasses, lamps, were all critically probed and tested. Every part of every carriage had been cleaned, every horse had been groomed, 15 with as much rigor as if they belonged to a private gentleman; and that part of the spectacle offered itself always. But the night before us is a night of victory; and, behold ! to the ordinary display what a heart-shaking addition ! — horses, men, carriages, 20 all are dressed in laurels and flowers, oak leaves and ribbons. The guards, as being officially his Majes- ty's servants, and of the coachmen such as are within the privilege of the post-office, wear the royal liver- ies of course; and, as it is summer (for all the 25 land victories were naturally won in summer), they wear, on this fine evening, these liveries exposed to view, without any covering of upper coats. Such a costume, and the elaborate arrangement of the laurels in their hats, dilate their hearts, by giving 30 to them openly a personal connection with the great 98 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH news in which already they have the general interest of patriotism. That great national sentiment sur- mounts and quells all sense of ordinary distinctions. Those passengers who happen to be gentlemen are 5 now hardly to be distinguished as such except by dress ; for the usual reserve of their manner in speak- ing to the attendants has on this night melted away. One heart, one pride, one glory, connects every man by the transcendent bond of his national blood. 10 The spectators, who are numerous beyond precedent, express their sympathy with these fervent feelings by continual hurrahs. Every moment are shouted aloud by the post-office servants, and summoned to draw up, the great ancestral names of cities known 15 to history through a thousand years — Lincoln, Winchester, Portsmouth, Gloucester, Oxford, Bristol, Manchester, York, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Perth, Stirling, Aberdeen — expressing the grandeur of the empire by the antiquity of its towns, and the 20 grandeur of the mail establishment by the diffusive radiation of its separate missions. Every moment you hear the thunder of lids locked down upon the mail bags. That sound to each individual mail is the signal for drawing off ; which process is the finest 25 part of the entire spectacle. Then come the horses into play. Horses ! can these be horses that bound off with the action and gestures of leopards ? What stir ! — what sea-like ferment ! — what a thundering of wheels ! — what a trampling of hoofs ! — what a 30 sounding of trumpets ! — what farewell cheers — what redoubling peals of brotherly congratulation, THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 99 connecting the name of the particular mail — " Liv- erpool forever !" — with the name. of the particular victory — " Badajoz forever!" or "Salamanca for- ever!" The half-slumbering consciousness that all night long, and all the next day — perhaps for even 5 a longer period — many of these mails, like fire racing along a train of gunpowder, will be kindling at every instant new successions of burning joy, has an obscure effect of multiplying the victory itself, by multiplying to the imagination into infinity theio stages of its progressive diffusion. A fiery arrow seems to be let loose, which from that moment is destined to travel, without intermission, westwards for three hundred l miles — northwards for six hun- 1 " Three hundred" :— Of necessity, this scale of measurement, to an American, if he happens to he a thoughtless man, must sound ludicrous. Accordingly, I remember a case in which an American writer indulges himself in the luxury of a little filming by ascrib- ing to an Englishman a pompous account of the Thames, constructed entirely upon American ideas of grandeur, and concluding in some- thing like these terms: — "Ami, sir, arriving at Loudon, this mighty father of rivers attains a breadth of at least two furlongs, having, in its winding course, traversed the astonishing distance of one hundred and seventy miles." And this the candid American thinks it fair to contrast with the scale of the Mississippi. Now, it is hardly worth while to answer a pure fiction gravely ; else one might say that no Englishman out of Bedlam ever thought of looking in an island for the rivers of a continent, nor, conse- quently, could have thought of looking for the peculiar grandeur of the Thames in the length of its course, or in the extent of soil which it drains. Yet, if he had been so absurd, the American might have recollected that a river, not to be compared with the Thames even as to volume of water — viz., the Tiber — has contrived to make itself heard of in this world for twenty-five centuries to an extent not reached as yet by any river, however corpulent, of his own land. The glory of the Thames is measured by the destiny of the population to which it ministers, by the commerce 100 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH dred ; and the sympathy of our Lombard Street friends at parting is exalted a hundredfold by a sort of visionary sympathy with the yet slumbering sym- pathies which in so vast a succession we are going to 5 awake. Liberated from the embarrassments of the city, and issuing into the broad uncrowded avenues of the northern suburbs, we soon begin to enter upon our natural pace of ten miles an hour. In the broad 10 light of the summer evening, the sun, perhaps, only just at the point of setting, we are seen from every story of every house. Heads of every age crowd to the windows; young and old understand the lan- guage of our victorious symbols; and rolling volleys 15 of sympathizing cheers run along us, behind us, and before us. The beggar, rearing himself against the wall, forgets his lameness — real or assumed — thinks not of his whining trade, but stands erect, with bold exulting smiles, as we pass him. The vic- 20tory has healed him, and says, Be thou whole! Women and children, from garrets alike and cellars, through infinite London, look down or look up with which it supports, by the grandeur of the empire in which, though far from the Largest, it is the most influential stream. Upon some such scale, and not hy a transfer of Columbian standards, is the course of our English mails to be valued. The American may fancy the effect of his own valuations to our English ears hy supposing the case of a Siberian glorifying his country in these terms: — "These wretches, sir, in France and England, cannot march half a mile in any direction without finding a house where food can be had and lodging ; whereas such is the noble desolation of our magnificent country that in many a direction for a thou- sand miles I will engage that a dog shall not find shelter from a snowstorm, nor a wren find an apology for breakfast." THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 101 loving eyes upon our gay ribbons and our martial laurels ; sometimes kiss their hands ; sometimes hang out, as signals of affection, pocket handkerchiefs, aprons, dusters, anything that, by catching the sum- mer breezes, will express an aerial jubilation. On 5 the London side of Barnet, to which we draw near within a few minutes after nine, observe that private carriage which is approaching us. The weather being so warm, the glasses are all down ; and one may read, as on the stage of a theater, everything thatio goes on within. It contains three ladies — one likely to be "mamma," and two of seventeen or eighteen, who are probably her daughters. What lovely animation, what beautiful unpremeditated pantomime, explaining to us every syllable that 15 passes, in these ingenuous girls ! By the sudden start and raising of the hands on first discovering our laureled equipage, by the sudden movement and appeal to the elder lady from both of them, and by the heightened color on their animated coun-20 tenances, we can almost hear them saying, " See, see ! Look at their laurels ! Oh, mamma ! there has been a great battle in Spain ; and it has been a great vic- tory." In a moment we are on the point of passing them. We passengers — I on the box, and the two 25 on the roof behind me — raise our hats to the ladies; the coachman makes his professional salute with the whip; the guard even, though punctilious on the matter of his dignity as an officer under the crown, touches his hat. The ladies move to us, in 30 return, with a winning graciousness of gesture; all 102 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACB smile on each Bide in a way that nobody could misunderstand, and that nothing short of a grand national Bympathy could ><» instantaneously prompt. Will these ladies say that we are nothing to them? 5 Oh, no; they will not say that. They cannot deny — they do not deny — that for this night they are OUT sist< atle or simple, Bcholar or illiterate ser- vant, for twelve hours t<> come, we on the outside have the honor to he their brothers. Those p«'<-r m women, again, who atop to gaze upon us with delight nt the entrance of Barnet, and seem, by their air of weariness, to he returning from labor — do you mean to Bay that they are washerwomen and char- women? Oh, my poor friend you are quite mis- i.-, taken. I assure you they bI and in a far higher rank ; for this one night they fed themselves by birthright to he daughters of England and answer to no hum- bler title. Every joy, however eveD rapturous joy — such 20 is the Bad law of earth - may carry with it grief, <>r fear of grief, to Borne. Three miles beyond Barnet, we see approaching us another private carriage, nearly repeating the circumstances of the former case. Here, also, the glasses are all down; here, 25 also, is an elderly lady seated : hut the two daughters are missing; for the single yimnL r person Bitting by the lady's Bide Seems to he an attendant — -so 1 judge from her dress and her air of respectful re- serve. The lady is in mourning; and her counte- 90 nance expresses sorrow. At first she does not look up: so that 1 believe Bhe is not aware of our ap- THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 103 proach, until Bhe hears the measured beating of our horses' hoofs. Theu Bhe raises her eyes to settle them painfully ou our triumphal equipage. Our decorations explain the case to her at once; but Bhe beholds them with apparent anxiety, or even with 5 terror Some time before this, I. finding it difficult to hit a flying mark when embarrassed by the coach- man's person and reins intervening, had given to the guard a "Courier" evening paper, containing the gazette, for the next carriage that might pass. Ac- 10 cordingly he tossed it in, bo folded that the huge capitals expressing some such legend as glorious victory might catch the eye at once. To see the paper, however, at all, interpreted as it was by our ensigns of triumph, explained everything; and, if 15 the guard were right in thinking the lady to have received it with a gesture of horror, it could not be doubtful that she had suffered some deep personal affliction in connection with this Spanish war. Here, now, was the case of one who, having for-20 merly suffered, might, erroneously perhaps, be dis- tressing herself with anticipations of another similar Buffering. That same night, and hardly three hours later, occurred the reverse case. A poor woman, who too probably would find herself, in a day or two, 25 to have suffered the heaviest of afflictions by the battle, blindly allowed herself to express an exulta- tion so unmeasured in the news and its details as gave to her the apparance which amongst Celtic Highlanders is called fey. This was at some little 30 town where we changed horses an hour or two after 104 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH midnight. Some fair or wake had kept the people up out of their beds, and had occasioned a partial illu- mination of the stalls and booths, presenting an unusual but very impressive effect. We saw many 5 lights moving about as we drew near; and perhaps the most striking scene on the whole route was our reception at this place. The flashing of torches and the beautiful radiance of blue lights (technically, Bengal lights) upon the heads of our horses; the 10 fine effect of such a Bhowery and ghostly illumination falling upon our flowers and glittering laurels 1 ; whilst all around ourselves, that formed a center of light, the darkness gathered on the rear and Hanks in massy blackness: these optical splendors, to- i.-. -ether with the prodigious enthusiasm of the people, composed a picture at once BCenical and affecting, theatrical and holy. A< we stayed for three or four minutes, I alighted; and immediately from a dis- mantled stall in the street, where no doubt she had 20 been presiding through the earlier pari of the night, advanced eagerly a middle-aged woman. The sight of my newspaper it was that had drawn her atten- tion upon myself. The victory which we were currying down to the provinces on this occasion was 25the imperfect one of Talavera — imperfect for ite results, such was the virtual treachery of the Spanish general, Cuesta, but not imperfect in its ever memorable heroism. I told her the main outline i" Glittering laurels" : — I must observe that the color of green Buffers almost a spiritual change and exaltation under the effect of Bengal lights. THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 105 of "the battle. The agitation of her enthusiasm had been so conspicuous when listening, and when first applying for information, that I could not but ask her if she had not some relative in the Peninsular army. Oh yes; her only son was there. In what 5 regiment ? He was a trooper in the 23d Dragoons. My heart sank within me as she made that answer. This sublime regiment, which an Englishman should never mention without raising his hat to their mem- ory, had made the most memorable and effectiveio charge recorded in military annals. They leaped their horses — over a trench where they could; into it, and with the result of death or mutilation, when they could //"/. What proportion cleared the trench is nowhere stated. Those who did closed up and 15 went down upon 1 he enemy with such divinity of fervor (I use the word divinity by design: the in- spiration of God must have prompted this move- ment for those whom even then He was calling to His presence) that two results followed. As re- 20 garded the enemy, this 23d Dragoons, not, I believe, originally three hundred and fifty strong, paralyzed a French column six thousand strong, then ascended the hill, and fixed the gaze of the whole French army. As regarded themselves, the 23d were sup- 25 posed at first to have been barely not annihilated; but eventually, I believe, about one in four survived. And this, then, was the regiment — a regiment al- ready for some hours glorified and hallowed to the ear of all London, as lying stretched, by a large 30 majority, upon one bloody aceldama — in which 106 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH the young trooper served whose mother was now talking in a spirit of such joyous enthusiasm. Did I tell her the truth? Had I the heart to break up her dreams? No. To-morrow, said I to myself — 5 1 o-morrow or the next day, will publish the worst. For one night more wherefore should she not sleep in peace? After to-morrow the chances are too many that peace will forsake her pillow. This brief respite, then, let her owe to my gift and my forbearance 10 But, if I told her not of the bloody price that had been paid, not therefore was I silent on the contribu- tions from her son's regiment to that day's service and glory. I showed her not the funeral banners under which the noble regiment was sleeping. 1 15 lifted not the overshadowing laurels from the bloody trench in which horse and rider lay mangled together. But I told her how these dear children of England, officers and privates, had Leaped their horses over all obstacles as gayly as hunters to the morning's chase. 20 I told her how they rode their horses into the midst of death, — saying to myself, but not Baying to her, " and laid down their young lives for thee, O mother England ! as willingly — poured out their noble blood as cheerfully — as ever, after a long day's 25 sport, when infants, they had rested their weary heads upon their mother's knees, or had sunk to sleep in her arms." Strange it is, yet true, that she seemed to have no fears for her son's safety, even after this knowledge that the 23d Dragoons had been 30 memorably engaged; but so much was she enrap- tured by the knowledge that his regiment, and there- THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 107 fore that he, had rendered conspicuous service in the dreadful conflict — a service which had actually made them, within the last twelve hours, the fore- most topic of conversation in London — so abso- lutely was fear swallowed up in joy — that, in the 5 mere simplicity of her fervent nature, the poor woman threw her arms round my neck, as she thought of her son, and gave to me the kiss which Becretly was meant for him. Section II — The Vision of Sudden Death What is to be taken as the predominant opinion 10 of man, reflective and philosophic, upon sudden DEATH? It is remarkable that, in different condi- tions of society, sudden death has been variously regarded as the consummation of an earthly career most fervently to be desired, or, again, as that con- is summation which is with most horror to be depre- cated. Caesar the Dictator, at his last dinner party (ca na), on the very evening before his assassination, when the minutes of his earthly career were num- bered, being asked what death, in his judgment, 20 might be pronounced the most eligible, replied " That which should be most sudden." On the other hand, the divine Litany of our English Church, when 'breathing forth supplications, as if in some represen- tative character, for the whole human race prostrate 25 before God, places such a death in the very van of horrors : " From lightning and tempest ; from plague, pestilence, and famine; from battle and murder, 108 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH and from sudden death — Good Lord, deliver us." Sudden death is here made to crown the climax in a grand ascent of calamities; it is ranked among the last of curses; and yet by the noblest of Romans 5 it was ranked as the first of blessings. In that differ- ence most readers will see little more than the eg tial difference between Christianity and Paganism. But this, on consideration. I doubt. The Christian Church may be righl in its estimate of sudden death ; 10 and it is a natural feeling, though after all it may also be an infirm one. to wi>h for a quiet dismissal from life, as that which 8< i m& most reconcilable with meditation, with penitential retrospects, and with the humilities of farewell prayer. There d<»e< nut. 15 however, occur to me any direct scriptural warrant for this earnest petition of the English Litany, unless under a Special construction of the word '•sudden."' It seems a petition indulged rather and conceded to human infirmity than exacted from human piety. 20 It is not so much a doctrine built upon the eterni- ties of the Christian Bystem as a plausible opinion built upon special varieties of physical temperament. Let. that, however, be a- it may, two remarks sug- gest themselves as prudent restraints upon a doc- 25 trine which else may wander, and has wandered, into an uncharitable superstition. The first is this: that many people are likely to exasperate the horror of a sudden death from the disposition to lay a false stress upon words or acts simply because by an acci- 3odent they have become final words or acts. If a man dies, for instance, by some sudden death when THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 109 Ik* happens to be intoxicated, such a death is falsely regarded with peculiar honor; as though the in- toxication were suddenly exalted into a blasphemy. But that is unphilosophic. The man was. or he was not, habitually a drunkard. If not, if his intoxica- 5 tion were a solitary accident, there can be no reason for allowing special emphasis to this act simply be- cause through misfortune it became his final act. Nor, on the other hand, if it were no accident, but one of his habitual transgressions, will it be the more lo habitual or the more a transgression because some sudden calamity, surprising him, has caused this habitual transgression to be also a final one. Could the man have had any reason even dimly to foresee his own sudden death, there would have been a new lb feature in his act of intemperance — a feature of pre- sumption and irreverence, as in one that, having known himself drawing near to the presence of ( rod, should have suited his demeanor to an expectation so awful. Hut this is no pari of the case supposed. 20 And the only new element in the man's act is not any element of special immorality, but simply of special misfortune. The other remark has reference to the meaning of the word sudden. Very possibly Caesar and the25 Christian Church do not differ in the way supposed, — that is, do not differ by any difference of doctrine as 1. <'tween Pagan and Christian views of the moral temper appropriate to death; but perhaps they are contemplating different cases. Both contemplate a 30 violent death, a Biufluvuros — death that is piatos, 110 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH or, in other words, death that is brought about, not by internal and spontaneous change, but by active force having its origin from without. In this mean- ing the two authorities agree. Thus far they arc in 5 harmony. But the difference is that the Roman by the word "sudden" means unlingering, whereas the Christian Litany by "sudden death" means a deatli without warning, consequently without any available summons to religious preparation. The 10 poor mutineer who kneels down to gather into his heart the bullets from twelve firelocks of his pitying comrades dies by a most sudden death in C&sar's Bense; one shock, one mighty spasm, one (possibly not one) groan, and all is over. But', in the sens 15 the Litany, the mutineer's death is far from sudden : his offense originally, his imprisonment, his trial, the interval between his sentence and it- execution, having all furnished him with separate warnings of his fate — having all Bummoned him to meet it 20 with solemn preparation. Here at once, in this Bnarp verbal distinction, we comprehend the faithful earnestness with which a holy Christian Church pleads on behalf of her poor departing children that God would vouchsafe to 26 them the last great privilege and distinction pos- sible on a deathbed, viz., the opportunity of un- troubled preparation for facing this mighty trial. Sudden death, as a mere variety in the modes of dying where death in some shape is inevitable, pro- 30 poses a question of choice which, equally in the Roman and the Christian sense, will be variously THE EN0L1SB MAIL COACH 111 answered according to each man's variety of tem- perament. Meantime, one aspect of sudden death there is, one modification, upon which no doubt can arise, that of all martyrdoms it is the most agitating — viz., where it surprises a man under circumstances 5 which offer (or which seem to offer) some hurrying, flying, inappreciably minute chance of evading it. Sudden as the danger which it affronts must be any effort by which such an evasion can be accomplished. Even that, even the Bickening necessity for hurrying 10 in extremity where all hurry seems destined to be vain, — even that anguish is liable to a hideous operation in one particular case: viz., where the appeal is made not exclusively to the instinct of self- preservation, but to the conscience, on behalf ofis some other life besides your own, accidentally thrown upon your protection. To fail, to collapse in a service merely your own. might seem compara- tively venial; though, in fact, it is far from venial. But to fail in a case where Providence has suddenly 20 thrown into your hands the final interests of another, — a fellow-creature shuddering between the gates of life and death: this, to a man of apprehensive conscience, would mingle the misery of an atro- cious criminality with the misery of a bloody calam-25 ity. You are called upon, by the case supposed, possibly to die, but to die at the very moment when, by any even partial failure or effeminate collapse of your energies, you will be self-denounced as a mur- derer. You had but the twinkling of an eye for 30 your effort, and that effort might have been una vail- 112 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH ing; but to have risen to the level of such an effort would have rescued you, though not from dying, yet from dying as a traitor to your final and farewell duty. 5 The situation here contemplated exposes a dread- ful ulcer, lurking far down in the depths of human nature. It is not thai men generally are summoned to face such awful trials. But potentially, and in shadowy outline, such a trial is moving subterrane- loously in perhaps all men'e natures. Upon the secret mirror of our dreams such a trial is darkly projected, perhaps, to every one of us. That dream, so famil- iar to childhood, of meeting a lion. and. through languishing prostration in hope and the energies of 15 hope, that constant sequel of lying down before the lion publishes the secret frailty of human nature — reveals its deep-seated falsehood to itself — records its abysmal treachery. Perhaps not one of us escapes that dream; perhaps, as by some sorrowful 2odoom of man. that dream repent- for every one of us, through every generation, the original temptation in Eden. Every one of us. in this dream, has a bait offered to the infirm places of his own individual will ; once again a snare is presented for tempting him 25 into captivity to a luxury of ruin; once again, as in aboriginal Paradise, the man falls by his own choice; again, by infinite iteration, the ancient earth groans to Heaven, through her secret caves, over the weak- ness of her child. " Xature, from her seat, sighing 30 through all her works," again "gives signs of woe that all is lost"; and again the counter sigh is re- THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 113 peated to the sorrowing heavens for the endless rebellion against God. It is not without probability that in the world of dreams every one of us ratifies for himself the original transgression. In dreams, perhaps under some secret conflict of the midnight 5 sleeper, lighted up to the consciousness at the time, but darkened to the memory as soon as all is finished, each several child of our mysterious race completes for himself the treason of the aboriginal fall. The incident, so memorable in itself by its features 10 of horror, and so scenical by its grouping for the eye, which furnished the text for this reverie upon Sudden Death occurred to myself in the dead of night, as a solitary spectator, when seated on the box of the Manchester and Glasgow mail, in the second or third 15 Bummer after Waterloo. I find it necessary to relate the circumstances, because they are such as could not have occurred unless under a singular combina- tion of accidents. In those days, the oblique and lateral communications with many rural post-offices 20 were so arranged, either through necessity or through defect of system, as to make it requisite for the main northwestern mail (i.e., the down mail) on reaching Manchester to halt for a number of hours; how many, I do not remember; six or seven, 1 25 think; but the result was that, in the ordinary course, the mail recommenced its journey north- wards about midnight. Wearied with the long detention at a gloomy hotel, I walked out about eleven o'clock at night for the sake of fresh air; 30 meaning to fall in with the mail and resume my seat 114 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH at the post-office. The night, however, being yet dark, as the moon had scarcely risen, and the streets being at that hour empty, so as to offer no opportuni- ties for asking the road, I lost my way. and did not 5 reach the post-office until it was considerably past midnight : but, to my great relief (as it was impor- tant for me to be in West moreland by the morning), 1 saw in the huge saucer eyes of the mail, blazing through the gloom, an evidence that my chance was in not yet lost. Past the time it was; but. by some rare accident, the mail was not even yet ready to start. I ascended to my seat on the box. where my cloak was still lying as it had lain at the Bridge- water Arms. I had left it there in imitation of a in nautical discoverer, who Leaves a bit of bunting on the shore of his discovery, by way of warning off the ground the whole human race, and notifying to the Christian and the heathen worlds, with his best compliments, that he has hoisted his pocket handker- 20 chief once and forever upon that virgin soil: thence- forward claiming the jus >, unit to the top of the atmosphere above it. and also the right ^\ driving shafts to the center of the earth below it ; BO that all people found after this warning either aloft in upper 26 chambers of the atmosphere, or groping in subter- raneous shafts, or squatting audaciously on the sur- face of the soil, will be treated as trespassers' — kicked, that is to say, or decapitated, as circum- stances may BUggest, by their very faithful servant, 30 the owner of the said pocket handkerchief. In the present case, it is probable that my cloak might not THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 115 have boon respected, and the jus gentium might have been cruelly violated in my person — for, in the dark, people commit deeds of darkness, gas being a great ally of morality; but it so happened that on this aighl there was no other outside passenger; and thus 5 the crime, which else was but too probable, missed fire for want of a criminal. Having mounted the box, I took a small quan- tity of laudanum, having already traveled two hun- dred and fifty miles — viz., from a point seventyio miles beyond London. In the taking of laudanum there was nothing extraordinary. Hut by accident it drew upon me the special attention of my assessor on the box. the coachman. And in that also there was nothing extraordinary. Hut by accident, audio with great delight, it drewmyown attention to the fact that this coachman was a monster in point of bulk, and that he had but one eye. In fact, he had heen foretold by Virgil as 14 Bfonstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum." 20 He answered to the conditions in every one of the items: — 1, a monster he was; 2, dreadful; 3, shapeless; 4, huge; 5, who had lost an eye. But why should that delight me? Had he been one of the Calendars in the " Arabian Nights," and had paid 28 down his eye as the price of his criminal curiosity, what right had / to exult in his misfortune? I did not exult; I delighted in no man's punishment, though it were even merited. But these personal distinctions (Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) identified in an instant 30 116 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH an old friend of mine whom I had known in the south for some years as the most masterly of mail coach- men. He was the man in all Europe that could (if any could) have driven six-in-hand full gallop over 5AI Sirat — that dreadful bridge of Mahomet, with no side battlements, and of extra room not enough for a razor's edge — leading right across the bottom- less gulf. Under this eminent man. whom in Greek I eognominated Cyclops Diphrttates (Cyclops the 10 Charioteer) , I. and others known to me, studied the diphrelatic art. Excuse, reader, a word too elegant to be pedantic. As a pupil, though I paid extra fees, it is to be lamented that I did not stand high in his esteem. It showed his dogged honesty 15 (though, observe, not his discernment) that he could not see my merits. Let us excuse his absurdity in this particular by remembering his want of an eye. Doubtless that made him blind to my merit-. In the art of conversation, however, he admitted 20 that I had the whip hand of him. On the present occasion great joy was at our meeting. But what was Cyclops doing here? Had the medical men recommended northern air, or how? I collected, from such explanations as he volunteered, that he 25 had an interest at stake in some suit-at-law now pending at Lancaster; so that probably he had got himself transferred to this station for the purpose of connecting with his professional pursuits an instant readiness for the calls of his lawsuit. 90 Meantime, what are we stopping for? Surely we have now waited long enough. Oh, this procras- THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 117 tinating mail, and this procrastinating post-office! Can't they take a lesson upon that subject from me? Some people have called me procrastinating. Yet you are witness, reader, that I was here kept wait- ing for the post-office. Will the post-office lay its 5 hand on its heart, in its moments of sobriety, and ri that ever it waited for me? What are they about? The guard tells me that there is a large extra accumulation of foreign mails this night, owing to irregularities caused by war, by wind, byio weather, in the packet service, which as yet does not benefit at all by steam. For an (\vtni hour, it seems, the post-office has been engaged in threshing out the pure wheaten correspondence of Glasgow, and win- nowing it from the chaff of all baser intermediate 15 towns. Bui at last all is finished. Sound your horn, guard! Manchester, good-by 1 we've lost an hour by your criminal conduct at the post-office: which, however, though I do not mean to part with a serviceable ground of complaint, and one which 20 really is such for the horses, to me secretly is an advantage, since it compels us to look sharply for t his lost hour amongst the next eight or nine, and to recover it (if we can) at the rate of one mile extra per hour. Off we are at last, and at eleven miles an 25 hour; and for the moment I detect no changes in the energy or in the skill of Cyclops. From Manchester to Kendal, which virtually (though not in law) is the capital of Westmoreland, there were at this time seven stages of eleven miles 30 each. The first five of these, counting from Man- 118 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH Chester, terminate in Lancaster; which is therefore fifty-five miles north of Manchester, and the same distance exactly from Liverpool. The first three Stages terminate in Preston (called, by way of dis- tinction from other towns of that name, Proud Preston) ; at which place it is that the separate roads from Liverpool and from Manchester to the north became confluent. 1 Within these firsl three sti lay the foundation, the progress, and termination of 10 our night's adventure. During the first Btage, 1 found out that Cyclops was mortal; he was liable to the shocking affection of sleep — a thing which previously I had never suspected. If a man in- dulges in the vicious habit of sleeping, all the skill i:. in aurigation of Apollo himself, with the horses <»t Aurora to execute his notion-, avails him nothing. "Oh, Cyclops!" I exclaimed, "thou art mortal. My friend, thou snorest." Through the first eleven mile.-, however, this infirmity — which I grieve to 30 Say that he shared with the whole Pagan Pantheon — betrayed itself only by brief snatches. On wak- ing up. he made an apology for himself which, in- stead of mending matters, laid open a gloomy vista of coming disasters. The summer assizes, he re- 25 minded me. were now going on at Lancaster: in .,,/„, „/ •• ;_ Suppose a capital V (the Pythagorean letter) : Lancaster is ;ii the foot of this letter; Liverpool at the tup of the right branch ; Manchester al the top of the left: Proud Preston at the center, where tin- two branches unite. It Is thirty-three miles along either of the two branches . it is twenty-two miles along the stem, — viz.. from l'nM.ni in the middle to Lancaster at the root. There's a lesson in geography foi the reader! THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 119 consequence of which for three nights and three days he had not lain down on a bed. During the day he was waiting for his own summons as a witness on the trial in which he was interested, or else, lest he should be missing at the critical moment, was 5 drinking with the other witnesses under the pastoral surveillance of the attorneys. During the night, or that part of it which at sea would form the middle watch, he was driving. This explanation certainly accounted for his drowsiness, but in a way which id made it much more alarming; since now, after several days' resistance to this infirmity, at length he was Bteadily giving way. Throughout the sec- ond stage he grew more and more drowsy. In the second mile of the third stage he surrendered himself is finally and without a Btruggle to his perilous temp- tation. All his past resistance had but deepened the weight of this final oppression. Seven atmos- pheres of sleep rest e< I upon him; and. to consummate the case, our worthy guard, after singing "Love 20 amongst the Roses" for perhaps thirty times, without invitation and without applause, had in revenge moodily resigned himself to slumber — not so deep, doubtless, as the coachman's, but deep enough for mischief. And thus at last, about ten 25 miles from Preston, it came about that I found my- self left in charge of his Majesty's London and Glas- gow mail, then running at the least twelve miles an hour. What made this negligence less criminal than else 30 it must have been thought was the condition of the 120 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH roads at night during the assizes. At that time, all the law business of populous Liverpool, and also of populous Manchester, with its vast cincture of populous rural districts, was called up by ancient 5 usage to the tribunal of Lilliputian Lancaster. To break up this old traditional usage required, 1, a conflict with powerful established interests, 2, a large system of new arrangements, and 3, a new parliamentary statute. But as yet this change was 10 merely in contemplation. As things were at present, twice in the year ' so vast a body of business rolled northwards from the southern quarter of the county that for a fortnight at least it occupied the severe exertions of two judges in its dispatch. The conse- lsquence of this was that every horse available for such a service, along the whole line of road, was ex- hausted in carrying down the multitudes of people who were parties to the different suits. By sunset, therefore, it usually happened that, through utter 20 exhaustion amongst men and horses, the road sank into profound silence. Except the exhaustion in the vast adjacent county of York from a contested election, no such silence succeeding to no such fiery uproar was ever witnessed in England. 25 On this occasion the usual silence and solitude pre- vailed along the road. Not a hoof nor a wheel was to be heard. And, to strengthen this false luxurious confidence in the noiseless roads, it happened also 1,1 Twice in the year": — There were at that time only two assizes even in the most populous counties — viz., the Lent Assizes and the Summer Assizes. THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 121 that the night was one of peculiar solemnity and peace. For my own part, though slightly alive to the possibilities of peril, I had so far yielded to the influence of the mighty calm as to sink into a pro- found reverie. The month was August; in the 5 middle of which lay my own birthday — a festival to every thoughtful man suggesting solemn and often sigh-born 1 thoughts. The county was my own native county — upon which, in its southern section, more than upon any equal area known to man past orio present, had descended the original curse of labor in its heaviest form, not mastering the bodies only of men, as of slaves, or criminals in mines, but working through the fiery will. Upon no equal space of earth was, or ever had been, the same energy of 15 human power put forth daily. At this particular season also of the assizes, that dreadful hurricane of flight and pursuit, as it might have seemed to a stranger, which swept to and from Lancaster all day long, hunting the county up and down, and regu-20 larly subsiding back into silence about sunset, could not fail (when united with this permanent distinc- tion of Lancashire as the very metropolis and cita- del of labor) to point the thoughts pathetically upon that counter vision of rest, of saintly re- 25 pose from strife and sorrow, towards which, as to their secret haven, the profounder aspirations of man's heart are in solitude continually traveling. 1 " Sigh-born" : — I owe the suggestion of this word to an obscure remembrance of a beautiful phrase in " Giraldus Cam- brensis" — viz., suspiriosse cogitationet. 122 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH Obliquely, upon our left we were Hearing the sea; which also must, under the present circumstances, be repeating the general state of halcyon repose. The sea, the atmosphere, the li.Lclit , bore each an 5 orchestral part in this universal lull. Moonlight and the first timid tremblings of the dawn were by this time blending; and the blendings were brought into a still more exquisite state of unity by a Blight silvery mist, motionless and dreamy, that covered lothe woods and fields, but with a veil of equable transparency. Except the feet of our own horses. — which, running on a sandy margin of the road, made but little disturbance, — there was do sound abroad. In the clouds and on the earth prevailed 15 the same majestic peace; aid. in spite of all that the villain of a schoolmaster has done for the ruin of our sublimer thoughts, which are the thoughts of our infancy, we still believe in no such nonsense a limited atmosphere. Whatever we may swear 20 with our false feigning lips, in our faithful hearts we still believe, and must forever believe, in fields of air traversing the total gulf between earth and the central heavens. Still, in the confidence of children that tread without fear every chamber in ■_t, their father's house, and to whom no door is closed, we, in that Sabbatic vision which sometimes is revealed for an hour upon nights like this, ascend with easy steps from the sorrow-stricken fields of earth upwards t<» the sandals of God. 30 Suddenly, from thoughts like these I was awak- ened to a sullen sound, as of some motion on the THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 123 distant road. It stole upon the air for a moment; I listened in awe; hut then it died away. Once roused, however, I could not but observe with alarm the quickened motion of our horses. Ten years' experience had made my eye learned in the valuing 5 of motion; and I saw that we were now running thirteen miles an hour. I pretend to no presence of mind. On the contrary, my fear is that I am miser- ably and shamefully deficient in that quality as re- gards action. The palsy of doubt and distraction 10 hangs like some guilty weight of dark unfathomed remembrances upon my energies when the Bignal is flying for u<> instantly its entire expansion; in the first syllable of the dreadful sentence I read already the last. It was not that I feared for our- selves. Us our hulk and impetus charmed against 20 peril in any collision. And I had ridden through too many hundreds of perils that were frightful to ap- proach, that were matter of laughter to look back upon, the first face of which was horror, the parting fail- a jest — for any anxiety to rest upon our inter- 2.-, ests. The mail was not built, I felt assured, nor bespoke, that could betray me who trusted to its protection. But any carriage that we could meet would be frail and light in comparison of ourselves. And I remarked this ominous accident of our situa-30 tion, — we were on the wrong side of the road. But 124 THE EX LIS II MAIL COACH then, it may be said, the other party, if other there was, might also be on the wrong side; and two wrongs might make a right. That was not likely. The same motive which had drawn us to the right- 5 hand side of the road — viz., the luxury of the soft beaten sand as contrasted with the paved center — would prove at tractive to others. The two adverse carriages would therefore, to a certainty, be travel- ing on the same side; and from this side, as not 10 being ours in law. the crossing over to the other would, of course, he looked for from us. 1 Our lamps, still lighted, would give the impression of vigilance on our part. And every creature that met us would rely upon US for quartering. 3 All this, and if the L5 separate links of the anticipation had been a thou- sand times more. I saw. not discursively, or by effort, or by succession, but by one flash of horrid simul- taneous intuition. Under this steady though rapid anticipation of the 20 evil which might be gathering ahead, ah ! what a sul- len mystery of fear, what a sigh of woe, was that which stole upon the air. as again the far-off sound of a wheel was heard ! A whisper it was — a whisper from, perhaps, four miles off — secretly announcing 25a ruin that, being foreseen, was not the less inevi- 1 It is true that, according to the law of the case as established by legal precedents, all carriages were required to give way before royal equipages, ami therefore before the mail as one of them. But this only increased the danger, as being a regulation very imperfectly made known, v.rv unequally enforced, and therefore often embarrassing the movements on both sides. 2 " Quartering" : — This is the technical word, and, I presume, derived from the French cartayer, to evade a rut or any obstacle. THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 125 table; that, being known, was not therefore healed. What could be done — who was it that could do it — to check the storm-flight of these maniacal horses? Could I not seize the reins from the grasp of the slumbering coachman? You, reader, think that it 5 would have been in your power to do so. And I quarrel not with your estimate of yourself. But, from the way in which the coach man's hand was viced between his upper and lower thigh, this was impossible. Easy was it? Sec. then, that bronzelO equestrian statue. The cruel rider has kept the bit in his horse's mouth for two centuries. Unbridle him for a minute, if you please, and wash his mouth with water. Easy was it? Unhorse me, then, that imperial rider; knock me those marble feet 15 from those marble stirrups of Charlemagne. The sounds ahead si rengthened, and were now too clearly the sounds of wheels. Who and what could it be? Was it industry in a taxed cart? Was it youthful gayety in a gig? Was it sorrow that 20 loitered, or joy that raced ? For as yet the snatches of sound were too intermitting, from distance, to decipher the character of the motion. Whoever were the travelers, something must be done to warn them. Upon the other party rests the active respon- 25 sibility, but upon us — and, woe is me ! that us was reduced to my frail opium-shattered self — rests the responsibility of warning. Yet, how should this be accomplished? Might I not sound the guard's horn? Already, on the first thought, I was making 30 my way over the roof to the guard's seat. But this, 126 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH from the accident which I have mentioned, of the foreign mails being piled upon the roof, was a diffi- cult and even dangerous attempt to one cramped by nearly three hundred miles of outside traveling. 5 And, fortunately, before I had lost much time in the attempt, our frantic horses swept round an angle of the road which opened upon us that final Stage where the collision must be accomplished and the catastrophe scaled. All was apparently finished. lc The court was Bitting; tin- case was heard: the judge had finished; and only the verdict was yet in arrear. Before us lay an avenue straight afl an arrow, six hundred yards, perhaps, in length; and the umbra- l5geous trees, which rose in a regular line from either side, meeting high overhead. gave to it the character of a cathedra] aisle. These trees lent a deeper solemnity to the early light : but there was still light enough to perceive, at the further end of this Gothic 20 aisle, a frail reedy gig, in which were seated a young man, and by his side a young lady. Ah. young sir! what are you about? If it is requisite that you should whisper your communications to this young lady — though really 1 see aobody, at an hour and 25 on a road so solitary, likely to overhear you — is it therefore requisite that you should carry your lips forward to hers? The little carriage is creeping on at one mile an hour; and the parties within it, being thus tenderly entered, are naturally bending 30 down their heads. Between them and eternity, to all human calculation, there is but a minute and a THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 127 half. Oh, heavens! what is it that I shall do? Speaking or acting, what help can I offer? Strange it is, and to a mere auditor of the tale might seem laughable, that I should need a suggestion from the '* Iliad" to prompt the sole resource that remained. 5 Yet so it was. Suddenly 1 remembered the shout of Achilles, and its effect. But could I pretend to shout like the son of Peleus, aided by Pallas? No: DU1 then I needed not the shout that should alarm all Asia militant; such a shout would suffice as 10 might carry terror int., the hearts of two thoughtless young people and one gig horse. I shouted — and the young man heard me not. A second time I shouted — and now he beard me, tor now he raised his head. 15 Here, then, all had been done that, by me, could be done; more on my part was not possible. Mine had been the first step; the second was for the young man; the third was for God. If, said I, this stran- ger is a brave man, and if indeed he loves the young20 girl at his side — or, loving her not, if he feels the obligation, pressing upon every man worthy to be called a man, of doing his utmost for a woman con- fided to his protection — he will at least make some effort to save her. If that fails, he will not perish •_<.- the more, or by a death more cruel, for having made it; and he will die as a brave man should, with his face to the danger, and with his arm about the woman that he sought in vain to save. But, if he makes no effort, — shrinking without a struggle 30 from his duty, — he himself will not the less certainly 128 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH perish for this baseness of poltroonery. He will .lie no less: and why not? Wherefore should we grieve that there is one craven less in the world? No; let him perish, without a pitying thought of ours wasted 5 upon him; and, in that case, all our grief will be reserved for the fate of the helpless girl who now, upon the least shadow of failure in him, must by the fiercest of translations — must without time for a prayer — must within seventy seconds — stand 10 before the judgment seat of God. But craven he was not: sudden had been the call upon him, and sudden was his answer to the call. He saw, he heard, he comprehended, the ruin that was coming down: already its gloomy shadow i.". darkened above him; and already he was measuring his strength to deal with it. Ah! what a vulgar thing does courage seem when we see nations buying it and selling it for a shilling a day : ah ! what a sub- lime thing does courage seem when some fearful 20 summons on the great deeps of life carries a man, as if running before a hurricane, up to the giddy crest of some tumultuous crisis from which lie t wo courses, and a voice says to him audibly, " One way lies hope ; take the other, and mourn forever!" How grand 25a triumph if, even then, amidst the raving of all around him, and the frenzy of the danger, the man is able to confront his situation — is able to retire for a moment into solitude with God, and to seek his counsel from Him ! 30 For seven seconds, it might be, of his seventy, the stranger settled his countenance steadfastly upon us, THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 129 as if to search and value every element in the con- flict between him. For five seconds more of his seventy he sat immovably, like one that mused on some great purpose. For five more, perhaps, he sat with eyes upraised, like one that prayed in sorrow, 6 under some extremity of doubt, for lighl that should guide him to the better choice. Then suddenly he rose; stood upright; and, by a powerful strain upon the reins, raising his horse's fore feet from the ground, lie slewed him round on the pivot of his 10 hind legs, so as to plant the little equipage in a posi- tion nearly at right angles to ours. Thus far his condition was not improved; except as a first step had been taken towards the possibility of a second. If no more were done, nothing was done; for thelS little carriage still occupied the very center of our path, though in an altered direction. Yet even now it may not be too late : fifteen of the seventy seconds may still be unexhausted; and one almighty bound may avail to clear the ground. Hurry, then, hurry !20 for the (lying moments — they hurry. Oh, hurry, hurry, my brave young man ! for the cruel hoofs of our horses — they also hurry ! Fast are the flying moments, faster are the hoofs of our horses. But fear not for him, if human energy can suffice; faith- 25 ful was he that drove to his terrific duty; faithful was the horse to his command. One blow, one im- pulse given with voice and hand, by the stranger, one rush from the horse, one bound as if in the act of rising to a fence, landed the docile creature's 30 fore feet upon the crown or arching center of the road. 130 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH The larger half of the little equipage had then cleared our overtowering shadow: thai was evident even to my own agitated Bight. But it mattered little that one wreck should float off in safety if upon the wreck 5 that perished were embarked the human freightage. The rear part of the carriage — was tlmt certainly beyond the line of absolute ruin ? What power eould answer the question? Glance of eye, thought of man, wing of angel, which of these had speed enough 10 to sweep between the question and the answer, and divide the one from the other? Light ^^~> not tread upon the steps of light more mdivisibly than did our all-conquering arrival upon the escaping efforts of the gig. That must the young man have felt too plainly. io His hack was now turned to us; Dot by sight eould he any longer communicate with the peril; but, by the dreadful rattle of our harness, too truly had his ear been instructed that all was finished as re- garded any efforts of his. Already in resignation he 20 had rested from his struggle; and perhaps in his heart he was whispering, "Father, which art in heaven, do Thou finish above what I on earth have attempted."' Faster than ever mill race we ran past them in our inexorable flight. Oh, raving of hurri- 25 canes that must have sounded in their young ears at the moment of our transit ! Even in that mo- ment the thunder of collision spoke aloud. Either with the swingle-bar, or with the haunch of our near leader, we had struck the off wheel of the little gig; 30 which stood rather obliquely, and not quite so far advanced as to be accurately parallel with the near THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 131 wheel. The blow, from the fury of our passage, resounded terrifically. I rose in horror, to gaze upon the ruins we might have caused. From my elevated station I looked down, and looked hack upon the scene; which in a moment told its own 5 tale, and wrote all its records on my heart for- ever. Here was the map of the passion that now had finished. The horse was planted immovably, with his fore feet upon the paved crest of the central road. 10 He of the whole party might be supposed untouched by the passion of death. The little cany carriage — partly, perhaps, from the violent torsion of the wheels in its recent movement, partly from the thundering blow we had given to it —as if it sym-ifi pathized with human horror, was all alive with tremblings and shiverings. The young man trem- bled not, nor shivered. He sat like a rock. But his was the steadiness of agitation frozen into rest by horror. As yet he dared not look round; for he 20 knew that, if anything remained to do, by him it could no longer be done. And as yet he knew not for certain if their safety were accomplished. But the lady But the lady ! Oh, heavens ! will that spec- 25 tacle ever depart from my dreams, as she rose and sank upon her seat, sank and rose, threw up her arms wddly to heaven, clutched at some visionary object in the air, fainting, praying, raving, despairing? Figure to yourself, reader, the elements of the case; 30 suffer me to recall before your mind the circum- 132 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACB stances of that unparalleled situation. From the silence and deep peace of this saintly summer night — from the pathetic blending of this sweet moon- light, dawnlight, dreamlight — from the manly 5 tenderness of this flattering, whispering, murmuring love — suddenly as from the woods and fields — suddenly as from the chambers of the air opening in revelation — suddenly as from the ground yawning at her feet, leaped upon her, with the flashing of 10 cataracts, Death the crowned phantom, with all the equipage of his terrors, and the tiger roar of his voice. The moments were numbered; the strife was fin- ished; the vision was closed. In the twinkling of ir, an rye our flying horses had carried us to the ter- mination of the umbrageous aisle ; at the right angles we wheeled into our former direction; the turn of the road carried the scene out of my eyes in an instant, and swept it into my dreams forever. THE ENGLISH MAIL COM II 133 Section III — Dream-Fugue: FOUNDED ON THE PRECEDING THEME OF SUDDEN DEATH " Whence the sound Of instruments that made melodious chime Was heard, of harp and organ ; and who moved Their stops and chords was Been ; his volant touch Instinct through all proportions, low and high, 5 Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue." Par. Lost, Bk. XI. Tumultuosissimamente Passion of sudden dcatli ! that once in youth I read and interpreted by the shadows of thy averted signs 1 ! — rapture of panic taking the shape (which amongst tombs in churches I have seen) of woman bursting 10 her sepulchral bonds — of woman's Ionic form b( nd- ing forward from the ruins of her grave with arching foot, with eves upraised, with clasped adoring hands — waiting, watching, trembling, praying for the trumpet's call to rise from dust forever! Ah, 15 vision too fearful of shuddering humanity on the brink of almighty abysses ! — vision that didst start back, that didst reel away, like a shriveling scroll from before the wrath of fire racing on the wings of the wind! I^pilepsy so brief of horror, wherefore 20 is it that thou canst not die? Passing so suddenly 1 " Averted signs": — I read the course and changes of the lady's agony in the succession of her involuntary gestures; but it must be remembered that I read all this from the rear, never once catching the lady's full face, and even her profile imperfectly. 134 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH into darkness, wherefore is it that still thou sheddest thy sad funeral blights upon the gorgeous mosaics of dreams? Fragment of music too passionate, heard once, and heard no more, what aileth thee, 5 that thy deep rolling chords come up at intervals through all the worlds of sleep, and after forty years have lost no element of horror? Lo, it is summer — almighty summer ! The ever- lasting gates of life and summer are thrown open 10 wide; and on the ocean, tranquil and verdant as a savannah, the unknown lady from the dreadful vision and I myself are floating — she upon a fairy pinnace, and I upon an English three-decker. Both of us are wooing gales of festal happiness 15 within the domain of our common country, within that ancient watery park, within the pathless chase of ocean, where England takes her pleasure as a huntress through winter and summer, from the ris- ing to the setting sun. Ah, what a wilderness of 20 floral beauty was hidden, or was suddenly revealed, upon the tropic islands through which the pinnace moved ! And upon her deck what a bevy of human flowers : young women how lovely, young men how noble, that were dancing together, and slowly drift - 25ing towards us amidst music and incense, amidst blossoms from forests and gorgeous corymbi from vintages, amidst natural caroling, and the echoes of sweet girlish laughter. Slowly the pinnace nears THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 135 us, gayly she hails us, and silently she disappears beneath the shadow of our mighty bows. But then, as at some signal from heaven, the music, and the carols, and the sweet echoing of girlish laughter — all are hushed. What evil has smitten the pinnace, 5 meeting or overtaking her ? Did ruin to our friends couch within our own dreadful shadow? Was our shadow the shadow of death? I looked over the bow for an answer, and, behold ! the pinnace was dismantled; the revel and the revellers were found 10 no more; the glory of the vintage was dust; and the forests with their beauty were left without a witness upon the seas. " But where," and I turned to our crew — " where are the lovely women that danced beneath the awning of flowers and clustering 15 corymbi? Whither have fled the noble young men that danced with them?" Answer there was none. But suddenly the man at the mast-head, whose coun- tenance darkened with alarm, cried out, "Sail on the weather beam ! Down she comes upon us : in 20 seventy seconds she also will founder." II I looked to the weather side, and the summer had departed. The sea was rocking, and shaken with gathering wrath. Upon its surface sat mighty mists, which grouped themselves into arches and long 25 cathedral aisles. Down one of these, with the fiery pace of a quarrel from a cross bow, ran a frigate right athwart our course. "Are they mad?" some voice 136 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH laimed from our dock. "Do they woo their ruin?" But in a moment, as Bhe was close upon us, some impulse of a heady current or local vortex gave a wheeling bias to her course, and off she forged 5 without a shock. As she ran past us. high aloft amongst the shrouds stood the lady of the pinnace. The deeps opened ahead in malice t<» receive her, towerinj - of foam ran after her, the billows were tierce to catch her. Hut far away she was 10 home into deserl spaces of the sea: whilst still by Bight I followed her. as she ran before the howling L r ale. chased by angry sea birds and by maddening billows; still I saw her. as at the moment when she ran past us. standing amongst the shrouds, with her us white draperies streaming before the wind. There she Stood, with hair disheveled, one hand clutched amongst the tackling — rising, sinking, fluttering, trembling, praying; there for leagues I saw her as she stood, raising at intervals one hand to heaven, :m amidst the fiery crests of the pursuing waves and the raving of the storm ; until at last, upon a sound from afar of malicious laughter and mockery, all was hidden forever in driving showers; and afterwards, but when 1 knew not, nor how, III 28 Sweet funeral bells from some incalculable dis- tance, wailing over the dead that die before the dawn, awakened me as I slept in a boat moored to some familiar shore. The morning twilight even then was THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 137 breaking; and, by the dusky revelations which it spread, I saw a girl, adorned with a garland of white g about her head for Borne greal festival, run- ning along the solitary strand in extremity of haste. Ih-r running was the running of panic; and often 5 she looked hack as to some dreadful enemy in the rear. But, when I leaped ashore and followed on her steps to warn her of a peril in front, alas! from me she tied as from another peril, and vainly 1 Bhouted to her of quicksands that lay ahead. Faster to and faster Bhe ran; round a promontory of rocks she wheeled oiit of Bight ; in an instant I also wheeled round it. hut only to Bee the treacherous sands gath- ering above her head. Already her person was buried; only the fair young head and the diadem 15 of white roses around it were still visible to the pity- ing heavens; and. last of all. was visible one white marble arm. I saw by the early twilight this fair young head, as it was Binking down to darkness — saw this marble arm. as it rose above her head andi'O her treacherous grave, tossing, faltering, rising, clutching, as at some false deceiving hand stretched out from the clouds — saw this marble arm uttering her dying hope, and then uttering her dying despair. The head, the diadem, the arm — these all had sunk; 25 at last over these also the cruel quicksand had closed; and no memorial of the fair young girl remained on earth, except my own solitary tears, and the funeral bells from the desert seas, that, rising again more Boftly, Bang a requiem over the grave of the buried 30 child, and over her blighted dawn. 138 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH I sat, and wept in secret the tears that men have ever given to the memory of those that died before the dawn, an«l by the treachery of earth, our mother. Hut suddenly the tear- and funeral hells were hushed 5 by a shout as of many nations, and by a roar as from some greal king's artillery, advancing rapidly along the valleys, and heard afar by echoes from the moun- tains. "Hush!" I said, as I bent my ear earth- wards to listen — "hush! — this either is the very 10 anarchy of strife, or else" — and then I listened more profoundly, and whispered as 1 raised my head — "or else, oh, heavens! it is victory that is final, victory that swallows up all strife." IV Immediately, in trance, I was carried over land 15 and sea to some distant kingdom, and placed upon a triumphal ear, amongst companions crowned with laurel. The darkness of gathering midnight, brooding over all the land, hid from us the mighty crowds that were weaving restlessly about ourselves •jo as a center: we heard them, but saw then. not. Tidings had arrived, within an hour, of a grandeur that measured itself against centuries; too full of pathos they were, too full of joy, to utter them- selves by other latiL r uaL r e than by tears, by restless 25 anthems, and Tt l)>um* reverberated from the choirs and orchestras of earth. These tidings we that sat upon the laureled ear had it for our privi- lege to publish amongst all nations. And already, THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 139 by Bigns audible through the darkness, by snortings and tramplings, our angry horses, thai knew no fear or fleshly weariness, upbraided us with delay. Wherefore was it that we delayed? We waited for a secret word, that should bear witness to the 5 hope of nations as now accomplished forever. At midnight the secret word arrived; which word was — Waterloo r< red t 'hrisU ndom ! The dread- ful word shone by its own light ; before us it went ; high above our leaders' heads it rode, and spread t<» a golden light over the paths which we traversed. Every city, at the presence of the secret word, threw open its gates. The rivers were conscious as we crossed. All the forests, as we ran along their margins, shivered in homage to the secret word. 15 And the darkness comprehended it. Two hours after midnight we approached a mighty Minster. I'- gates, which rose to the clouds, were closed. But, when the dreadful word that rode before us reached them with its golden light, silently 20 they moved back upon their hinges, and at a flying gallop our equipage entered the grand aisle of the cathedral. Headlong was our pace; and at every altar, in the little chapels and oratories to the right hand and left of our course, the lamps, dying or 25 sickening, kindled anew in sympathy with the secret word that was flying past. Forty leagues we might have run in the cathedral, and as yet no strength of morning light had reached us, when before us we saw the aerial galleries of organ and choir. 30 Every pinnacle of fretwork, every station of advan- 140 THE ENGLISH MAIL CO Ac II tage amongst the traceries, was crested by white- robed choristers that sang deliverance ; that wept no more tears, as once their fathers had wept ; but at intervals that sang together to the generations, 5 saying, " Chant the deliverer's praise in every tongue," and receiving answers from afar, "Such as once in heaven and earth were sung." And of their chanting was no end; of our head- 10 long pace was neither pause nor Blackening. Thus as we ran Like torrents — thus as we swept with bridal rapture over the Campo Santo * of the cathedral graves — suddenly we became aware of a vast necropolis rising upon the far-off horizon — 15a city of sepulchers, built within the Baintly cathe- dral for the warrior dead that rested from their feuds on earth. Of purple granite was the necropolis; yet, in the first minute, it lay like a purple stain upon the horizon, so mighty was the distance. In the 2osecond minute it trembled through many chants i"Campo Santo": — It is probable that most of my readers will bf acquainted with the history ol tin- Campo Santo (or ceme- tery) at Pisa, composed of earth brought from Jerusalem for a bed <>f sanctity, as the highesl prize which the ooble piety <>i cru- saders could a->k or imagine. To readers who art- unacquainted with England, or who (being English) are yet unacquainted with the cathedra] cities of England, it may be righl to mention that the graves within-side the cathedrals often form a flat pavement over which carriages and horses might run ; and perhaps a boyish remembrance of one particular cathedral, across which I had seen passengers walk and burdens carried, as about two centuries back they were through the middle of St. Paul's in London, may have assisted my dream. THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 141 growing into terraces and towers of wondrous altitude, so mighty was the pace. In the third minute already, with our dreadful gallop, we were entering its suburbs. Vast sarcophagi rose on every side, having towers and turrets that, upon the 5 limits of the central aisle, strode forward with haughty intrusion, that ran back with mighty shadows into answering recesses. Every sarcopha- gus showed many bas-reliefs — bas-reliefs of battles and of battlefields; battles from forgotten ages, 10 battles from yesterday; battlefields that, long since, nature had healed and reconciled to herself with the sweet oblivion of flowers; battlefields that were yet angry and crimson with carnage. Where the terraces ran, there did we run ; where the towers 15 curved, there did we curve. With the flight of swallows our horses swept round every angle. bike rivers in flood wheeling round headlands, like hurricanes that ride into the secrets of forests, faster than ever light unwove the mazes of darkness, 20 our flying equipage carried earthly passions, kindled warrior instincts, amongst the dust that lay around us — dust oftentimes of our noble fathers that had slept in God from Crecy to Trafalgar. And now had we reached the last sarcophagus, now were we 25 abreast of the last bas-relief, already had we recov- ered the arrow-like flight of the illimitable central aisle, when coming up this aisle to meet us we beheld afar off a female child, that rode in a carriage as frail as flowers. The mists which went before 30 her hid the fawns that drew her, but could not hide 142 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH the shells and tropic flowers with which she played — but could not hide the lovely smiles by which she uttered her trust in the mighty cathedral, and in the cherubim that looked down upon her from the 5 mighty shafts of its pillars. Face to face she was meeting us; face to face she rode, as if danger there were none. "Oh, baby!" I exclaimed, " shalt thou be the ransom for Waterloo? Must we, that carry tidings of great joy to every people, be mes- lOsengers of ruin to the In horror I rose at the thought; but then, also, in horror at the thought rose one that was sculptured on a bas-relief — a Dying Trumpeter. Solemnly from the field of battle he rose to his feel ; and. iinslinging his stony 15 trumpet, carried it, in his dying anguish, to his stony lips — Bounding once, and yet once again; proclamation that, in thy ears, oh. baby! spoke from the battlements of death. Immediately deep shadows fell between us, and aboriginal silence. 2oThe choir had ceased to sing. The hoofs of our horses, the dreadful rattle of our harness, the groan- ing of our wheels, alarmed the graves no more. By horror the bas-relief had been unlocked unto life. By horror we, that were so full of life, we men and 25 our horses, with their fiery fore legs rising in mid air to their everlasting gallop, were frozen to a bas- relief. Then a third time the trumpet sounded; the seals were taken off all pulses; life, and the frenzy of life, tore into their channels again; again ao the choir burst forth in sunny grandeur, as from the muffling of storms and darkness; again the thun- THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 143 derings of our horses carried temptation into the graves. One cry burst from our lips, as the clouds, drawing off from the aisle, showed it empty before us< _ " Whither has the infant fled ? — is the young child caught up to Clod?" Lo! afar off, in a vast 5 recess, rose three mighty windows to the clouds; and on a level with their summits, at height insu- perable to man, rose an altar of purest alabaster. On its eastern face was trembling a crimson glory. A glory was it from the reddening dawn that nowio amed through the windows? Was it from the crimson robes of the martyrs painted on the windows? Was it from the bloody bas-reliefs of earth? There, suddenly, within that crimson radiance, rose the apparition of a woman's head, and then of a woman'sl5 figure. The child it was — grown up to woman's height. Clinging to the horns of the altar, voice- less she stood — sinking, rising, raving, despairing; and behind the volume of incense that, night and day. streamed upwards from the altar, dimly was 20 seen the fiery font, and the shadow of that dreadful being who should have baptized her with the bap- tism of death. But by her side was kneeling her better angel, that hid his face with wings; that wept and pleaded for her; that prayed when she 25 could not; that fought with Heaven by tears for her deliverance; which also, as he raised his im- mortal countenance from his wings, I saw, by the glory in his eye, that from Heaven he had won at last. 3° 144 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH Then was completed the passion of the mighty fugue. The golden tubes of the organ, which as yet had but muttered at intervals — gleaming amongst clouds and surges of incense — threw up, 5 as from fountains unfathomable, columns of heart- shattering music. Choir and antechoir were Oiling fast with unknown voices. Thou also, Dying Trumpeter, with thy love that was victorious, and thy anguish thai was finishing, didsi enter the 10 tumult; trumpet and echo — farewell love, and farewell anguish — rang through the dreadful sanctua. Oh, darkness of the gravel that from the crimson altar and from the fiery font werl visited and searched by the effulgence in the angel's eye — IB were these indeed thy children? Pomps of life, that, from the burials of centuries, rose again to the voice of perfect joy, did ye indeed mingle with the festivals of Death? Lo! as I looked back for Beventy leagues through the mighty cathedral, 20 1 saw the quick and the dead that Bang together to God, together that sang to the generations of man. All the hosts of jubilation, like armies that ride in pursuit, moved with one step. Us, that. with laureled heads, were passing from the cathe- 25dral, they overtook, and. as with a garment, they wrapped us round with thunders greater than our own. As brothers we moved together ; to the dawn that advanced, to the stars that fled; render- ing thanks to God in the highest — that, having THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 145 hid his face through one generation behind thick clouds of War, once again was ascending, from the Campo Santo of Waterloo was ascending, in the visions of Peace; rendering thanks for thee, young girl ! whom having overshadowed with His ineffable 5 passion of death, suddenly did God relent, suffered thy angel to turn aside His arm. and even in thee, sister unknown! shown to me for a moment only to be hidden forever, found an occasion to glorify His goodness. A thousand times, amongst theio phantoms of Bleep, have 1 seen thee entering the gates of the golden dawn, with the secret word riding before thee, with the armies of the grave behind thee. — scon thee Binking, rising, raving, despairing; a thousand times in the worlds of sleep i.~, have I seen thee followed by Bustain it. At the very moment of birth, just as the infant tasted for the first time the atmosphere of our troubled planet, it was laid on the ground. Thai might hear dif- lsferent interpretations. But immediately, lest so grand a creature should grovel there for more than one instant, either the paternal hand, as proxy for the goddess Levana, or some near kinsman, as proxy for the father, raised it upright, hade ii look 2oerect as the king of all this world, and presented its forehead to the star-, saying, perhaps, in his heart. "Behold what i- greater than yourselvi This symbolic act represented the function of Levana. And that mysterious lady, who never revealed her 26 face (except to mo in dreams), hut always acted 1 1»; LEVANA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW 147 by delegation, had her name from the Latin verb (as still it is the Italian verb) levare, to raise aloft. This is the explanation of Levana. And hence it has arisen that some people have understood by Levana the tutelary power that controls the edn- 5 cation of the QUTsery. She, that wonld not suffer at his birth even a prefigurative or mimic degrada- tion for her awful ward, far less could be supposed to suffer the real degradation attaching to the non- development of his powers. She therefore watchesio over human education. Now, the word (duco, with the penultimate short, was derived (by a pro- often exemplified in the crystallization of Languages) from the word educo, with the penulti- mate long. Whatsoever <<>kf>. as applied by him to the flying successions of day and night. I borrowed it for one moment in order to point my own sentence ; which being done, the reader is witness that I now pay it back instantly by a note made for that 148 LEVANA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW' If, then, these arc the ministries by which Levana works, how profoundly must she reverence the encies of grief! But you. reader I think, — that children generally arc not liable to ^rief such mine. There are two senses in the word gen- erally, — tin 1 sense of Euclid, where it means universally for in the whole extent of the genus), and a foolish Bense of this world, where it means usually. Now, I am far from Baying that children 10 universally are capable of grief like mine. But there are more than you ever ln-ard of who die of grief in this island of ours. I will tell you a com- mon case. The rules of EtoD require that a boy on the foundation should he there twelve years: i.-i he is superannuated at eighteen, consequently he must come at six. Children torn away from mothers and sisters at that age not unfrequently die. 1 speak of what I know. The complaint is not ente',. ,1 by the registrar a- grief; hut that it Is. Grief of •jn that sort, and at that age, has killed more than ever have been counted amongst its martyrs. Therefore it is that Levana often communes with the powers that shake man's heart: therefore it 18 that she dotes upon grief. "These ladies/' said I 26 softly to myself, on seeing the ministers with whom Levana was conversing, "these are the Son < s«>li- purpose. I >ii the same principle T often borrow their Beak from young ladies, when closing my letters, because there ui inre to be some tender sentimenl upon them about " memory," <>r " hope," or "roses," or "reunion," and my correspondent must be ;i sad brute who is not touched by the eloquence of the seal, even if his taste i> bo bad that he remains deal to mine. LEVANA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW 149 and they are three in Dumber; as the Graces are three, who dress man's life with beauty: the Parccc are three who weave the dark arras of man's life in their mysterious loom always with colors sad in part, sometime- angry with tragic crimson and 5 Mack; the Furies are three, who visit with retribu- tions called from the other side of the grave offenses that walk upon this; and once even the Muses were but three, who lit the harp, the trumpet, or the lute, to the great burdens of man's impassioned io creations. These are the Sorrows, all three of whom I know." The last words I say now; but in Oxford I said, "one of whom I know, and the others too surely 1 shall know." For already, in my fervent youth. I saw (dimly relieved upon the dark back-ic ground <>f my dreams) the imperfecl lineaments of the awful sisters. These sisters — by what names shall we call t hem '.' If I say simply "The Sorrow-." there will be a chance of mistaking the term; it might be under-'jo stood of individual sorrow — separate cases of Borrow, — whereas I want a term expressing the mighty abstractions that incarnate themselves in all individual sufferings of man's heart ; and I wish to have these abstractions presented as impersona-25 tions, that is, as clothed with human attributes of life, and with functions pointing to flesh. Let us call them therefore, Our Ladies of Sorrow. I know them thoroughly, and have walked in all their kingdoms. Three sisters they are, of one mysteri-30 ous household; and their paths are wide apart; 150 LEV AN A AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW but of their dominion there is no end. Them I saw often conversing with Levana, and sometimes about myself. Do they talk, then ? O, no ! Mighty phantoms like these disdain the infirmities 5 of language. They may utter voices through the organs of man when they dwell in human hearts, but amongst themselves is no voice nor sound; eternal silence reigns in their kingdoms. They spoke not, as they talked with Levana; they whis- lopered not; they sang not; though oftentimes me- thought they might have sung: for I upon earth had heard their mysteries oftentimes deciphered by harp and timbrel, by dulcimer and organ. Like God, whose servants they are, they utter their 15 pleasure not by sounds that perish, or by words that go astray, but by signs in heaven, by changes on earth, by pulses in secret rivers, heraldries painted on darkness, and hieroglyphics written on the tablets of the brain. They wheeled in mazes; / spelled 20 the steps. They telegraphed from afar; I read the signals. They conspired together; and on the mir- rors of darkness my eye traced the plots. Theirs were the symbols; mine are the words. What is it the sisters are ? What is it that they 25 do ? Let me describe their form and their presence, if form it were that still fluctuated in its outline, or presence it were that forever advanced to the front or forever receded amongst shades. The eldest of the three is named Mater Lachry- 30 marum, Our Lady of Tears. She it is that night and day raves and moans, calling for vanished LEVAXA AXD OUR LADIES OF SORROW 151 faces. She stood in Rama where a voice was heard of lamentation — Rachel weeping for her children, and refused to be comforted. She it was that stood in Bethlehem on the night when Herod's sword swept its nurseries of Innocents, and the little feet 5 were stiffened forever, which, heard at times as they tottered along floors overhead, woke pulses of love in household hearts that were not unmarked in heaven. Her eyes are sweet and subtile, wild and sleepy 10 by turns; oftentimes rising to the clouds, often- times challenging the heavens. She wears a dia- dem round her head. And I knew by childish memories that she could go abroad upon the winds when she heard that sobbing of litanies or thei5 thundering of organs, and when she beheld the mustering of summer clouds. This sister, the elder, it is that carries keys more than papal at her girdle, which open every cottage and every palace. She, to my knowledge, sat all last summer by the bed- 20 side of the blind beggar, him that so often and so gladly I talked with, whose pious daughter, eight years old, with the sunny countenance, resisted the temptations of play and village mirth to travel all day long on dusty roads with her afflicted father. 25 For this did God send her a great reward. In the springtime of the year, and whilst yet her own spring was budding, he recalled her to himself. But her blind father mourns forever over her; still he dreams at midnight that the little guiding 30 hand is locked within his own; and still he wakens 152 LEV AN A AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW to a darkness that is now within a second and a deeper darkness. This Mater Lachrymarum also has been sitting all this winter of 1844-5 within the bedchamber of the Czar, bringing before his 5 eyes a daughter (not less pious) that vanished to God not less suddenly, and left behind her a dark- ness not less profound. By the power of her keys it is that Our Lady of Tears glides a ghostly intruder into the chambers of sleepless men, sleepless women, 10 sleepless children, from Ganges to the Nile, from Nile to Mississippi. And her, because she is the firstborn of her house, and has the widest empire, let us honor with the title of "Madonna." The second sister is called Mater Suspiriorum, 15 Our Lady of Sighs. She never scales the clouds, nor walks abroad upon the winds. She wears no diadem. And her eyes, if they were ever seen, would be neither sweet nor subtile; no man could read their story; they would be found filled with 20 perishing dreams, and with wrecks of forgotten delirium. But she raises not her eyes; her head, on which sits a dilapidated turban, droops forever, forever fastens on the dust. She weeps not. She groans not. But she sighs inaudibly at intervals. 25 Her sister Madonna is oftentimes stormy and frantic, raging in the highest against heaven, and demand- ing back her darlings. But Our Lady of Sighs never clamors, never defies, dreams not of rebellious aspirations. She is humble to abjectness. Hers 30 is the meekness that belongs to the hopeless. Mur- mur she may, but it is in her sleep. Whisper she LEV AN A AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW 153 may, but it is to herself in the twilight. Mutter she does at times, but it is in solitary places that are desolate as she is desolate, in ruined cities, and when the sun has gone down to his rest. This sister is the visitor of the Pariah, of the Jew, of the bonds- 5 man to the oar in the Mediterranean galleys; of the English criminal in Norfolk Island, blotted out from the books of remembrance in sweet far-off England; of the baffled penitent reverting his eyes forever upon a solitary grave, which to him seems 10 the altar overthrown of some past and bloody sacrifice, on which altar no oblations can now be availing, whether towards pardon that he might implore, or towards reparation that he might at- tempt. Every slave that at noonday looks up to 15 the tropical sun with timid reproach, as he points with one hand to the earth, our general mother, but for him a stepmother, — as he points with the other hand to the Bible, our general teacher, but against him sealed and sequestered ; l every woman 20 sitting in darkness, without love to shelter her head, or hope to illuminate her solitude, because the heaven-born instincts kindling in her nature germs of holy affections, which God implanted in her womanly bosom, having been stifled by social 25 necessities, now burn sullenly to waste, like sepul- chral lamps amongst the ancients; every nun de- 1 This, the reader will be aware, applies chiefly to the cotton and tobacco states of North America; but not to them only : on which account I have not scrupled to figure the sun which looks down upon slavery as tropical — no matter if strictly within the tropics, or simply so near to them as to produce a similar climate, 154 LEV AN A AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW frauded of her unreturning May time by wicked kinsmen, whom God will judge; every captive in every dungeon; all that are betrayed, and all that are rejected; outcasts by traditionary law, sand children of hereditary disgrace, — all these walk with Our Lady of Sighs. She also carries a key; but she needs it little, for her kingdom is chiefly amongst the tents of Shem, and the houseless vagrant of every clime. Yet in the very highest 10 ranks of man she finds chapels of her own; and even in glorious England there are some that, to the world, carry their heads as proudly as the rein- deer, who yet secretly have received her mark upon their foreheads. 15 But the third sister, who is also the youngest — Hush! whisper whilst we talk of her! Her king- dom is not large, or else no flesh should live; but within that kingdom all power is hers. Her head, turreted like that of Cybele, rises almost beyond 20 the reach of sight. She droops not ; and her eyes rising so high might be hidden by distance. But, being what they are, t hey cannot be hidden; through the treble veil of crape which she wears, the fierce light of a blazing misery, that rests not for matins 25 or for vespers, for noon of day or noon of night, for ebbing or for flowing tide, may be read from the very ground. She is the defier of God. She also is the mother of lunacies, and the suggestress of suicides. Deep lie the roots of her power; but 30 narrow is the nation that she rules. For she can approach only those in whom a profound nature LEV AN A AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW 155 has been upheaved by central convulsions; in whom the heart trembles and the brain rocks under conspiracies of tempest from without and tempest from within. Madonna moves with uncertain steps, fast or slow, but still with tragic grace. Our Lady 5 of Sighs creeps timidly and stealthily. But this youngest sister moves with incalculable motions, bounding, and with a tiger's leaps. She carries no key; for, though coming rarely amongst men, she storms all doors at which she is permitted toio enter at all. And her name is Mater Tenebrarum, Our Lady of Darkness. These were the Semnai Theai, or Sublime God- desses, 1 these were the Eumenides, or Gracious Ladies (so called by antiquity in shuddering pro- 15 pitiation), of my Oxford dreams. Madonna spoke. She spoke by her mysterious hand. Touching my head, she beckoned to Our Lady of Sighs; and what she spoke, translated out of the signs which (except in dreams) no man reads, was this: 20 " Lo ! here is he whom in childhood I dedicated to my altars. This is he that once I made my darling. Him I led astray, him I beguiled, and from heaven I stole away his young heart to mine. Through rne did he become idolatrous ; and through 25 me it was, by languishing desires, that he worshiped the worm and prayed to the wormy grave. Holy 1 "Sublime goddesses": The word i(in t ) here appears to be used in the sur- veyor's sense, "the place selected for planting the instrument with which an observation is to be made." — Cent»r>i !>;<■- tionary. 17. Scepter was departing from Judah. Cf. Genesis xlix. 10. 20. Sang together with the songs. A peculiar expr- probably an echo of scriptural phrases, as in Isaiah lii. '.», and Job xxxviii. 7. 21. Domremy. More generally called Domrgmy-la-Pucelle, in honor of Joan of Arc. The house in which she was born is preserved as a national relic. Near it is a handsome monument with a colossal statue of the heroine. A chapel has also been built to her memory. 23 : (J. Apparitors. The summoners, or attendants upon the officers of an ecclesiastical court. 7. En contumace. In contumacy, contempt of court; a French legal term denoting the position of one who, when sum- moned to answer charges before the court, does not appear. 8. As yet may happen. Already "universal France" has practically accepted .loan of Arc as a national heroine. Her fame could hardly be more exalted, unless she were canonized by the Church ; this, however, is not probable with the present condition of the Church in France. Her sentence was revoked by decree of the Pope in 1456, and since then the genuineness of her inspiration has been accepted by Roman Catholic writers NOTES 159 26. Rouen. A city on the Seine in Normandy, where Joan wis martyred. 24 : 10. Lilies of France. The lily, or fleur-de-lis (flower of the lily), is .said to have been the royal emblem of France from the time of Clovis. The Revolution of 178t>-17*.>:» caused the royal lily to "wither," when Louis XVI was beheaded, and the people for a time ruled the kingdom. 18. But stay. The original article in TaiVs Magazine has, 11 But Btop." 25. Jules Michelet [meesh-la 7 ] (1798-1874). A French his- torian, professor of history in tli.-c-li.--v of France. His prin- cipal works are History of France, History of the French Revolution, Women of the Revolution, and Beveral books of a poetical and speculative character, such as Tin Bird, The In- sect, The fifea, and Woman. His writings are especially remark- able for their brilliancy of style. Upon the preparation of his chief wmk. the History of France, he is said to have spent forty years. An available translation of this work is that of G. II. Smith. 2 vols. 27. '• As mad as a March hare," is a very old saying. In the month of March hares are unusually wild and excitable. 28. Recovered liberty. An allusion, apparently, to the minor revolution of 1830, by which the restored Bourbons were ex- pelled. Their mighty r< volution is, of course, the great one of ITS-.) and Napoleon. The one to the other is as laughing-gas to voim . 25 : 11. His worst book. A translation of the work, Priests, Women, and Families, had been published in London the y< ar before. After the next sentence De Quincey originally added, •• 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." 18. Falconer's lure. A decoy used to recall the hawk to his perch on the fist ; sometimes an artificial bird, with meat attached, which strongly attracts the hawk when it is swung in the air by the falconer, with a peculiar whistle or call. 26 : 3. Chevy Chase. De Quincey parodies the opening lines of the old ballad of Chevy Chose, not of the familiar version in l'i rcy's Reliques, but of the "enfeebled edition" current in the 160 NOTES printed broadsides of the seventeenth century. This is given in the Child Collection, and in the abridged edition, English and Scottish Popular Ballads {Cambridge Edition), p. 397. " The stout Erie of Northumberland a vow to <;<>.i Quiche- rat's Proces a\ Condemnation D' Ai>\ New York. 1902. 27 : 16. Hannibal. The famous Carthaginian general, who when nine years old was made by his father. Elamilcar, to swear eternal enmity to Rome. In lM7 b.c. he Led a Fast army across the Alps, and for a time threatened the empire with total destruction. In 183 b.c he took poison to escape falling into the hands of his old enemies. 1»'». Mithridates. A Ferocious king of Pontus, who for many years waged war against the Romans. In the lasl war against Pompey, 66 b.c, his son Pharnaces having rebelled, Mithri- dates, after attempting ineffectually to poison himself, ordered C'ln of his Gallic mercenaries to dispatch him with his sword. 23. Delenda est Anglia Victrix. " Victorious England must be destroyed : " suggested by the famous words with which the elder Cato is said to have ended all his speeches, "Delenda est Carthago." NOTES 1G1 28. Hyder Ali. One of the most powerful princes of India, Sultan of tlic state of Mysore. The defeat and death of his son Tippoo Sahib occurred in 1799. 28 : 10. Suffren. A French admiral, who in 1780 captured twelve merchant-ships from the British, and in 1781 defeated the British commodore Johnstone. In the original article in Tait'a the name is spelled Suffrein. 10. Magnanimous justice of Englishmen. De Quincey could not have had Shakspere's / Henry VI in mind when writing this line. Fuller, in his Holy and Pro/am State, included Joan of Arc among the examples of the "Profane State.' 1 Admit- ting thai the greal doctors disagreed as to some of her acts, he gives two tacts that for himself are quite conclusive, namely, " going in man's clothes, flatly againsl scripture," and "shaved her hair in the fashiOD of a friar, against GrOd's express word." 29 : 1. Marches. An old French word for the border or frontier of a country. Ct p. "><'>, 1. 25. See map of France in the fifteenth century. 18. The cis and the trans. Latin on this side and on the oik* r tide. 29. St. Andrew's Cross. Called in Latin crux deeuasata, decussate cross. Upon a cross of this form St. Andrew, the apostle, is supposed to have been crucified. 30 : 13. Odious man. Later in the essay De Quincey ex- plains his '-systematic hatred of D'Arc," p. 39. 31: 1. Crecy (Eng., Oessy). This famous battle was fought in 1346 between the English under Edward III and the Black Prince and the French under Philip VI ; 1200 knights, the flower of French chivalry, and 30,000 footmen were slain. It marks the downfall of feudalism. The knights on horseback in glittering armor, in spite of their traditional prowess, could not cope with the English foot-soldiers, mere yeomen, armed with the bow. 2. Agincourt [aj'in-kort]. This victory was won by Henry V in 1415. The French lost 10,000 men, including many princes and nobles. Nicopolis. The allied armies of Hungary, Poland, and France, under King Sigismund, were signally defeated at this place in 1396 by the Sultan Bajazet. 32 : 8. Poictiers (or Poitiers) [poi-terz']. Here in 1356 Ed- L62 N0TE8 ward the Black Prince, with 8000 men, defeat '1 a French army of atom 50,000 men, and captured the king, John the 1 1 Withering overthrow.- u »n thai England Learned at Bannockburn she taught the world a( The whole social and political fabric of the Middle Ages rested i military iddenly withdrawn. The churl ha stern civilization, as the breaking ap of feudalism, the aboli- tion of Berfdom, thi n of commerce, the building up of separate Btates of Europe, could nol be foreseen. 7. Destruction of the Templars. The celebrated "Order of the Templars,* 1 or " Knight- of the Temple," was organized at salem in 1117, for the purpose of protecting pilgrims their Lodging was in a palace near the temple. The Quml I first Limited to nine ; but in time the order • 1 throughout Europe, becoming very wealthy, corrupt, and powerful. Iii 1812 many of its leaders were burned at the a ami the order abolished by decree of the Pope. B. Papal interdicts. " iv Quincey has probably in mind such an interdict as that pronounced in 1200, by [nnocenl III. \ il functions were suspended and tin- land was in desolation. 11 — Hart. The house of Anjou was an old and powerful one, num- its dukes and their descendants many royal Prom this house sprung the royal house of Plan- in !. The i i \ An .. vins were especially fa- mous for their monstrous deeds. After the assassination of 1 les of Durazzo in Hungary, Id lis of Anjou e the throne of Naples, bul i expelled by Ladislaus, son of Durazzo. The cruelties of Charles of Anjou in Sicily caused the terrible uprising in 1282 known as the Sicilian Vespers, in which thousands of French people were massacred. And by the Emperor. The Emperor Conradin, in 1268, attempted to recover the Two Sicilies from the usurper, Charles . rjou, but red by Charles and beheaded. It was the treachery of the Emperor Sigismund thai led to the burning In 14l.">. and the enn 1 and desolating Hussite war. The irresponsible absolutism of the Emperors was thus inter- preted : •• No laws can bind this Emperor, though he may choose to live according t<> them; hone may presume to arraign the conduct or question the motives of him who is answerable only d." 17. A double Pope. In 1378 two popes were chosen, Urban VI and Clement VII; the one held cnut at Koine, and the other at Avignon. For there were two rival popes, L64 NOTES hurling anathemas and foul ich other, like " two dogs snarling over a h Wyclif. In 1402 there were even three recognized popes; but in 1 1 ral Coun- cil deposed all three, and ended lh< schism." 21. Those vast rents. The Protestant Reformation in I many ami in England. The earlier troubles <>f the Church were but preparations,* rehearsals, fortl tor tribulations. !>■ Quincey <1 mix metaphors as muchasinthJi Bnoe. The sentence reads in raft's; u 8he was aln rehearsing, as in still earlier forma Bhe had rehearsed, the first rent in her foundations 1 for the coming which no man shoul il." 34: - _'4. Miserere. A musical composition f<>r the 51st Psalm, which in I Ins with the word M Have mi rcj ; ly appointed in the Etonian Catholic Church for peniten- tial B 26. Te Deum. An old Latin hymn of which the fil / I > a m hi n. i.i \us, W God j sung In - of public thanksgiving. 35 : 18. Abbeys there were, etc Turk quotes Wordsworth's >nd part : — ■• Temples like those smong the Hind And iii*»-~«4»i»--~. and Bpires, and abbey wind And castles all with Ivy green." 21. German Diets. Hie imperial Parliament, or I>i«-t. composed of three houses, the 8< n d Ble< tors, the Pi and ecclesiastical, and tl aperisi Cities. Three of the Prince Eli • the Archbishops and Cologne. 36 : •"). Except in 1813. Another exception now is 1870, when in the Franco-Prussian War th»-\ ne of much fighting, and great sen. 17. Those mysterious fawns. -*ln Bome of the romai of th.- Middle Ages, especially those containing Celtic material, s knight, while hunting, is led by his pursuit <>f s white fawn ■ white Btag or boat an Inhabitant <»f the 'Happy Other-world') <>r into the confines of the 'Happy Other-world ' itself." We are indebted to Pi II 11. Turk NOTES 165 for this explanation, as also for the reference furnishing the next . 19. That ancient stag. "This chasing of the white doe or the white hart by the Bpectral huntsman has assumed various form-. v ording to Aristotle a white hart was killed by j, King «»f Sicily, which a thousand years beforehand had been ted to Diana by Diomedes. Alexander the • is taid by Pliny to have can-lit ■ white Btag, place. 1 a collar of gold about its neck, and afterwards ael it free. Succeed- in- heroes have in after days been announced as the capturera of this EamOUfl white hart. .Julius Ca.-ar took the place of Alex- ander, and Charlemagne caught ■ white hart at both Uagde- . and in the Holstein woods." — II m;i»w i< ra'a Traditions, t s'ii r - and FolkrLon . p. I 96. A marquis. A march was the frontier or boundary of a country, and originally the officer charged with the guarding of the frontier was called a matquii. 37 : •"». Sir Roger de Coverley. Addison's charming hero, who, in Spectator paper No. 122, decides the dispute between his two friends about the Ashing by telling them. •• with the air of a man who would not give Ids judgment rashly, that much might he said on DOtfa Bid 38:.".. Bergereta. Latin form of the French bergerette, a. Shepherd glrL 12. M. Simond. Louis Simond'a Journal of a '/'<>ur and i; i ' Britain during the yean is id ami is if, with an appendix on France, written in 1815 and 1810. Do. Quinoey was much impressed by the horror of this story, for he refers to it more than once. 29. Prasdial. From Lat. prasdium, a farm ; hence, attached to land or farms. 39: 14. Friday. 1\> binson Crusoe's "man" Friday. l'T. St. Louis. Louis IX. the •• Royal Saint" and leader of tie Eighth Crusade, Bis religion was that of an anchorite, his rnment that of exact justice. " He was," says Voltaire, '•in all respects a model for men." The Order of St. Louis instituted by Louis XIV for military service. Chevalier was the title of lowest rank in such an order. " Chevalier, have you fed the hog ?" "My daughter, have 166 NOTES you fed the hog?" "Maid of Orleans, have yon saved the royal lilie 40: 4. If the man that turnips cries. Dr. Johnson's parody of some v( • - I I. vpez de Vega, given In Napier's Johnsoni- ana, among .Mrs. Piozzi'a Anecdotes of Johnson, 11. Orifiamme. The ancient royal standard o! France; ■ red flag, deeply split into flame-shaped streamers, and borne on a gilded la i- and //•/,/<, /w. a flame. 41:.:. Robert Souths. 1843 . One oi the "Lake School" of i ts, and Poet Laureate, a multitudinous writer Ire, hie first Long poem, is a blank-Terse poem in I . readable bat not poetical. I ». ( \ , . : y'a opinion oi 1 1 1* • poem will be found In his essaj on Charles Lamb. Southey lived near De Quincey in the neigh- boring vill n ick. The story. ICichelet'a account la M follows: "At last the King received her, and surrounded by all the splendor of his court, In the hope, apparently, of disconcerting her. It was evening ; the light of fifty torches Illumined the ball, and a brilliant array of noblea and above three hundred knights were assembled round the monarch. I the Borcen it might be, the Inspired mail. . . . She entered the splendid circle with all humility, l like a poor little shepherdess, 1 distinguished at the first the King, who had purposely kept himself amidst the crowd <>f conn ami although at first he maintained that be was not the Kim:. she fell down and embraced his knees. Hut as h. had not been crowned, Bhe only styled him dauphin: 'Gentle dauphin.' she addressed him, 'my name is Jeanne la Pncelle. The Kin n Bends you word by me that you Bhall he consecrated and crowned in the city of Klnims, ami shall he lieutenant of the King Of heaven, who is King of France.'" 12. Coup d'essai. Fr., first trial 19. "Pricking for sheriffs'* is the annual ceremony of ap- pointing sheriffs for each county. A list of persons qualified to serve is sent to the sovereign, '-who. without looking at it, strikes a bodkin amongst the names, and he whose name is pierced is elected.' 1 l'_'. Happy lady of the islands and the orient. Victoria NOTES 161 was Queen of Great Britain and [reland, and, after 1876, Empress of India. 42 : 16. Un peu fort. A Little Btrong. 43 : 1. Sacred ampulla. The Baered ampulla of Rheiraa was 188 flask filled with holy oil, according to tradition, brought from heaven bj a dove at the coronation of Clovis, in 4'.m;. The kings of Prance down to Louis XVI were anointed with this oil The flask was destroyed in the Revolution, a piece with a little oil being saved, which was exhausted in anointing Charles X. :i. The English boy. Eenry V died in 1422, a few weeks re the death of Charles VI, for whose throne he had bar- gained. His son, Henry VI, who had been proclaimed king at Paris when aboul nine months old, was qow eight years old. r». Ovens of Rheims. Tradition and superstition required that all 1. ranee should be crowned at Rheims. The bakeries of Rheims were famous for their biscuits and cakes. Hart thinks De Quincey had in mind some French popular saying, but more likely his frisky mind was merely indulging it- usual pleasantry. After the words. Frano along with him,, the original article read- thus: "Trouble us not, lawyer, with your quillets. We arc illegal blockheads, so thoroughly with- out law that we don't know even if we have a right to be Mock- head-; and our mind is made up — that the first man drawn from the oven of coronation at Rheims is the man that is b into a kin-. All others are counterfeits made of base Indian meal— damaged by sea-water." 21. Matthew Tindal. A deistical writer whose hook hero mentioned appeared in l7-".<>. De Quincey is prodding Southey for attributing to Joan a deistical speech, the substance <»f which is taken from TiiidaPs hook, published three centuries after -loan lived. 22. A parte ante. From a part gone before. 24. Cottle, Bristol. Joseph Cottle, publisher and bookseller of Bristol, wh<» published .f>>»i,, in 1796 ; the friend of Southey and Coleridge, something of a poet himself, and the author ot Bemini8cence8 of Coleridgt and Southey. L'7. Nor 3d, Confession. Between this sentence and the next in the original article in Taifs were several lines of De 168 NOTES Quinceyish nonsense, typical of many passages, the suppression of which in the revision of 1854 shows the improvement with age of De Quincey's taste. The passage is worth reproducing as an illustration of his writing at its worst: "Here's a pre- cious windfall for the doctors ; they, by snaky tortuosities, had hoped, through the aid of a corkscrew (which every D.D. or S.T.D. 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 D.D.'s 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 to corrupt the principles of six Church pillars.' " 30. Both trials. That of condemnation, 1431, and of reha- bilitation, 1455. The best witness was Baumette. 44 : 9. That divine passage. Paradise lie gained, Book I, 190-206. 29. France Delivered. In imitation of Jerusalem Delivered, Tasso's great epic of the Crusades. 46 : 11. Coup-de-main. Fr., stroke of hand ; a military term, denoting a sudden and rapid attack. 18. Excepting one man. What man De Quincey has in mind is not clear, but quite likely Mac,on, president of the council. Her strong supporter at first was the Due d'Alencon. Accord- ing to popular accounts, Dunois, the bastard, was her chief admirer, whom Schiller in his Jung/ran represents as in love with her. 48 : 13. Nolebat, etc. " She did not wish to use her sword, or to kill any one." 49 : 18. Michelet argues that there ivas "treacherous collu- sion." " The probability is that the Pucelle was bargained for NOTES 169 and bought." Her captor sold her to the Duke of Burgundy, and the duke sold her to the English. 24. Bishop of Beauvais. Pierre Cauchon, rector of the Uni- versity of Paris, who had been expelled from his bishopric of Beauvais (forty-three miles from Paris) as a traitor. He sold himself to the English for the promise of an archbishopric. 27. An echo of the witches' words in Macbeth: " Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be what thou art promised." Act I, iii and v. 30. Triple crown. The Pope's crown consists of a high cap, or tiara, of golden cloth, encircled by three coronets, and sur- mounted by a ball and cross of gold. The second coronet was added to indicate the prerogatives of spiritual and temporal power. The third was added (probably by Urban V, 1302) to indicate the Trinity. 50 : 10. Judges examining the prisoner against himself. In the French courts the judge questions searchingly the prisoner before he is brought to regular trial, a method almost univer- sally condemned outside of France. 51:13. Wretched Dominican. The Dominicans were an order of mendicant friars called Fratres Predicatores, "Preaching Friars," established in France in 1210 by the Spaniard Domingo de Guzman, called St. Dominic. De Quincey has in mind the preliminary examination at Poictiers, when a Dominican said to Jeanne that if God willed to deliver France he had no need of men-at-arms, to which she replied, " The men-at-arms will do battle, and God will give the victory." 20. Mahometan metaphysics. According to which God works out his purposes without the use of human means. 52 : 12. For a less cause than martyrdom. Cf. Genesis ii. 24. 53 : 20. Rising even now in Paris. Referring to the publica- tion of the documents of the trial. See note, p. 27, 29. 54 : 8. Bringing together from the four winds, etc. Cf. Ezekiel xxxvii. 1-10. 22. Tellurians. Dwellers upon earth ; Lat. tellus, the earth. 26. Luxor. A palace temple forming a part of the ruins of Thebes in Egypt. Of the temple of Karnak, another part of these ruins, Fergusson says, "It is perhaps the noblest effort of architectural magnificence ever produced by the hand of man." 170 NOTES 55 : 13. Marie Antoinette. The queen of Louis XVI, daughter of Francis I, Emperor of Germany, who, as head of the " Holy Roman Empire," could be regarded as a successor to the Roman Caesars. For an account of the career of this brilliant and ill-starred queen, consult histories of the French Revolu- tion. 10. Charlotte Corday. Daughter of a Norman nobleman ; deeply impressed by the atrocities of the Reign of Terror, she made her way to Paris, assassinated Marat, and was immedi- ately after guillotined, July 17, 1793. In the original article De Quincey included another heroine of the Revolution, "How if it were the 'martyred wife of Roland,' uttering impassioned truth — truth odious to the rulers of her country — with her expiring breath." 56 : 28. Grafton. Richard Grafton's Chronicle at large and meere History of the Affayres of Englande and Kinges of the same, from the creation to the date of publication, appeared in 1569. According to this fair-minded Englishman, Joan with the "foule face" (ugly) was a "devilish witch, and a fanaticall Enchanteresse," who was "borne in Burgoyne, in a towne called Droymy besyde Vaucolour, which was a greate space a Chamberlein in a common Hostrey, and was a Rompe of such boldnesse that she would course horses, and ride them to water, and do thinges, that other young may dens both abhorred and were ashamed to do. . . . She (as a monster) was sent to the Dolphyn . . . rehersying to him visions, traunces and fables, full of blasphemie, superstition, and hypocrisye, that I marveyle much that wise men dyd believe her, and learned clerkes would write such phantasy es." 57 : 1. Holinshead. Raphael Holinshed's Ch?'o nicies of Eng- land, Scotland, and Ireland (1587) has the particular fame of having furnished Shakspere with the facts for his English historical plays. His "pleasing testimony" is as follows : "A young wench of an eighteene yeeres old, called Jone Arc. Of favour was she counted likesome, of person stronglie made and manlie, of courage great, hardie, and stout withall, an understander of counsels though she were not at them, great semblance of chastitie both of bodie and behaviour, the name of Jesus in her NOTES 171 mouth about all her businesses, humble, obedient, and fasting diverse daies in the weeke." De Quincey was too eager to score a point against Michelet, for beyond the above passage Holinshed is as rancorous as Grafton. His quaint summary of the last scene of Joan's life is worth quoting, " Upon a further definitive sentence declared against hir to be relapse and a renouncer of hir oth and repentance, was she thereupon delivered over to secular power, and so executed by consumption of fire in the old market place of Rone, in the self same steed where now saint Michaels church stands, hir ashes afterward without the towne wals shaken into the wind." THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH Introductory Note. In Blackwood? s Edinburgh Magazine for October, 1849, there appeared an unsigned article entitled The English Mail Coach, or the Glory of Motion. There was no indication that this article was to be followed by others upon the same topic, but in the December number of the magazine appeared an article in two sections, with the titles The Vision of Sudden Death and Dream-Fugue, on the above theme of Sudden Death. In an introductory paragraph the author ex- plained the connection of this article with the preceding one. " The ultimate object," he says, " was the Dream-Fugue, as an attempt to wrestle with the utmost efforts of music in dealing with a colossal form of impassioned horror." In 1854, when De Quincey revised these papers for the Collective Edition of his works, he printed them under the one general title, The Eng- lish 3Iail Coach, divided as at present into three sections with sub-titles. A comparison of the text of the original with that of the revised papers affords an exceedingly interesting and valuable lesson in the art of literary workmanship. It reveals De Quincey as a most scrupulous and laborious critic of himself. More than seven hundred changes and corrections were made in the text of these three brief papers. Whole passages, too rambling and digressive, were cut out bodily ; other passages were entirely rewritten, such, for example, as the description 172 NOTES of the Cyclopean driver, and the last section of the Fugue ; words, phrases, and sentences were added to heighten the musi- cal effects by refining and amplifying the rhythmic movement, and sometimes merely to touch up a humorous picture ; on every page words were changed for more precise, emphatic, or euphonious synonyms ; for example, such substitutions as spe- cial for extra, relative for relation, intellect for mind, yet for but, impassioned for awakened, made no answer for said nothing, since for for, evidently for quite; and in nearly every one of these changes there is an obvious gain in artistic perfectness. No poet ever refined his lines with a more sensitive and dis- criminating taste. Some of these changes have been included in the notes, enough to illustrate the care with which De Quin- cey's finished products were elaborated. 68 : 2. Mr. Palmer. John Palmer was for many years pro- prietor of the Theatre Royal, in the city of Bath. Experiencing much difficulty in securing the prompt appearance of the actors at his theater, who journeyed from city to city by slow and irregular stage coaches, he conceived a scheme for establishing a system of government mail coaches that should carry a limited number of passengers, make close connections, and run at a rate of speed not less than ten miles an hour. With the aid of the great Pitt, the plan was inaugurated, and the first mail coach left London, August 8, 1784. Mr. Palmer was appointed Comptroller-General of the Post-Office, was elected a member of Parliament from Bath, and finally was enriched by large sums of money received from the government as compensation for his services in promoting the public welfare. 7. Daughter of a duke. In a footnote De Quincey gives the name as "Lady Madeline Gordon." Masson notes a mistake here ; De Quincey apparently confused John Palmer with Charles Palmer, of Lockley Park, Berks, to whom Lady Madelina Gordon, second daughter of Alexander, fourth Duke of Gordon, was married in 1805. The National Dictionary of Biography states that John Palmer married a Miss Pratt, "probably a relative of his friend, Lord Camden." 69 : 8. National result. With this passage should be read a passage in the Autobiography, Chap. XII, Travelling in Eng- land in the Old Days, Masson's Ed., Vol. I, 270. NOTES 173 23. Apocalyptic vials. Cf. Revelation xvi. 2L The battle of Trafalgar, October 21, 1805, in which Nel- son won his last victory; Salamanca, in Spain, where Wellington defeated the French, July 22, 1812; Vittoria, in Spain, the scene of another of Wellington's victories, June 21, 1813; the battle of Waterloo, June 18, 1815, in which Napoleon was finally defeated by the English under Wellington. 70 : 9. Crisis of general prostration. For more than twenty years all Europe had been prostrated by the sweeping victories of Napoleon. 21. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge are composed of many separate colleges, united in a kind of federation with a central or general government, very much like the federation of free states composing the United States, subject to certain limitations of a general government. Each college has its own faculty, but all degrees are conferred by the University. 27. Michaelmas, Lent, Easter, and Act. The names of the college terms at Oxford, corresponding respectively to fall, winter, spring, and summer term. Michaelmas is the church festival celebrated September 29. Act was a name applied originally to the public disputation or thesis required for the degree of Master or Doctor ; hence it came to be applied to that part of the scholastic year in which degrees were conferred. This term was also called Trinity, and the winter term Hilary, from St. Hilary, an eminent church father, whose feast day was January 13. 71:1. Going down. The usual English phrase, when going from London or Oxford into the country ; similarly a journey from the country to the city, is " going up to London." 16. Posting-houses. See De Quincey's description of the post-houses in the Autobiography, Masson's Ed., Vol. I, 279. 25. An old tradition. At first no passengers were carried on the outside; then servants and poor people occupied outside seats at a low price. 72 : 1. Attaint. A legal term. A person convicted of high crime is "attaint," i.e. is deprived of the privileges of a free citizen, and the consequences of this " corruption of the blood " are visited upon his descendants unless the attainder is re- moved by act of Parliament. See p. 81, 1. 11. 174 NOTES 6. Pariahs. In India the Pariah is a member of a caste, or social class, far below the regular Brahmins, by whom he is shunned as unclean ; hence, generally, a Pariah is an out- cast from society. 23. Salle-a-manger. Hall for eating, dining hall. 73 : 8. Same logical construction. In a footnote De Quincey indicates that he is here paraphrasing a Roman legal maxim : " De non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est lex." 14. Questionable characters. In the original Blackwood article, this was suspicious characters, and by voluntarily going outside was substituted for voluntarily. 17. Raff. A term applied to the students at Oxford by the townspeople. In provincial English, rubbish, refuse; then a rowdy, scapegrace; finally, worthless persons generally, the riff-raff of society. 18. Snobs. A " snob " was at first a shoemaker; then, in university cant, a " townsman " as opposed to a " gownsman "; and, more generally, any common person, or member of the profanum vulgus ; then one who vulgarly apes gentility ; finally, in provincial language, a workman who refuses to strike, or who works for lower wages than other workmen, a " rat," or in the current language of strikes, a" scab." De Quincey has in mind the second usage. See Century Dictionary. Nob, probably an abbreviation of nobleman, is a member of the aristocracy, or any superior person. 19. Constructively. By inference ; a legal usage. 74 : 16. Such was the difficulty, etc. This sentence origi- nally read: "Under coercion of this great practical difficulty we instituted, etc." 30. Great wits jump. Great wits agree. Cf. Merchant of Venice, II, ix. 32 : " I will not jump with common spirits." 75 : 5. The ambassador, etc. The original of this story is a brief passage in Staunton's Account of the Earl of Macartney's Embassy to China in 1792, Vol. II, 164 (London, 1797) : " When a splendid chariot, intended as a present for the Em- peror, was unpacked and put together, nothing could be more admired ; but it was necessary to give directions for taking off the box ; for when the mandarins found out that so elevated a seat was destined for the coachman who was to drive the horses, NOTES 175 they expressed the utmost astonishment that it should he pro- posed to place any man in a situation above the Emperor. So easily is the delicacy of the people shocked in whatever relates to the person of their exalted sovereign." Any curious fact or picturesque incident expanded with a marvelous growth under the warm and fructifying influence of De Quincey's imagination. Any fact, even the most serious, was never safe in his presence. Let it expose hut for a moment its picturesque side, and he would expand it into an elaborate fiction, comic or serious, according as the mood seized him. As Gosse remarks, " De Quincey was but little enamored of the naked truth, and a suspicion of the fabulous hangs, like a mist, over all his narrations." 12. Hammercloth. The cloth that covers the driver's seat or box, so called, it is thought, from the practice of carrying under it hammer, nails, etc. The clause "was nearest to the moon," was added in the revised version. 25. Whole flowery people. China is called the Flowery Kingdom, as well as the Celestial Empire. 76 : 10. Checkstrings. Strings used by the inside passengers for communicating with the driver. Jury reins. A jury-mast is a temporary mast substituted for a broken one ; so a jury-rudder. Hence any temporary makeshift may be designated by this nautical combination. 24. Ca ira. "'This will do,' 'This is the go'; a proverb of the French Revolutionists when they were hanging the aris- tocrats in the streets, etc., and the burden of one of the most popular revolutionary songs, Qa ira, ga ira, ga ira." — Masson. The music of this song was that of a popular air called Carillon National, a great favorite with Marie Antoinette. It is said that the words were first suggested by Lafayette to a street- singer, having remembered them from Franklin's common reply, " Ca ira, 9a ira," to questions about the progress of the American Revolution. 28. Chief seats in synagogues. Cf. Matthew xxiii. 6. 77 : 6. Warming pans. A warming pan keeps the bed warm until the occupant takes possession. So a person would be hired as a "dummy" to hold a seat until the real occupant arrived. 176 NOTES 9. Aristotle's, Zeno's, Cicero's. Aristotle, the most influential of the Greek philosophers, wrote valuable works upon almost every topic of human concern, among them being the celebrated Nicomachean Ethics. Zeno was the founder of the Stoic school of philosophers, who professed and taught the stern moral doc- trine of indifference to pains and pleasures alike. Cicero wrote De OJJiciis, a treatise on moral obligations, the morality of which is that of the practical Roman politician. 78 : 0. Noters and protesters. A noter is a notary (Scotch, notar), who " is empowered by law to note protests and certify the same." A note or bill of exchange is said to "go to pro- test" when payment is refused and the fact is certified by a notary in a "note of protest." The passage is an illustration of De Quincey's characteristic playing with words. 8. House of life. An astrological term. The heavens are divided into " houses," to one of which man's life is allocated, to use De Quincey's word, by the astrologer. Astrological shadows are the misfortunes of one who is " ill-starred," born under the wrong star. 25. De Quincey confused Von Troil's Letters on Iceland with Niels Horrebow's Natural History of Iceland, which con- tains such a chapter, and a similar one on owls. Quite likely De Quincey borrowed the allusion from Boswell's Johnson (Vol. Ill, 316, Hill's Ed.): — "Langton said very well to me afterwards, that he could repeat Johnson's conversation before dinner, as Johnson had said that he could repeat a complete chapter of The Natural History of Iceland, from the Danish of Horrebow ; the whole of which was exactly thus : — ' Chapter LXII. Concerning Snakes 1 There are no snakes to be met with throughout the whole island.' " 26. Parliamentary rat. One who deserts his falling party or cause, as a rat deserts a sinking ship. "Though Mackworth ratted to my own side, I fear it must be confessed that he did rat.'* 1 — George Saintsburt. In provincial slang "to rat it" is to run away quickly. 79 : 9. Laesa majestas. An offense against majesty or sov- ereignty, treason. A Roman legal phrase. NOTES 111 80 : 7. Jam proximus. Virgil's ^Eneid, II. 311 : — Jam Deiphobi dedit ampla ruinam Vulcano superante domus, jam proximus ardet Ucalegon. (Now the spacious house of Deiphobus falls in ruins as the fire overtops it, now [the house of his] neighbor Ucalegon burns.) 15. In Syriac or in Coptic. That is, in an unknown language. 18. Waybill. The passenger list. In England passengers are said to be booked, instead of being ticketed, and a ticket office is a booking office. 20. No dignity is perfect, etc. The characteristic judgment of De Quincey in this passage is amply illustrated in his best writings. 81 : 8. Crane-neck quarterings. The horses, suddenly urged by the whip, crane their necks forward as they haul the heavy carts to one side, — quartering across the road. See p. 124, 1. 14, and De Quincey's note. 15. Benefit of clergy. In old English law, the privilege of the clergy, and finally of all who could read, to be exempted from trial and punishment by the civil courts. To test his abil- ity to read, a verse of Latin, usually the first verse of the 51st Psalm, was given to the accused, called the neck verse, as by reading it he saved his neck. Cf. Jew of Malta, " Within forty feet of the gallows conning his neck verse." The law was not wholly repealed until 1827. 17. Systole and diastole. The regular pulsation or beating of the heart consists of two alternate movements, dilation or di-as'to-le and contraction or sys'to-le. 26. Quarter Sessions. A court held quarterly in England in the counties by a justice of the peace, for the trial of minor offenses and the administration of poor laws and highway laws. 82 : 15. False echoes of Marengo. At the battle of Marengo, June 14, 1800, General Desaix saved the day for the French, but was himself shot through the heart. " When the report of his [Desaix's] death was made known to Buonaparte, he hypo- critically exclaimed, 'Why cannot I weep?'" — Gifford's Memoirs of the Life and Campaigns of Napoleon Buonaparte, Vol. I, 373. Vengeur (footnote). In a battle between the French and 178 NOTES English fleets, June 1, 1794, the Vengeur was sunk. The report that the crew went down with the ship, shouting "Vive la Kepublique " was circulated by Bare re, who, in the opinion of Macaulay, " approached nearer than any person in history or fiction to the idea of consummate and universal depravity." Carlyle accepted the story, in his French devolution, but after- ward corrected himself in an essay on The Sinking of the Vengeur. La Garde meurt, etc. (footnote). The " Guard dies, but does not surrender"; said of Napoleon's famous "Old Guard" at Waterloo, supposedly by General Cambronne. The phrase " was invented by Iiougemont, a prolific author of notes, two days after the battle, in the IndependanV — Fournier, quoted in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. Talleyrand (footnote) was a celebrated French statesman and wit, to whom floating witticisms are attributed, much as witty English sayings are attributed to Sydney Smith. 83 : 19. False, fleeting, perjured Brummagem. An echo of Pilchard III, I, iv, 55: "False, fleeting, perjured Clarence." Brummagem, a corruption of Birmingham, is a name applied to cheap, showy jewelry and other metal trinkets, manufactured extensively in Birmingham. This part of the sentence was added in the revision. 25. Jacobinical. The Jacobins were the radical and violent democrats of the French Revolution, who were most active in the annihilation of aristocracy. 84 : 5. Slipped. A hunting term, to slip hounds, or haivks, is to let them loose upon the game. Cheetah is the name of a species of leopard used in India for hunting. The animal is taken to the field hooded, ard at the proper time slipped. 10. Tower of moral strength, etc. Cf. Bichard III, V, iii, 12 : " Besides, the King's name is a tower of strength, which they upon the adverse party want." 20. My heart burn within me. Cf. Luke xxiv. 32. 27. A cat may look at a king. A very old saying, found in the "Proverbs" of John Heywood, published in 1546, the earliest collection of English colloquial sayings. 85 : 4. Story from one of our elder dramatists. Barrow refers this to Dryden's Aurengzebe, but mistakenly. The Omrahs are NOTES 179 in that play, but not the story. The word Omrah was used by the earlier English authors in the sense of lord or grandee at the court of oriental princes; in reality the plural of amir (ameer). Professor Turk quotes a similar story from the trans- lation of Caius's Of English Dogs in Arber's English Garner, Vol. Ill, 253. The Indian setting of the story was added by De Quincey in the revision. The original has prince in place of sultan, and the words in contempt . . . from Agra and Lahore were originally in sight also of all the astonished field-sports- men, spectators, and followers. 30. Paste diamonds. Imitation diamonds, made of a glass prepared for the purpose, called paste. Roman pearls are imitation pearls made of alabaster, fine wax, and other substances, manufactured especially in Rome. 86 : 3. The 6th of Edward Longshanks. There is no such law. De Quincey is making " game " of the Welshman, whose native country was subdued by Edward I, in 1283. In Black- wood it was " the 10th of Edward III, Chap. 15." 24. Not magna loquimur ... but vivimus. We do not speak great things, but live them. 87 : 18. Nile nor Trafalgar. Nelson's two great naval battles with the French. Notice the omission, by "poetic license," of neither before Nile. 28. By culinary process. By boiling water to make steam. 30. Laureled mail. When "going down with victory," the mail coach would be decked with the emblems of victory ; "horses, men, carriages, all are dressed in laurels and flowers,' oak-leaves and ribbons," p. 97, 1. 20. 88 : 3. Pot-wallopings. Literally pot-boilings ; Anglo-Saxon weallan, to boil ; Early English, walopen. 89 : 21. Ulysses even, etc. An allusion to Homer's Odyssey, Books XXI and XXII, describing the contest of Ulysses with the suitors of his wife, Penelope, several of whom he dispatched with his great "polished bow," which only he could bend to the string. 90 : 10. About Waterloo. About 1815, the year of the battle of Waterloo. 26. Say, all our praises, etc. Pope's Moral Essays, III, 249 : " But all our praises why should Lords engross? " 180 NOTES 91 : 17. Turrets. Chaucer's use of the word is in The Knight's Tale, 1294: " Colers of golde, and toretz fyled rounde," where it refers to the ring on a dog's collar. De Quincey remembered his Chaucer imperfectly. 23. They hanged liberally. Forgery, pocket picking, sheep stealing, and similar offenses were then capital crimes. 24. Tree. The gallows or gibbet. 92 : 22. Mr. Waterton. [Sindbad, the sailor in the Arabian Nights, being induced to carry the Old Man of the Sea on his back, made him drunk, and then crushed his head with a stone.] Charles Waterton was an English naturalist who pub- lished in 1825 Wanderings in South America, which contains a description of this remarkable adventure with a cayman. Syd- ney Smith wrote a review of the book for the Edinburgh Revieio of February, 1826, in which he quoted the passage in full, and quite likely this was De Quincey's source for the story. The real story runs as follows: "By the time the cayman [which was caught by a shark hook and strong rope] was within two yards of me, I saw he was in a state of fear and perturbation ; I instantly dropped the mast [of the canoe], sprung up and jumped on his back, turning half round as I vaulted, so that I gained my seat with my face in a right position ; I immediately seized his fore-legs, and by main force twisted them on his back ; then they served me for a bridle. He now seemed to have recovered from his surprise ; and probably fancying himself in hostile company, he began to plunge furiously, and lashed the sand with his long, powerful tail. I was out of reach of the strokes of it, by being near his head. He continued to plunge and strike, and made my seat very uncomfortable. It must have been a fine sight for an unoccupied spectator. The people roared out in triumph, and were so vociferous that it was some time before they heard me tell them to pull me and my beast of burden further inland. ... It was the first and last time I was ever on a cayman's back. Should it be asked how I managed to keep my seat, I would answer, I hunted some years with Lord Darlington's fox-hounds." 23. Cayman. The proper Spanish word, caiman, for alli- gator, "applied popularly to the alligators of the West Indies and South America." — Century Dictionary. NOTES 181 93 : 18. Regularly hunted. Regularly ridden in the hunt. 20. Take a six-barred gate. Jump a gate six bars high. An idiom of the turf. 22. If, therefore, etc. This paragraph is only about one fifth as long as when first printed. The original paragraph is given in Masson's Edition, Vol. XIII, p. 289. 23. The shadow of the pyramids grows less. Because of the removal of stones from the sides, and the piling of the drifting sand at their bases. 95 : 5. Quartered heraldically. In heraldry, quartering is the division of the shield of an escutcheon into four or more parts, for the purpose of displaying the coats of allied families. 12. Going down with Victory. For an excellent introduc- tory note to this second part of the Glory of Moliui, see Mas- son's De Quincey (Men of Science Series), p. 193. 19. Long succession of victories. Trafalgar, 1805 ; capture of the Danish fleet, 1807 ; Baylen and Vimiera, 1808 ; Corunna, Talavera, and Oporto, 1809 ; Busaco and Torres Vedras, 1810 ; Fuentesde Onore and Albuera, 1811 ; Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, and Salamanca, 1812 ; Vittoria and the Pyrenees, 1813 ; Orthez and Toulouse, 1814; Waterloo, June 18, 1815. In the years 1806 and 1807 Napoleon won his great victories over the Prus- sians at Jena and the Russians at Eylau. 20. Titans. In Greek mythology a race of giants who made war against the gods of Olympus, making a scaling ladder to heaven by piling Mount Ossa upon Mount Pelion. 21. Inappreciable value. Of very great value, rather than, of very little value, the usual sense of* the word. 96 : 2. One quarter. England. Nearly all Europe was pros- trated in despair by Napoleon's sweeping victories. Only England seemed to make headway against him, in the Spanish peninsula, where he did not command in person. 13. Prelibation. Foretaste. 17. Lombard Street is the financial center, the " Wall Street," of London, so called because the early bankers and money lend- ers were Lombards or Italians. St. Martin' 1 s-le-Orand, a street deriving its name from an old church. The present post-office building was erected in 1829. 4 182 NOTES 97 : 2. Attelage. A team of horses ; here it means the four horses and the coach to which they are attached. 98 : 14. Draw up. The waiting coaches are distinguished by the names of the great towns to which they are destined, and each is ordered to draw up in front of the post office to receive its portion of the mail and then to draw off. 100 : 20. Be thou whole. Suggested by Luke viii. 48. 101 : 27. Professional salute. The coachman's professional salute is a raising of the elbow of the whip hand. 102 : 13. Charwomen. Women who work by day's work or do odd jobs ; old English chares, or in Yankee speech, chores. 103 : 10. Gazette. This word was applied at first to any newspaper ; then specifically to the three official newspapers established by government in Great Britain, published at Lon- don, Edinburgh, and Dublin ; finally, as in the text, to any official announcement or account of an important event. 30. Called fey. Fey or fay is not Celtic, as De Quincey assumed, but is the Anglo-Saxon faege preserved in Lowland Scotch, meaning fated, doomed. The expression ' ' you are surely fey" would be applied in Scotland, Masson says, "to a person observed to be in extravagantly high spirits, or in any mood surprisingly beyond the bounds of his ordinary temperament, — the notion being that the excitement is supernatural and a presage of his approaching death or of some other calamity about to befall him." 104 : 1. Wake. Originally a vigil or church festival ; hence, any merrymaking, as in Milton's Comus, 121 : " Their merry wakes and pastimes keep." The Irish "wake" is a watching with the dead, which deteriorates into a revel. 17. Holy. This climax is characteristic of the workings of De Quincey's penetrative insight. He saw truth through the emotions. The words "theatrical and holy" were added in the revised edition. 25. Imperfect one of Talavera. At the Spanish town of Talavera Wellington won a great victory, but was unable to reap its fine results on account of the disloyal support of the Spaniards under Cuesta. " The conduct of Cuesta, in this pre- cipitate retreat, is indefensible. ... In quitting the position of Talavera, Cuesta had abandoned the only situation in which NOTES 183 the advance of Victor on the British rear could be resisted with any prospect of success. . . . The whole calculations of Sir Arthur Wellesley were at once overthrown." — Hamilton's Annals of the Peninsula Campaigns. 105 : 6. The 23d Dragoons. This charge is described in Na- pier's Peninsula War, Book VIII, Chap. 6, in part, as follows : " In the front of the 23d the chasm was more practicable, the English blood was hot, and the regiment plunged down without a cluck, — men and horses rolling over each other in dreadful confusion ; the survivors, still untamed, mounted the opposite bank by two's and three's, and Col. Seymour being severely wounded, Major Frederick Ponsonby, a hardy soldier, rallied all who came up, and passing through the midst of Villatte's columns, which poured in a fire from each side, fell with inex- pressible violence upon a brigade of French chasseurs in the rear. The combat was fierce, but short. . . . Those who were not killed or taken made for Massecour's Spanish division and so escaped, leaving behind two hundred and seven men and officers, or about half the number that went into action." 29. Glorified and hallowed to the ear of all London. For these words the original has "known to myself and all Lon- don." For " To-morrow, said I to myself etc. (1. 5 below) the original was, " I said to myself, to-morrow or the next day she will hear the worst. For this night wherefore," etc. 31. Aceldama. The potter's field outside of Jerusalem, purchased with the bribe which Judas took for betraying his master, and therefore called the " field of blood"; hence, any field of slaughter. Elsewhere De Quincey speaks of " immense tracts converted by war into one universal Aceldama." 107 : 10. What is to be taken, etc. This sonorous introduc- tory question was substituted for the simpler original, " What is to be thought of sudden death ? " 14. Consummation . . . fervently to be desired. Cf. Ham- let, III, i, 60 : — ' ' To die, — to sleej), — No more ; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, — 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished." 184 NOTES 17. Caesar the Dictator. This incident is given by Plutarch as follows : "The day before his assassination, he supped with Marcus Lepidus ; and as he was signing some letters, according to his custom, as he reclined at table, there arose a question what sort of death was the best. At which he immediately, before any one could speak, -said, ' A sudden one.' " — Clough- Dryden Translation, Vol. IV, 320. 18. Ccena. In his essay, The Casuistry of Boman Meals, De Quincey explains that the Roman ccena corresponded to the modern dinner or evening meal. 21. Eligible. Desirable, fit to be chosen ; Latin, eligere, to choose. The more usual sense is qualified to be chosen. 23. Divine Litany. The Greek Xiraveia, a prayer. The General Supplication in the Book of Common Prayer, in which the response of the congregation to many of the petitions is, Good Lord, deliver us. 108 : 4. Noblest of Romans. In his essay on The Ccesars, De Quincey maintains Shakspere's exalted judgment of Caesar: "The foremost man of all this world." Masson says: "The character of the ' mightiest Julius' is estimated by De Quincey, one is glad to find, as he was by Shakspere, and has been by every other fit modern authority, as the noblest of Roman men. 1 ' 109 : 31. BiaQavaTos. Greek fiiavos, violent, and davaros, death. In his essay on Suicide, De Quincey discusses the theme of a treatise by John Donne, entitled, piadavaros, A Decla- ration of that Paradox or Thesis, that Self-homicide is not so naturally Sin, that it may never be otherwise. From this source he doubtless derived the word, which is not strictly classical. Ill : 2. One aspect. In this paragraph De Quincey is philoso- phizing the particular incident which he is about to describe. 13. Exasperation. Here used in the unusual sense of increase of intensity. 19. Far from venial. There is a moral obligation to act in behalf of one's self as well as in behalf of others. 23. Apprehensive. * Sensitive. 30. Twinkling of an eye. Cf. 1 Corinthians xv. 51, 52: " We shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump." NOTES 185 112 : 12. That dream, etc. De Quincey uses this illustration again in the Confessions. Masson's Ed., Ill, 316. 27. The ancient earth groans. Cf. Paradise Lost, IX, 1000-1008. 29. Nature, from her seat, etc. From Paradise Lost, IX, 782. 113 : 10. The incident, etc. This explanatory and transi- tional passage, down to 1. 24, was inserted in the revised edition. The original began abruptly : "As I drew near to the Man- chester post-office, I found that it was considerably past mid- night," etc. 114 : 14. I had left it . . . said pocket handkerchief. The discoverer of a new land hoists the flag of his country as a token of possession. This characteristically whimsical digres- sion was much elaborated in the revision. For " hoisted his pocket handkerchief once and forever " the original reads "planted his throne forever"; and the close of the sentence reads: " So that all people found after this warning, either aloft in the atmosphere, or in the shafts, or squatting on the soil, will be treated as trespassers — that is, decapitated by their very faithful and obedient servant, the owner of the said bunting." 21. Jus dominii. Law of lordship, or ownership. A Roman legal phrase. So below, jus gentium, law of nations. 20. Squatting. A squatter is one who occupies land to which he has no legal title. 115 : 7. For want of a criminal. At the end of this para- graph a long passage of fantastic foolery was cut out by De Quincey's revisionary judgment. It explains that there was no other passenger aboard the mail except "a horrid creature of the class known to the world as insiders, but whom young Ox- ford called sometimes ' Trojans,' in opposition to our Grecian selves, and sometimes ' vermin.' " Like a Turkish Effendi, who never mentions a pig by name, he himself will not mention the insider "by his gross natural name," and explains why this "other creature" was not present at the accident. "We dropped the creature — or the creature, by natural imbecility, dropped itself — within the first ten miles from Manchester." Then, with a serio-comic discussion of a proper epitaph for him, the passage closes with the remark, "But why linger on the subject of vermin ? " 186 NOTES 8. Small quantity of laudanum. At this time De Quincey's opium habit was at its worst, and his judgment as to quantity could hardly be trusted. In 1816, he says, a decanter holding "a quart of ruby-colored laudanum," and " a book of German metaphysics placed by its side," would "sufficiently attest' ' his being in the neighborhood. 13. Assessor. One who sits by another ; companion. Latin assidere, to sit by. 20. Monstrum horrendum. Virgil's JEneid, III, 658. The Cyclops Polyphemus, whose eye was put out by Ulysses. The Cyclops were monstrous, man-eating giants, with one huge eye in the middle of the forehead. 25. Calendars. The calenders are dervishes, or Mohamme- dan monks, who go about preaching in the market-places, professing poverty, and living by alms. The allusion is to the History of the Three Calenders in the Arabian Nights. 116 : 5. Al Sirat. The bridge over which Mohammedan souls must pass to heaven, "not so wide as a spider's thread." The wicked fall off into hell below. 9. Cognominated. Coined by De Quincey. The Romans sometimes added to the nomen (family name) and prasnomen (individual name) a cognomen, as a mark of special distinction, as Publius Scipio Africanus. Cyclops Diphrelates. As originally published in Black- wood, this passage reads thus: "I used to call him Cyclops Mastigopharus (Cyclops the Whip-bearer), until I observed that his skill made whips useless, except to fetch off an imper- tinent fly from a leader's head ; upon which I changed his Gre- cian name to Cyclops Diphrelates (Cyclops the Charioteer). I, and others known to me, studied under him the diphrelatic art. Excuse, reader, a word too elegant to be pedantic, and also take this remark from me as a gage d'amitie — that no word ever was or can be pedantic which, by supporting a dis- tinction, supports the accuracy of logic, or which fills up a chasm for the understanding." 117 : 3. Procrastinating. Editors and publishers had trying experiences with this weakness. De Quincey treats the accusa- tion humorously in his essays. In Surtilege and Astrology he speaks of " a lecture addressed to myself by an ultra-moral NOTES 187 friend — a lecture on procrastination," and protests against its publication on the ground that he could not allow himself " to be advertised in a book as a procrastinator on principle." 28. Virtually (though not in law). Kendal is larger and more important than Appleby, the legal capital. The Pythagarian letter s is the Greek T, ypsilon, which in the language of Pythagarian philosophy "represents the sacred triad, formed by the duad proceeding from the monad." 118:15. Aurigation. Driving. Latin auriga, a charioteer. Apollo, as the sun god, drives the fiery steeds and golden chariot of the sun across the arch of heaven each day, starting from the purple palace of Aurora, goddess of the Morn. 20. Whole Pagan Pantheon. All the gods of the pagans. A De Quinceyish thrust at the human frailties of the ancient divinities. Pantheon is a temple dedicated to all the gods; Greek irav, all, and deos, a god. 119 : 0. Pastoral surveillance. The attorneys watchfully herd the witnesses, as a shepherd tends his sheep. 8. Middle watch. On shipboard the day is divided into five icatches, or periods of four hours each, and two dog v:atches of two hours each. The middle watch is from twelve to four a.m. I)e Quincey originally wrote, "that part of it when the least temptations existed to conviviality." 18. Seven atmospheres of sleep. The pressure, or weight, of one atmosphere is fifteen pounds to the square inch. Sleep was as heavy upon him as seven atmospheres. 120 : 5. Lilliputian Lancaster. In Swift's Gullivers Travels, the hero visits the land of the Lilliputians, people only six inches in height. Lancaster, though the capital of the country, is a very small town in comparison with its great neighbors, Liverpool and Manchester. 7. Powerful established interests. The sitting of the county court, or assizes, at Lancaster would be of great material advan- tage to its citizens, tradespeople, and others. This digressive ob- servation illustrates the vicious propensity of De Quincey's mind for explanations and details that clog and confuse his literary art. 121 : 5. In the middle of which lay my own birthday. De Quincey was born August 15, 1785, at Greenhay, near Man- chester. 188 NOTES 8. Sigh-born (footnote). Giraldus Cambrensis, Gerald de Barry (1147-1220), a Welsh historian and ecclesiastic, wrote the Itinerarium Cambrice, or Journey in Wales. 11. Original curse of labor. Genesis iii. 19: " In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.'" 122 : 3. Halcyon repose. According to ancient belief, while the halcyon, or king-fisher, is breeding in a nest floating upon the water, the sea is miraculously calm. 10. Limited atmosphere. The extent of the atmosphere above the earth's surface is variously estimated by scientists to be from one hundred to six hundred miles. 25. Their father's house. Cf. John xiv. 2 : "In my father's house are many mansions." 26. Sabbatic vision. Peaceful, restful vision. The Hebrew word Sabbath means day of rest. 123 : 12. Signal is flying for action. A naval metaphor. The order for beginning a battle is given by a signal flag on the admiral's ship. 125 : 1(5. Charlemagne. Charles the Great (747-814), king of the Franks and Emperor of the Romans. No special statue is in De Quincey's mind. For " imperial rider " the original has "marble emperor." 19. Taxed cart. More commonly tax cart; in England, a light open spring cart like the dog cart. Formerly such vehi- cles were subject to taxation. 27. Reduced to my frail opium-shattered self. In the original, " my single self." 126 : 19. Gothic aisle. This avenue of " umbrageous trees " shapes itself into a "mighty minster" in the Dream-Fugue. The likeness between Gothic architecture and avenues of inter- lacing trees has given strong color to the theory that the sugges- tion for this form of cathedral came from the forests. 127 : 7. Shout of Achilles . . . son of Peleus, aided by Pallas. Homer's Iliad, XVIII, 217 et seq.: — " Forth marched the chief, and distant from the crowd, High on the rampart raised his voice aloud ; With her own shout Minerva swells the sound, Troy starts astonished, and the shores rebound. . . . Thrice from the trench his dreadful voice he raised, And thrice they tied, confounded and amazed." — Pope's Translation. NOTES 189 128 : 18. For a shilling a day. " When a man enlists for a soldier he receives from the recruiting sergeant a shilling ; thus when a man enlists he is said to 'take the Queen's shilling.' " — Barrow. 129 : 30. Rising to a fence. Rising to leap a fence ; a horse- man's phrase. 130 : 23. Faster than ever mill race, etc. This sentence origi- nally read : " We ran past them faster than ever mill race in our inexorable flight." Masson remarks that De Quincey's "sensitiveness to fit sound, at such a moment of wild rapidity, suggested the inversion." 28. Swingle-bar. The same as swingletree, singletree, and whippletree ; a crossbar, pivoted in the middle, to which the traces are attached. 31. Accurately parallel, etc. The meaning is that the two wheels of the gig were not in a line parallel to the coach ; that is, the gig was turned not quite fully at right angles with the coach. 131 : 8. "This sentence, 'Here was the map,' etc., is an insertion in the reprint ; and one observes how artistically it causes the due pause between the horror as still in rush of trans- action, and the backward look at the wreck when the crash was past." — Masson. 133 (Title) : Dream-fugue : The fugue (Latin fuga, flight) is an elaborate form of musical composition, of which the various parts or melodies are always pursuing each other. The theme, presented in the first part, appears and disappears at intervals, connecting and interweaving the melodies into one complex progressive whole. It will be seen that in composing his dream material into form, De Quincey held very closely to the musical model. The minor elements from The Glory of Motion, and the main theme from The Vision of Sudden heath, will be readily recognized as they appear and reappear throughout the dreams. 7. Tumultuosissimamente. Most tumultuously. To com- plete the similitude of the musical score, a direction for the tempo or movement is included. There is some force in Mas- son's remark that this direction "rather repels one, as too sug- gestive of artificiality and the flourished baton of the leader of an orchestra." 190 NOTES 11. Woman's Ionic form. Of the three orders of Greek architecture, Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian, the Ionic is regarded as possessing the most grace and refinement of beauty in its lines and proportions, differing from the massive severity of the Doric as woman differs from man. 18. Shriveling scroll. Barrow and Hunter quote Scott's paraphrase of the ancient Latin hymn, Dies Irce, in the Lay of the Last Minstrel, v. 31 : — " When shriveling like a parched scroll, The flaming heavens together roll." 134 : 8. It is summer. In the Confessions (Masson's Ed. Ill, 444), De Quincey says that "the contemplation of death generally is (coeteris paribus) more affecting in summer than in any other season of the year . . . and any particular death, if not actually more affecting, at least haunts my mind more obstinately and besiegingly, in that season." 12. Fairy pinnace. The "frail reedy gig " has now become in dream a fairy pinnace, and the great coach has become a huge three-decker, a man-of-war of the old wooden type. The next sentence is a glorification of England's dominion over the sea. 26. Corymbi. Clusters of fruit or flowers ; plural of the Latin corymbus. 135 : 20. On the weather beam. On the weather, or wind- ward, side of the ship. 27. Quarrel. A crossbow arrow, having a square or four- edged head ; Low Latin quadrellus, Latin quadrum, a square. 136:25. Sweet funeral bells. This third "movement" is especially filled with musical effects, beginning with pianissimo softness and ending with a grand fortissimo climax of victory. Note the transition from the second part to the third, without break of sentence. 138 : 23. Too full of joy . . . orchestras of earth. In the original, " too full of joy that acknowledged no fountain but God, to utter themselves by other language than by tears, by restless anthems, by reverberations rising from every choir, of the Gloria in excelsis.' 1 '' 139 : 8. Waterloo and Recovered Christendom ! The final NOTES 191 triumph over Napoleon and the French at Waterloo was a relief and a source of rejoicing to England and the greater part of Europe like the relief of a final victory of Christianity over paganism. De Quincey often expresses the excessive views of a loyal English Tory of the period. 16. The darkness comprehended it. Cf. John i. 5. 141 : 24. Crecy. The battle of CrCcy, 1346, in which the English won an illustrious victory over the French. 142 : 9. Tidings of great joy. Cf. Luke ii. 10. IS. A Dying Trumpeter. " The incident of the dying trum- peter, who rises from a marble bas-relief, and carries a marble trumpet to his marble lips for the purpose of warning the female infant, was doubtless secretly suggested by my own imperfect effort to seize the guard's horn and to blow a warning blast." — De Quincey. 143 : 1. Carried temptation into the graves. Tempted the dead to rise. 5. Caught up to God. Cf. Revelation xii. 5. 9. Crimson glory. A beautiful effulgence, like that of the aureola of a saint. 21. That dreadful being. " Death, the crowned phantom," in the Vision, p. 132, 1. 10. 144:1. Then was completed, etc. This opening sentence originally read: "Then rose the agitation, spreading through the infinite cathedral, to its agony ; then was completed the passion of the mighty fugue." In the revision of this section De Quincey made eighteen changes, all serving to increase and perfect the poetic splendor of the passage. 6. Choir and antechoir. In the choir of a cathedral the choristers are seated in stalls along each side, so that the two sections face each other. 12. Sanctus. The hymn Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts. 20. The quick and the dead. The living and the dead. Cf 2 Timothy iv. 1. 145 : 1. Having hid his face. That is, while Napoleon was victorious. 10. A thousand times, etc. Notice the rhythmic char- acter of this magnificent sentence. It scans almost perfectly in 192 NOTES iambics, with a mixture of anapests. Much of De Quincey's "impassioned prose" is as rhythmical as this. The sentence -, as it originally appeared in Blackwood reads thus : " A thousand times, amongst the phantoms of sleep, has he shown thee to me, % standing before the golden dawn, and ready to enter its gates — with the dreadful Word going before thee — with the armies of the grave behind thee ; shown thee to me, sinking, rising, fluttering, fainting, but then suddenly reconciled, adoring: a thousand times has he followed thee in the worlds of sleep — < through storms ; through desert seas ; through the darkness of quicksands ; through fugues and the persecution of fugues ; through dreams, and the dreadful resurrections that are in dreams — only that at the last, with one motion of his victorious arm, he might record and emblazon the endless resurrections of his love ! " 12. The secret word. See p. 139, 1. 8. "Every element in the shifting movements of the dream," says De Quincey, " derived itself either primarily from the incidents of the actual scene, or from secondary features associated with the mail." It would be well for the student to identify the minor elements of the dream with the suggesting incidents of the Glory of Motion and the Vision; such elements, for example, as in p. 134, 11. 10-13 ; p. 135, 1. 27. 20. With one sling of His victorious arm. Barrow quotes Paradise Lost, X, G33 : — "At one sling Of thy victorious arm, well pleasing Son, Both Sin and Death, and yawning Grave, at last, Through Chaos hurled, obstruct the mouth of Hell, For ever, and seal up his ravenous jaws." Author's Postscript When De Quincey revised his essays in 1854 for the Collec- tive Edition of his writings, he printed, in the preface to the volume containing the English Mail Coach, the following com- ments and explanation : — "'The English Mail Coach.' This little paper, according to my original intention, formed part of the ' Suspiria de Pro- fundis ' ; from which, for a momentary purpose, I did not NOTES 193 scruple to detach it, and to publish it apart, as sufficiently- intelligible even when dislocated from its place in a larger whole. To my surprise, however, one or two critics, not care- lessly in conversation, but deliberately in print, professed their inability to apprehend the meaning of the whole, or to follow the links of the connexion between its several parts. I am myself as little able to understand where the difficulty lies, or to detect any lurking obscurity, as these critics found themselves to un- ravel my logic. Possibly I may not be an indifferent and neutral judge in such a case. I will therefore sketch a brief abstract of the little paper according to my original design, and then leave the reader to judge how far this design is kept in sight through the actual execution. "Thirty-seven years ago, or rather more, accident made me, in the dead of night, and of a night memorably solemn, the solitary witness of an appalling scene, which threatened instant death in a shape the most terrific to two young people whom I had no means of assisting, except in so far as I was able to give them a most hurried warning of their danger ; but even that not until they stood within the very shadow of the catastrophe, being divided from the most frightful of deaths by scarcely more, if more at all, than seventy seconds. " Such was the scene, such in its outline, from which the whole of this paper radiates as a natural expansion. This scene is circumstantially narrated in Section the Second, entitled ' The Vision of Sudden Death.' " But a movement of horror, and of spontaneous recoil from this dreadful scene, naturally carried the whole of that scene, raised and idealised, into my dreams, and very soon into a roll- ing succession of dreams. The actual scene, as looked down upon from the box of the mail, was transformed into a dream, as tumultuous and changing as a musical fugue. This troubled dream is circumstantially reported in Section the Third, entitled ' Dream-Fugue on the theme of Sudden Death.' What I had beheld from my seat upon the mail, — the scenical strife of action and passion, of anguish and fear, as I had there wit- nessed them moving in ghostly silence, — this duel between life and death narrowing itself to a point of such exquisite evanes- cence as the collision neared : all these elements of the scene 194 NOTES blended, under the law of association, with the previous and permanent features of distinction investing the mail itself ; which features at that time lay — 1st, in velocity unprece- dented, 2dly, in the power and beauty of the horses, 3dly, in the official connexion with the government of a great nation, and, 4thly, in the function, almost a consecrated function, of publishing and diffusing through the land the great political events, and especially the great battles, during a conflict of unparalleled grandeur. These honorary distinctions are all described circumstantially in the First or introductory Section ('The Glory of Motion'). The three first were distinctions maintained at all times ; but the fourth and grandest belonged exclusively to the war with Napoleon; and this it was which most naturally introduced Waterloo into the dream. Waterloo, I understand, was the particular feature of the ' Dream-Fugue' which my censors were Least able to account for. Yet surely "Waterloo, which, in common with every other great battle, it had been our special privilege to publish over all the land, most naturally entered the dream under the licence of our privilege. If not — if there be anything amiss — let the Dream be respon- sible. The Dream is a law to itself; and as well quarrel with a rainbow for showing, or for not showing, a secondary arch. So far as I know, every element in the shifting movements of the Dream derived itself either primarily from the incidents of the actual scene, or from secondary features associated with the mail. For example, the cathedral aisle derived itself from the mimic combination of features which grouped themselves together at the point of approaching collision — viz. an arrow- like section of the road, six hundred yards long, under the solemn lights described, with lofty trees meeting overhead in arches. The guard's horn, again — a humble instrument in itself — was yet glorified as the organ of publication for so many great national events. And the incident of the Dying Trumpeter, who rises from a marble bas-relief, and carries a marble trumpet to his marble lips for the purpose of warning the female infant, was doubtless secretly suggested by my own imperfect effort to seize the guard's horn, and to blow the warn- ing blast. But the Dream knows best ; and the Dream, I say again, is the responsible party." XOTES ' 195 LEVAXA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW Introductory Note. This paper is one of several which De Quincey included under the general title Suspiriq de Profun- di*, intended as a Sequel to the Confessions of an Opium Eater. Other papers in the series are The Afflictions of Childhood, Dream Echoes, Vision of Sudden Death and Dream- Fugue, TJie Palimpsest, Savannah-la-Mar, Memorial Suspiria, The Apparitio?i of the Brocken, and The Daughter of Lebanon. Many others were planned, but never fully written. Those remarkable productions — the best of them — are the glorified visions of his opium dreams, given a substantial and permanent existence through the conscious effort of art. of Levana Mas- son says : " This little paper is, perhaps, all in all, the finest thing that De Quincey ever wrote. It is certainly the most perfect specimen lie has left us of his peculiar art of English prose-poetry, and certainly also one of the most magnificent pieces of prose in the English or in any other language." 147 : 2. Levare. Tins verb signifies also, in its derived sense, to lighten, relieve, <<>us