The English mail-coach and Joan of Arc

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DE QUINCEY'S
THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH

W

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AND

JOAN OF ARC

Edited
With Introduction and Notes

by
MILTON HAIGHT TURK, Ph.D.

Professor of English in Hobart College

GINN & COMPANY

BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON

Entered at Stationers' Hall

Copyright, 1902, 1905
Bv MILTON HAIGHT TURK

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

gftt flttimitum Dreg*

1. INN St COMPANY • PRO-
PKIIiTORS • HUSTON . U.S.A.

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URL

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TO

CHARLES DEACON CREE

THIS LITTLE VOLUME
IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED

G/cncairn, Kilmacolm, Scotland
June 27, Kpoj

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2007 with funding from

Microsoft Corporation

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PREFACE

Some portions of this Introduction have been taken from
the Athenaeum Press Selections from De Quincey ; many of the
notes have also been transferred from that volume. A num-
ber of the new notes I owe to a review of the Selections by
Dr. Lane Cooper, of Cornell University. I wish also to thank
for many favors the Committee and officers of the Glasgow
University Library.

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

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Page

I. Life vii

II. Critical Remarks x

III. Bibliographical Note xiv

SELECTIONS

The English Mail-Coach i

Joan of Arc 64

NOTES 103

INTRODUCTION

I. LIFE

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

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

In 1800, at the age of fifteen, De Quincey was ready for
Oxford ; he had not been praised without reason, for his
scholarship was far in advance of that of ordinary pupils of his
years. " That boy," his master at Bath School had said, "that

Vlii INTRODUCTION

boy could harangue an Athenian mob better than you or I could
address an English one." He was sent to Manchester Grammar
School, however, in order that after three years' stay he might
secure a scholarship at Brasenose College, Oxford. He re-
mained there — strongly protesting against a situation which
deprived him " of health, of society, of amusement, of liberty,
of congeniality of pursuits'1'1 — for nineteen months, and then
ran away.

His first plan had been to reach Wordsworth, whose Lyrical
Ballads (1798) had solaced him in fits of melancholy and
had awakened in him a deep reverence for the neglected
poet. His timidity preventing this, he made his way to Ches-
ter, where his mother then lived, in the hope of seeing a
sister ; was apprehended by the older members of the family ;
and through the intercession of his uncle, Colonel Penson,
received the promise of a guinea a week to carry out his later
project of a solitary tramp through Wales. From July to
November, 1802, De Quincey then led a wayfarer's life.1 He
soon lost his guinea, however, by ceasing to keep his family
informed of his whereabouts, and subsisted for a time with
great difficulty. Still apparently fearing pursuit, with a little
borrowed money he broke away entirely from his home by
exchanging the solitude of Wales for the greater wilderness
of London. Failing there to raise money on his expected
patrimony, he for some time deliberately clung to a life of
degradation and starvation rather than return to his lawful
governors.

Discovered by chance by his friends, De Quincey was
brought home and finally allowed (1803) to go to Worcester
College, Oxford, on a reduced income. Here, we are told,
" he came to be looked upon as a strange being who associated

1 For a most interesting account of this period see the Confessions of
an English Opium- Eater, Athenx-um Press Selections from De Quincey,
pp. 1 65-1 71, and notes.

INTRODUCTION ix

with no one." During this time he learned to take opium.
He left, apparently about 1807, without a degree. In the same
year he made the acquaintance of Coleridge and Wordsworth;
Lamb he had sought out in London several years before.

His acquaintance with Wordsworth led to his settlement in
1809 at Grasmere, in the beautiful English Lake District; his
home for ten years was Dove Cottage, which Wordsworth had
occupied for several years and which is now held in trust as a
memorial of the poet. De Quincey was married in 18 16, and
soon after, his patrimony having been exhausted, he took up
literary work in earnest.

In 182 1 he went to London to dispose of some translations
from German authors, but was persuaded first to write and
publish an account of his opium experiences, which accord-
ingly appeared in the London Magazine in that year. This
new sensation eclipsed Lamb's Essays of Elia, which were
appearing in the same periodical. The Confessions of an
English Opium-Eater was forthwith published in book form.
De Quincey now made literary acquaintances. Tom Hood
found the shrinking author " at home in a German ocean of
literature, in a storm, flooding all the floor, the tables, and the
chairs — billows of books." Richard Woodhouse speaks of the
" depth and reality of his knowledge. . . . His conversation
appeared like the elaboration of a mine of results. . . . Tay-
lor led him into political economy, into the Greek and Latin
accents, into antiquities, Roman roads, old castles, the origin
and analogy of languages ; upon all these he was informed to
considerable minuteness. The same with regard to Shake-
speare's sonnets, Spenser's minor poems, and the great writers
and characters of Elizabeth's age and those of Cromwell's
time."

From this time on De Quincey maintained himself by con-
tributing to various magazines. He soon exchanged London
and the Lakes for Edinburgh and its suburb, Lasswade, where

x INTRODUCTION

the remainder of his life was spent. Blackwood's Edinburgh
Magazine and its rival Tail's Magazine received a large num-
ber of contributions. The English Mail- Coach appeared in
1849 in Blackwood. Joan of Arc had already been published
(1847) in Tail. De Quincey continued to drink laudanum
throughout his life, — twice after 182 1 in very great excess.
During his last years he nearly completed a collected edition
of his works. He died in Edinburgh on the 8th of December,
1859.

II. CRITICAL REMARKS

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

De Quincey divides his writings into three groups : first,
that class which " proposes primarily to amuse the reader, but
which, in doing so, may or may not happen occasionally to
reach a higher station, at which the amusement passes into
an impassioned interest." To this class would belong the
Autobiographic Sketches and the Literary Reminiscences. As
a second class he groups "those papers which address them-
selves purely to the understanding as an insulated faculty, or
do so primarily." These essays would include, according to
Professor Masson's subdivision, (a) Biographies, such as Shake-
speare or Pope — Joan of Arc falls here, yet has some claim
to a place in the first class ; (l>) Historical essays, like 77ie
Ccesars ; (c) Speculative and Theological essays ; (d) Essays in

INTRODUCTION xi

Political Economy and Politics ; (e) Papers of Literary Theory
and Criticism, such as the brilliant discussions of Rhetoric,
Style, and Conversation, and the famous On the Knocking at
the Gate in ' Macbeth' As a third and " far higher " class the
author ranks the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, and
also (but more emphatically) the Suspiria de Profundis. "On
these," he says, "as modes of impassioned prose ranging un-
der no precedents that I am aware of in literature, it is much
more difficult to speak justly, whether in a hostile or a friendly
character."

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

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

The Confessions as a narrative is related to the Autobiogra-
phy, while its poetical passages range it with the Suspiria and

Xll INTRODUCTION

the Mail-Coach. De Quincey seems to have believed that he
was creating in such writings a new literary type of prose
poetry or prose phantasy ; he had, with his splendid dreams
as subject-matter, lifted prose to heights hitherto scaled only
by the poet. In reality his style owed much to the seven-
teenth-century writers, such as Milton and Sir Thomas Browne.
He took part with Coleridge, Lamb, and others in the general
revival of interest in earlier modern English prose, which is
a feature of the Romantic Movement. Still none of his con-
temporaries wrote as he did ; evidently De Quincey has a dis-
tinct quality of his own. Ruskin, in our own day, is like him,
but never the same.

Yet De Quincey's prose poetry is a very small portion of
his work, and it is not in this way only that he excels. Mr.
Saintsbury has spoken of the strong appeal that De Quincey
makes to boys.1 It is not without significance that he men-
tions as especially attractive to the young only writings with a
large narrative element.2 Few boys read poetry, whether in
verse or prose, and fewer still criticism or philosophy ; to
every normal boy the gate of good literature is the good story.
It is the narrative skill of De Quincey that has secured for
him, in preference to other writers of his class, the favor of
youthful readers.

It would be too much to say that the talent that attracts the
young to him must needs be the Opium-Eater's grand talent,
though the notion is defensible, seeing that only salient quali-
ties in good writing appeal to inexperienced readers. I believe,

1 " 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." — History of Nineteenth-Century literature, p. 198.

2 " To read the Essay on Murder, the English Mail-Coach, The
Spanish Nun, The Cusars, and half a score other things at the age of
about fifteen or sixteen is, or ought to be, to fall in love with them."-
Essays in English Literature, ij8o-fS6o, p. 307.

INTRODUCTION xiii

however, that this skill in narration is Ue Quincey's most
persistent quality, — the golden thread that unites all his most
distinguished and most enduring work. And it is with him a
part of his genius for style. Creative power of the kind that
goes to the making of plots De Quincey had not; he has
proved that forever by the mediocrity of Klosterheim. Give
him Bergmann's account of the Tartar Migration, or the story
of the Fighting Nun, — give him the matter, — and a brilliant
narrative will result. Indeed, De Quincey loved a story for its
own sake ; he rejoiced to see it extend its winding course
before him ; he delighted to follow it, touch it, color it, see it
grow into body and being under his hand. That this enthusi-
asm should now and then tend to endanger the integrity of the
facts need not surprise us ; as I have said elsewhere, accuracy
in these matters is hardly to be expected of De Quincey. And
we can take our pleasure in the skillful unfolding of the dra-
matic narrative of the Tartar Flight — we can feel the author's
joy in the scenic possibilities of his theme — even if we know
that here and there an incident appears that is quite in its
proper place — but is unknown to history.

In his Confessions the same constructive power bears its
part in the author's triumph. A peculiar end was to be
reached in that narrative, — an end in which the writer had
a deep personal interest. What is an opium-eater? Says a
character in a recent work of fiction, of a social wreck: "If
it isn't whisky with him, it's opium; if it isn't opium, it's
whisky." This speech establishes the popular category in
which De Quincey's habit had placed him. Our attention was
to be drawn from these degrading connections. And this is
done not merely by the correction of some widespread falla-
cies as to the effects of the drug ; far more it is the result of
narrative skill. As we follow with ever-increasing sympathy
the lonely and sensitive child, the wandering youth, the neu-
ralgic patient, into the terrible grasp of opium, who realizes,

xiv INTRODUCTION

amid the gorgeous delights and the awful horrors of the tale,
that the writer is after all the victim of the worst of bad habits ?
We can hardly praise too highly the art which even as we look
beneath it throws its glamour over us still.

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

III. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
I. Works

i. The Collected Writings of Thomas de Quincey. New and
enlarged edition by David Masson. Edinburgh : A. and C.
Black, 1 889-1 890. [New York: The Macmillan Co. 14
vols., with footnotes, a preface to each volume, and index.
Reissued in cheaper form. The standard edition.]

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

INTRODUCTION xv

Selections from De Quincey. Edited with an Introduction and
Notes, by M. H. Turk. Athenaeum Press Series. Boston,
U.S.A., and London: Ginn and Company, 1902. ["The
largest body of selections from De Quincey recently pub-
lished. . . . The selections are The Affliction of Child-
hood, Introduction to the World of Strife, A Meeting
with Lamb, A Meeting with Coleridge, Recollections of
Wordsworth, Confessions, A Portion of Suspiria, The
English Mail-Coach, Murder as one of the Fine Arts,
Second Paper, foati of Arc, and On the Knocking at the
Gate in ' Macbeth? "]

II. Biography and Criticism

D. Masson. Thomas De Quincey. English Men of Letters.
London. [New York : Harper. An excellent brief biog-
raphy. This book, with a good volume of selections, should
go far toward supplying the ordinary student's needs.]

H. S. Salt. De Qui.ncey. Bell's Miniature Series of Great
Writers. London : George Bell and Sons. [A good short life.]

A. H. Japp. Thomas De Quincey : His Life and Writings.
London, 1890. [New York : Scribner. First edition by
"H. A. Page," 1877. The standard life of De Quincey ;
it contains valuable communications from De Quincey's
daughters, J. Hogg, Rev. F. Jacox, Professor Masson, and
others.]

A. H. Japp. De Quincey Memorials. Being Letters and Other
Records, here first published. With Comtnunications from
Coleridge, the Wordsworths, Hannah More, Professor
Wilson, and others. 2 vols. London : W. Heinemann, 1 891.

J. Hogg. De Quincey and his Friends, Personal Recollec-
tions, Souvenirs, and Anecdotes [including Woodhouse's
Conversations, Findlay's Personal Recollections, Hodgson's
On the Genius of De Quincey, and a mass of personal
notes from a host of friends]. London : Sampson Low,
Marston & Co., 1895.

xvi INTRODUCTION

9. E. T. Mason. Personal Traits of British Authors. Nev
York, 1885. [4 vols. The volume subtitled Scott, Hogg
etc., contains some accounts of De Quincey not includec
by Japp or Hogg.]

10. L. Stephen. Hours in a Library. Vol. I. New York, 1892

11. W. Minto. Manual of English Prose Literature. Boston

1889. [Contains the best general discussion of De Quin
cey's style.]

12. L. Cooper. The Prose Poetry of Thomas De Quincey

Leipzig, 1902.

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH

Section I — The Glory of Motion

Some twenty or more years before I matriculated at
Oxford, Mr. Palmer, at that time M.P. for Bath, had
accomplished two things, very hard to do on our little
planet, the Earth, however cheap they may be held by
eccentric people in comets : he had invented mail-coaches, 5
and he had married the daughter of a duke. He was,
therefore, just twice as great a man as Galileo, who did
certainly invent (or, which is the same thing,1 discover)
the satellites of Jupiter, those very next things extant to
mail-coaches in the two capital pretensions of speed and 10
keeping time, but, on the other hand, who did not marry
the daughter of a duke.

These mail-coaches, as organised by Mr. Palmer, are
entitled to a circumstantial notice from myself, having had
so large a share in developing the anarchies of my subse- 15
quent dreams: an agency which they accomplished, 1st,
through velocity at that time unprecedented — for they first
revealed the glory of motion ; 2dly, through grand effects
for the eye between lamplight and the darkness upon soli-
tary roads ; 3dly, through animal beauty and power so often 20
displayed in the class of horses selected for this mail service;

1 " The same thing" : — Thus, in the calendar of the Church Festi-
vals, the discovery of the true cross (by Helen, the mother of
Constantine) is recorded (and, one might think, with the express
consciousness of sarcasm) as the Invention of the Cross.

2 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY

4thly, through the conscious presence of a central intellect,
that, in the midst of vast distances1 — of storms, of darkness,
of danger — overruled all obstacles into one steady co-opera-
tion to a national result. For my own feeling, this post-office
5 service spoke as by some mighty orchestra, where a thousand
instruments, all disregarding each other, and so far in dan-
ger of discord, yet all obedient as slaves to the supreme baton
of some great leader, terminate in a perfection of harmony
like that of heart, brain, and lungs in a healthy animal organ-

10 isation. But, finally, that particular element in this whole
combination which most impressed myself, and through
which it is that to this hour Mr. Palmer's mail-coach system
tyrannises over my dreams by terror and terrific beauty, lay
in the awful political mission which at that time it fulfilled.

15 The mail-coach it was that distributed over the face of the
land, like the opening of apocalyptic vials, the heart-shaking
news of Trafalgar, of Salamanca, of Vittoria, of Waterloo.
These were the harvests that, in the grandeur of their
reaping, redeemed the tears and blood in which they

20 had been sown. Neither was the meanest peasant so much
below the grandeur and the sorrow of the times as to con-
found battles such as these, which were gradually moulding
the destinies of Christendom, with the vulgar conflicts of
ordinary warfare, so often no more than gladiatorial trials

25 of national prowess. The victories of England in this
stupendous contest rose of themselves as natural Te Deums
to heaven; and it was felt by the thoughtful that such
victories, at such a crisis of general prostration, were not
more beneficial to ourselves than finally to France, our

30 enemy, and to the nations of all western or central Europe,

1 " I'ust distatices" : — One case was familiar to mail-coach travellers
where two mails in opposite directions, north and south, starting at
the same minute from points six hundred miles apart, met almost con-
stantly at a particular bridge which bisected the total distance.

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 3

through whose pusillanimity it was that the French domina-
tion had prospered.

The mail-coach, as the national organ for publishing
these mighty events, thus diffusively influential, became
itself a spiritualised and glorified object to an impassioned 5
heart ; and naturally, in the Oxford of that day, all hearts
were impassioned, as being all (or nearly all) in early man-
hood. In most universities there is one single college ; in
Oxford there were five-and-twenty, all of which were peopled
by young men, the elite of their own generation ; not boys, 10
but men : none under eighteen. In some of these many
colleges the custom permitted the student to keep what are
called " short terms " ; that is, the four terms of Michael-
mas, Lent, Easter, and Act, were kept by a residence, in
the aggregate, of ninety-one days, or thirteen weeks. Under 15
this interrupted residence, it was possible that a student
might have a reason for going down to his home four
times in the year. This made eight journeys to and fro.
But, as these homes lay dispersed through all the shires of
the island, and most of us disdained all coaches except his 20
Majesty's mail, no city out of London could pretend to so
extensive a connexion with Mr. Palmer's establishment as
Oxford. Three mails, at the least, I remember as passing
every day through Oxford, and benefiting by my personal
patronage — viz., the Worcester, the Gloucester, and the 25
Holyhead mail. Naturally, therefore, it became a point of
some interest with us, whose journeys revolved every six
weeks on an average, to look a little into the executive
details of the system. With some of these Mr. Palmer had
no concern ; they rested upon bye-laws enacted by posting- 30
houses for their own benefit, and upon other bye-laws,
equally stern, enacted by the inside passengers for the
illustration of their own haughty exclusiveness. These last
were of a nature to rouse our scorn ; from which the

4 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

transition was not very long to systematic mutiny. Up to
this time, say 1804, or 1805 (the year of Trafalgar), it had
been the fixed assumption of the four inside people (as an
old tradition of all public carriages derived from the reign of
5 Charles II) that they, the illustrious quaternion, constituted
a porcelain variety of the human race, whose dignity would
have been compromised by exchanging one word of civility
with the three miserable delf-ware outsides. Even to have
kicked an outsider might have been held to attaint the foot

10 concerned in that operation, so that, perhaps, it would have
required an act of Parliament to restore its purity of blood.
What words, then, could express the horror, and the sense
of treason, in that case, which //^v/ happened, where all three
outsides (the trinity of Pariahs) made a vain attempt to sit

15 down at the same breakfast-table or dinner-table with the
consecrated four ? I myself witnessed such an attempt ; and
on that occasion a benevolent old gentleman endeavoured
to soothe his three holy associates, by suggesting that, if
the outsides were indicted for this criminal attempt at the

20 next assizes, the court would regard it as a case of lunacy
or delirium tremens rather than of treason. England owes
much of her grandeur to the depth of the aristocratic
element in her social composition, when pulling against
her strong democracy. I am not the man to laugh at it.

25 Put sometimes, undoubtedly, it expressed itself in comic
shapes. The course taken with the infatuated outsiders,
in the particular attempt which I have noticed, was that
the waiter, beckoning them away from the privileged salle-
d-manger, sang out, "This way, my good men," and then

30 enticed these good men away to the kitchen. Put that plan
had not always answered. Sometimes, though rarely, cases
occurred where the intruders, being stronger than usual, or
more vicious than usual, resolutely refused to budge, and so
far carried their point as to have a separate table arranged

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 5

for themselves in a corner of the general room. Yet, if an
Indian screen could be found ample enough to plant them
out from the very eyes of the high table, or dais, it then
became possible to assume as a fiction of law that the three
delf fellows, after all, were not present. They could be 5
ignored by the porcelain men, under the maxim that objects
not appearing and objects not existing are governed by the
same logical construction.1

Such being, at that time, the usage of mail-coaches, what
was to be done by us of young Oxford ? We, the most 10
aristocratic of people, who were addicted to the practice of
looking down superciliously even upon the insides them-
selves as often very questionable characters — were we, by
voluntarily going outside, to court indignities? If our dress
and bearing sheltered us generally from the suspicion of 15
being " raff " (the name at that period for " snobs " 2), we
really were such constructively by the place we assumed.
If we did not submit to the deep shadow of eclipse, we
entered at least the skirts of its penumbra. And the
analogy of theatres was valid against us, — -where no man 20
can complain of the annoyances incident to the pit or
gallery, having his instant remedy in paying the higher
price of the boxes. But the soundness of this analogy we
disputed. In the case of the theatre, it cannot be pre-
tended that the inferior situations have any separate 25
attractions, unless the pit may be supposed to have an
advantage for the purposes of the critic or the dramatic
reporter. But the critic or reporter is a rarity. For most

1 De 11011 apparentibus, etc.

2 " Snobs" and its antithesis, " nobs," arose among the internal fac-
tions 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.

6 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

people, the sole benefit is in the price. Now, on the con-
trary, 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

5 connected with the condition of riding inside ; which con-
dition we pronounced insufferable. The air, the freedom
of prospect, the proximity to the horses, the elevation of
seat : these were what we required ; but, above all, the
certain anticipation of purchasing occasional opportunities

10 of driving.

Such was the difficulty which pressed us ; and under the
coercion of this difficulty we instituted a searching inquiry
into the true quality and valuation of the different apart-
ments about the mail. We conducted this inquiry on meta-

15 physical principles; and it was ascertained satisfactorily
that the roof of the coach, which by some weak men had
been called the attics, and by some the garrets, was in
reality the drawing-room ; in which drawing-room the box
was the chief ottoman or sofa; whilst it appeared that the

20 inside, which had been traditionally regarded as the only
room tenantable by gentlemen, was, in fact, the coal-cellar
in disguise.

Great wits jump. The very same idea had not long
before struck the celestial intellect of China. Amongst the

25 presents carried out by our first embassy to that country
was a state-coach. It had been specially selected as a
personal gift by George III ; but the exact mode of using
it was an intense mystery to l'ekin. The ambassador,
indeed (Lord Macartney), had made some imperfect expla-

30 nations upon this point; but, as His Excellency communi-
cated these in a diplomatic whisper at the very moment
of his departure, the celestial intellect was very feebly illu-
minated, and it became necessary to call a cabinet council
on the grand state question, "Where was the Emperor to

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 7

sit ? " The hammer-cloth happened to be unusually gorgeous ;
and, partly on that consideration, but partly also because
the box offered the most elevated seat, was nearest to the
moon, and undeniably went foremost, it was resolved by
acclamation that the box was the imperial throne, and, 5
for the scoundrel who drove, —he might sit where he could
find a perch. The horses, therefore, being harnessed,
solemnly his imperial majesty ascended his new English
throne under a flourish of trumpets, having the first lord of
the treasury on his right hand, and the chief jester on his 10
left. Pekin gloried in the spectacle ; and in the whole
flowery people, constructively present by representation,
there was but one discontented person, and that was the
coachman. This mutinous individual audaciously shouted,
"Where am /to sit?" But the privy council, incensed 15
by his disloyalty, unanimously opened the door, and kicked
him into the inside. He had all the inside places to him-
self ; 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, 20
how am I to catch hold of the reins?" — "Anyhow," was
the imperial answer ; " don't trouble me, man, in my glory.
How catch the reins ? Why, through the windows, through
the keyholes — «#_yhow." Finally this contumacious coach-
man lengthened the check-strings into a sort of jury-reins 25
communicating with the horses ; with these he drove as
steadily as Pekin had any right to expect. The Emperor
returned after the briefest of circuits ; he descended in
great pomp from his throne, with the severest resolution
never to remount it. A public thanksgiving was ordered 30
for his majesty's happy escape from the disease of a broken
neck ; and the state-coach was dedicated thenceforward
as a votive offering to the god Fo Fo — whom the learned
more accurately called Fi Fi.

8 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

A revolution of this same Chinese character did young
Oxford of that era effect in the constitution of mail-coach
society. It was a perfect French Revolution ; and we had
good reason to say, ca ira. In fact, it soon became too
5 popular. The " public" — a well-known character, particu-
larly disagreeable, though slightly respectable, and noto-
rious for affecting the chief seats in synagogues — had at
first loudly opposed this revolution ; but, when the oppo-
sition showed itself to be ineffectual, our disagreeable

10 friend went into it with headlong zeal. At first it was a
sort of race between us ; and, as the public is usually from
thirty to fifty years old, naturally we of young Oxford, that
averaged about twenty, had the advantage. Then the
public took to bribing, giving fees to horse-keepers, &c,

15 who hired out their persons as warming-pans on the box
seat. That, you know, was shocking to all moral sensibili-
ties. Come to bribery, said we, and there is an end to
all morality, — Aristotle's, Zeno's, Cicero's, or anybody's.
And, besides, of what use was it ? For we bribed also.

20 And, as our bribes, to those of the public, were as five
shillings to sixpence, here again young Oxford had the
advantage. But the contest was ruinous to the principles
of the stables connected with the mails. This whole cor-
poration was constantly bribed, rebribed, and often sur-

25 rebribed ; a mail-coach yard was like the hustings in a
contested election ; and a horse-keeper, ostler, or helper,
was held by the philosophical at that time to be the most
corrupt character in the nation.

There was an impression upon the public mind, natural

30 enough from the continually augmenting velocity of the
mail, but quite erroneous, that an outside seat on this class
of carriages was a post of danger. On the contrary, I
maintained that, if a man had become nervous from scmiic
gipsy prediction in his childhood, allocating to a particular

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 9

moon now approaching some unknown danger, and he
should inquire earnestly, " Whither can I fly for shelter ?
Is a prison the safest retreat ? or a lunatic hospital ? or the
British Museum?" I should have replied, "Oh no; I'll
tell you what to do. Take lodgings for the next forty days 5
on the box of his Majesty's mail. Nobody can touch you
there. If it is by bills at ninety days after date that you
are made unhappy — if noters and protesters are the sort
of wretches whose astrological shadows darken the house
of life — then note you what I vehemently protest: viz., 10
that, no matter though the sheriff and under-sheriff in every
county should be running after you with his posse, touch a
hair of your head he cannot whilst you keep house and
have your legal domicile on the box of the mail. It is
felony to stop the mail; even the sheriff cannot do that. 15
And an extra touch of the whip to the leaders (no great
matter if it grazes the sheriff) at any time guarantees your
safety." In fact, a bedroom in a quiet house seems a
safe enough retreat ; yet it is liable to its own notorious
nuisances — to robbers by night, to rats, to fire. But the 20
mail laughs at these terrors. To robbers, the answer is
packed up and ready for delivery in the barrel of the guard's
blunderbuss. Rats again ! there are none about mail-
coaches any more than snakes in Von Troil's Iceland1 ;
except, indeed, now and then a parliamentary rat, who 25
always hides his shame in what I have shown to be the
"coal-cellar." And, as to fire, I never knew but one in a
mail-coach; which was in the Exeter mail, and caused by
an obstinate sailor bound to Devonport. Jack, making
light of the law and the lawgiver that had set their faces 30

1 " Von Trail's Iceland" : — The allusion is to a well-known chapter
in Von Troil's work, entitled, " Concerning the Snakes of Iceland."
The entire chapter consists of these six words — " There are no snakes
in Iceland."

io SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

against his offence, insisted on taking up a forbidden
seat 1 in the rear of the roof, from which he could exchange
his own yarns with those of the guard. No greater offence
was then known to mail-coaches ; it was treason, it was

S Icesa majcstas, it was by tendency arson ; and the ashes of
Jack's pipe, falling amongst the straw of the hinder boot,
containing the mail-bags, raised a flame which (aided by
the wind of our motion) threatened a revolution in the
republic of letters. Yet even this left the sanctity of the

io box unviolated. In dignified repose, the coachman and
myself sat on, resting with benign composure upon our
knowledge that the fire would have to burn its way through
four inside passengers before it could reach ourselves. I
remarked to the coachman, with a quotation from Virgil's

15 "^Eneid " really too hackneyed —

'•Jam proximus ardet
Ucalegon."

1 "Forbidden seat" : — The very sternest code of rules was enforced
upon the mails by the Post-office. Throughout England, only three
outsides were allowed, of whom one was to sit on the box, and the
other two immediately behind the box ; none, under any pretext, to
come near the guard ; an indispensable caution ; since else, under the
guise of a passenger, a robber might by any one of a thousand advan-
tages— which sometimes are created, but always are favoured, by the
animation of frank social intercourse — have disarmed the guard.
Beyond the Scottish border, the regulation was so far relaxed as to
allow of four outsides, but not relaxed at all as to the mode of placing
them. One, as before, was seated on the box, and the other three on
the front of the roof, with a determinate and ample separation from
the little insulated chair of the guard. This relaxation was conceded
by way of compensating to Scotland her disadvantages in point of
population. England, by the superior density of her population, might
always count upon a large fund of profits in the fractional trips of
chance passengers riding for short distances of two or three stages. In
Scotland this chance counted for much less. And therefore, to make
good the deficiency, Scotland was allowed a compensatory profit upon
one extra passenger.

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH II

But, recollecting that the Virgilian part of the coachman's
education might have been neglected, I interpreted so far
as to say that perhaps at that moment the flames were
catching hold of our worthy brother and inside passenger,
Ucalegon. The coachman made no answer, — which is my 5
own way when a stranger addresses me either in Syriac or
in Coptic ; but by his faint sceptical smile he seemed to
insinuate that he knew better, • — for that Ucalegon, as it
happened, was not in the way-bill, and therefore could not
have been booked. 10

No dignity is perfect which does not at some point ally
itself with the mysterious. The connexion of the mail with
the state and the executive government — a connexion
obvious, but yet not strictly defined — gave to the whole
mail establishment an official grandeur which did us service 15
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 turn-
pike gates : with what deferential hurry, with what an
obedient start, they fly open at our approach ! Look at 20
that long line of carts and carters ahead, audaciously usurp-
ing the very crest of the road. Ah ! traitors, they do not
hear us as yet ; but, as soon as the dreadful blast of our
horn reaches them with proclamation of our approach, see
with what frenzy of trepidation they fly to their horses' 25
heads, and deprecate our wrath by the precipitation of
their crane-neck quarterings. Treason they feel to be
their crime ; each individual carter feels himself under the
ban of confiscation and attainder ; his blood is attainted
through six generations ; and nothing is wanting but the 30
headsman and his axe, the block and the sawdust, to close
up the vista of his horrors. What ! shall it be within bene-
fit of clergy to delay the king's message on the high road ?
— to interrupt the great respirations, ebb and flood, systole

12 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

and diastole, of the national intercourse ? — to endanger the
safety of tidings running day and night between all nations
and languages ? Or can it be fancied, amongst the weakest
of men, that the bodies of the criminals will be given up to

5 their widows for Christian burial ? Now, the doubts which
were raised as to our powers did more to wrap them in
terror, by wrapping them in uncertainty, than could have
been effected by the sharpest definitions of the law from
the Quarter Sessions. We, on our parts (we, the collective

io mail, I mean), did our utmost to exalt the idea of our

privileges by the insolence with which we wielded them.

Whether this insolence rested upon law that gave it a sanc-

' tion, or upon conscious power that haughtily dispensed with

that sanction, equally it spoke from a potential station ;

iS and the agent, in each particular insolence of the moment,
was viewed reverentially, as one having authority.

Sometimes after breakfast his Majesty's mail would
become frisky ; and, in its difficult wheelings amongst the
intricacies of early markets, it would upset an apple-cart, a

20 cart loaded with eggs, &c. Huge was the affliction and
dismay, awful was the smash. I, as far as possible, endeav-
oured in such a case to represent the conscience and moral
sensibilities of the mail ; and, when wildernesses of eggs
were lying poached under our horses' hoofs, then would I

25 stretch forth my hands in sorrow, saying (in words too
celebrated at that time, from the false echoes 1 of Marengo),
"Ah! wherefore have we not time to weep over you?"
which was evidently impossible, since, in fact, we had not

1 "False echoes " .' — Yes, false ! for the words ascribed to Napoleon,
as breathed to the memory of Desaix, never were uttered at all. They
stand in the same category of theatrical fictions as the cry of the
foundering line-of-battle ship Vengeur, as the vaunt of General Cam-
bronne at Waterloo, " La Garde meurt, mals ne se rend pas," or as the
repartees of Talleyrand.

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 13

time to laugh over them. Tied to post-office allowance in
some cases of fifty minutes for eleven miles, could the royal
mail pretend to undertake the offices of sympathy and con-
dolence ? Could it be expected to provide tears for the
accidents of the road ? If even it seemed to trample on 5
humanity, it did so, I felt, in discharge of its own more
peremptory duties.

Upholding the morality of the mail, a fortiori I upheld
its rights ; as a matter of duty, I stretched to the utter-
most its privilege of imperial precedency, and astonished 10
weak minds by the feudal powers which I hinted to be
lurking constructively in the charters of this proud estab-
lishment. Once I remember being on the box of the
Holyhead mail, between Shrewsbury and Oswestry, when
a tawdry thing from Birmingham, some "Tallyho" or 15
"Highflyer," all flaunting with green and gold, came up
alongside of us. What a contrast to our royal simplicity
of form and colour in this plebeian wretch ! The single
ornament on our dark ground of chocolate colour was the
mighty shield of the imperial arms, but emblazoned in pro- 20
portions as modest as a signet-ring bears to a seal of office.
Even this was displayed only on a single panel, whispering,
rather than proclaiming, our relations to the mighty state ;
whilst the beast from Birmingham, our green-and-gold friend
from false, fleeting, perjured Brummagem, had as much 25
writing and painting on its sprawling flanks as would have
puzzled a decipherer from the tombs of Luxor. For some
time this Birmingham machine ran along by our side — a
piece of familiarity that already of itself seemed to me
sufficiently Jacobinical. But all at once a movement of 30
the horses announced a desperate intention of leaving us
behind. "Do you see t/iat?" I said to the coachman. —
" I see," was his short answer. He was wide awake, — yet
he waited longer than seemed prudent ; for the horses of

14 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

our audacious opponent had a disagreeable air of freshness
and power. But his motive was loyal ; his wish was that
the Birmingham conceit should be full-blown before he
froze it. When that seemed right, he unloosed, or, to speak
5 by a stronger word, he sprang, his known resources : he
slipped our royal horses like cheetahs, or hunting-leopards,
after the affrighted game. How they could retain such a
reserve of fiery power after the work they had accomplished
seemed hard to explain. But on our side, besides the physical

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 itself the bitterest mockery of

15 their presumption; whilst our guard blew back a shatter-
ing blast of triumph that was really too painfully full of
derision.

I mention this little incident for its connexion with what
followed. A Welsh rustic, sitting behind me, asked if I had

20 not felt my heart burn within me during the progress of
the race ? I said, with philosophic calmness, No ; because
we were not racing with a mail, so that no glory could be
gained. In fact, it was sufficiently mortifying that such a
Birmingham thing should dare to challenge us. The Welsh-

25 man replied that he didn't see iliat ; for that a cat might
look at a king, and a Brummagem coach might lawfully
race the Holyhead mail. " Race us, if you like," I replied,
" though even that has an air of sedition ; but not beat us.
This would have been treason ; and for its own sake I am

30 glad that the 'Tallyho ' was disappointed." So dissatisfied
did the Welshman seem with this opinion that at last I was
obliged to tell him a very fine story from one of our elder
dramatists : viz., that once, in some far Oriental kingdom,
when the sultan of all the land, with his princes, ladies, and

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 15

chief omrahs, were flying their falcons, a hawk suddenly
flew at a majestic eagle, and, in defiance of the eagle's nat-
ural advantages, in contempt also of the eagle's traditional
royalty, and before the whole assembled field of astonished
spectators from Agra and Lahore, killed the eagle on the 5
spot. Amazement seized the sultan at the unequal contest,
and burning admiration for its unparalleled result. He com-
manded that the hawk should be brought before him ; he
caressed the bird with enthusiasm ; and he ordered that,
for the commemoration of his matchless courage, a diadem 10
of gold and rubies should be solemnly placed on the hawk's
head, but then that, immediately after this solemn coro-
nation, 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 15
and anointed sovereign, the eagle. "Now," said I to the
Welshman, "to you and me, as men of refined sensibilities,
how painful it would have been that this poor Brummagem
brute, the 'Tallyho,' in the impossible case of a victory
over us, should have been crowned with Birmingham tinsel, 20
with paste diamonds and Roman pearls, and then led off
to instant execution." The Welshman doubted if that
could be warranted by law. And, when I hinted at the 6th
of Edward Longshanks, chap. 18, for regulating the prece-
dency of coaches, as being probably the statute relied 25
on for the capital punishment of such offences, he replied
drily that, if the attempt to pass a mail really were treason-
able, it was a pity that the "Tallyho " appeared to have so
imperfect an acquaintance with law.

The modern modes of travelling cannot compare with 30
the old mail-coach system in grandeur and power. They
boast of more velocity, — ■ not, however, as a consciousness,
but as a fact of our lifeless knowledge, resting upon alien
evidence : as, for instance, because somebody says that we

1 6 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

have gone fifty miles in the hour, though we are far from
feeling it as a personal experience ; or upon the evidence
of a result, as that actually we find ourselves in York four
hours after leaving London. Apart from such an assertion,
5 or such a result, I myself am little aware of the pace. But,
seated on the old mail-coach, we needed no evidence out
of ourselves to indicate the velocity. On this system the
word was not magna loquimur, as upon railways, but vivimus.
Yes, "magna vivimus" ; we do not make verbal ostentation

10 of our grandeurs, we realise our grandeurs in act, and in the
very experience of life. The vital experience of the glad
animal sensibilities made doubts impossible on the question
of our speed ; we heard our speed, we saw it, we felt it as a
thrilling; and this speed was not the product of blind insen-

15 sate agencies, that had no sympathy to give, but was incar-
nated in the fiery eyeballs of the noblest amongst brutes,
in his dilated nostril, spasmodic muscles, and thunder-
beating hoofs. The sensibility of the horse, uttering itself
in the maniac light of his eye, might be the last vibration

20 of such a movement ; the glory of Salamanca might be
the first. But the intervening links that connected them,
that spread the earthquake of battle into the eyeballs of the
horse, were the heart of man and its electric thrillings —
kindling in the rapture of the fiery strife, and then propa-

25 gating its own tumults by contagious shouts and gestures
to the heart of his servant the horse. But now, on the new
system of travelling, iron tubes and boilers have discon-
nected man's heart from the ministers of his locomotion.
Nile nor Trafalgar has power to raise an extra bubble in a

30 steam-kettle. The galvanic cycle is broken up for ever ; man's
imperial nature no longer sends itself forward through the
electric sensibility of the horse ; the inter-agencies are gone
in the mode of communication between the horse and his
master out of which grew so many aspects of sublimity

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH

17

under accidents of mists that hid, or sudden blazes that
revealed, of mobs that agitated, or midnight solitudes that
awed. Tidings fitted to convulse all nations must hence-
forwards travel by culinary process ; and the trumpet that
once announced from afar the laurelled mail, heart-shaking 5
when heard screaming on the wind and proclaiming itself
through the darkness to every village or solitary house on
its route, has now given way for ever to the pot-wallopings
of the boiler. Thus have perished multiform openings for
public expressions of interest, scenical yet natural, in great 10
national tidings, — for revelations of faces and groups that
could not offer themselves amongst the fluctuating mobs
of a railway station. The gatherings of gazers about a
laurelled mail had one centre, and acknowledged one sole
interest. But the crowds attending at a railway station 15
have as little unity as running water, and own as many
centres as there are separate carriages in the train.

How else, for example, than as a constant watcher for
the dawn, and for the London mail that in summer months
entered about daybreak amongst the lawny thickets of 20
Marlborough forest, couldst thou, sweet Fanny of the Bath
road, have become the glorified inmate of my dreams ?
Yet Fanny, as the loveliest young woman for face and per-
son that perhaps in my whole life I have beheld, merited
the station which even now, from a distance of forty years, 25
she holds in my dreams ; yes, though by links of natural
association she brings along with her a troop of dread-
ful creatures, fabulous and not fabulous, that are more
abominable to the heart than Fanny and the dawn are
delightful. 30

Miss Fanny of the Bath road, strictly speaking, lived at
a mile's distance from that road, but came so continually
to meet the mail that I on my frequent transits rarely
missed her, and naturally connected her image with the

1 8 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

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 hap-
pened to be Fanny's grandfather. A good man he was,
that loved his beautiful granddaughter, and, loving her
wisely, was vigilant over her deportment in any case where

10 young Oxford might happen to be concerned. Did my
vanity then suggest that I myself, individually, could fall
within the line of his terrors ? Certainly not, as regarded
any physical pretensions that I could plead ; for Fanny (as
a chance passenger from her own neighbourhood once told

15 me) counted in her train a hundred and ninety-nine pro-
fessed admirers, if not open aspirants to her favour ; and
probably not one of the whole brigade but excelled myself
in personal advantages. Ulysses even, with the unfair
advantage of his accursed bow, could hardly have under-

20 taken that amount of suitors. So the danger might have
seemed slight — only that woman is universally aristocratic;
it is amongst her nobilities of heart that she is so. Now,
the aristocratic distinctions in my favour might easily with
Miss Fanny have compensated my physical deficiencies.

25 Did I then make love to Fanny ? Why, yes ; about as

1" Wore the royal livery" : — The general impression was that the
royal livery belonged of right to the mail-coachmen as their profes-
sional dress. But that was an error. To the guard it did belong, I
believe, and was obviously essential as an official warrant, and as a
means of instant identification for his person, in the discharge of his
important public duties. But the coachman, and especially if his
place in the series did not connect him immediately with London
and the General Post-Office, obtained the scarlet coat only as an
honorary distinction after long (or, if not long, trying and special)
service.

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 19

much love as one could make whilst the mail was changing
horses — a process which, ten years later, did not occupy
above eighty seconds; but then, — viz., about Waterloo —
it occupied five times eighty. Now, four hundred seconds
offer a field quite ample enough for whispering into a young 5
woman's ear a great deal of truth, and (by way of paren-
thesis) some trifle of falsehood. Grandpapa did right, there-
fore, 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 10
meditated any evil whispers to Fanny ! She, it is my belief,
would have protected herself against any man's evil sug-
gestions. 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? 15
Blooming he was as Fanny herself.

" Say, all our praises why should lords "

Stop, that's not the line.

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

The coachman showed rosy blossoms on his face deeper 20
even than his granddaughter's — his being drawn from the
ale-cask, Fanny's from the fountains of the dawn. But, in
spite of his blooming face, some infirmities he had ; and
one particularly in which he too much resembled a croco-
dile. This lay in a monstrous inaptitude for turning round. 25
The crocodile, I presume, owes that inaptitude to the absurd
length of his back ; but in our grandpapa it arose rather from
the absurd breadth of his back, combined, possibly, with
some growing stiffness in his legs. Now, upon this croco-
dile infirmity of his I planted a human advantage for ten- 30
dering my homage to Miss Fanny. In defiance of all his
honourable vigilance, no sooner had he presented to us his

20 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY

mighty Jovian back (what a field for displaying to man-
kind his royal scarlet !), whilst inspecting professionally
the buckles, the straps, and the silvery turrets ' of his har-
ness, than I raised Miss Fanny's hand to my lips, and, by

5 the mixed tenderness and respectfulness of my manner,
caused her easily to understand how happy it would make
me to rank upon her list as No. 10 or 12 : in which case a
few casualties amongst her lovers (and, observe, they hanged
liberally in those days) might have promoted me speedily

10 to the top of the tree ; as, on the other hand, with how
much loyalty of submission I acquiesced by anticipation
in her award, supposing that she should plant me in the
very rearward of her favour, as No. 199 + 1. Most truly
I loved this beautiful and ingenuous girl; and, had it not

15 been for the Bath mail, timing all courtships by post-office
allowance, heaven only knows what might have come of it.
People talk of being over head and ears in love ; now, the
mail was the cause that I sank only over ears in love, —
which, you know, still left a trifle of brain to overlook the

20 whole conduct of the affair.

Ah, reader ! when I look back upon those days, it seems
to me that all things change — all things perish. "Perish
the roses and the palms of kings " : perish even the crowns
and trophies of Waterloo: thunder and lightning are not

25 the thunder and lightning which I remember. Roses are
degenerating. The Fannies of our island — though this I
say with reluctance — are not visibly improving; and the

1,1 Turrets": — As one who loves and venerates Chaucer for his
unrivalled merits of tenderness, of picturesque characterisation, and
of narrative skill, I noticed with great pleasure that the word torrettes
is used by him to designate the little devices through which the reins
are made to pass. This same word, in the same exact sense, I heard
uniformly used by many scores of illustrious mail-coachmen to whose
confidential friendship I had the honour of being admitted in my
younger days.

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 21

Bath road is notoriously superannuated. Crocodiles, you
will say, are stationary. Mr. Waterton tells me that the
crocodile does not change, — that a cayman, in fact, or an
alligator, is just as good for riding upon as he was in the
time of the Pharaohs. That may be ; but the reason is 5
that the crocodile does not live fast — he is a slow coach.
I believe it is generally understood among naturalists that
the crocodile is a blockhead. It is my own impression
that the Pharaohs were also blockheads. Now, as the
Pharaohs and the crocodile domineered over Egyptian 10
society, this accounts for a singular mistake that prevailed
through innumerable generations on the Nile. The croco-
dile made the ridiculous blunder of supposing man to be
meant chiefly for his own eating. Man, taking a different
view of the subject, naturally met that mistake by another: 15
he viewed the crocodile as a thing sometimes to worship,
but always to run away from. And this continued till
Mr. Waterton * changed the relations between the animals.
The mode of escaping from the reptile he showed to be
not by running away, but by leaping on its back booted 20
and spurred. The two animals had misunderstood each
other. The use of the crocodile has now been cleared
up — viz., to be ridden; and the final cause of man is that
he may improve the health of the crocodile by riding him

1 "Mr. Waterton" : — Had the reader lived through the last gener-
ation, he would not need to be told that, some thirty or thirty-five
years back, Mr. Waterton, a distinguished country gentleman of ancient
family in Northumberland, publicly mounted and rode in top-boots a
savage old crocodile, that was restive and very impertinent, but all to
no purpose. The crocodile jibbed and tried to kick, but vainly.
He was no more able to throw the squire than Sinbad was to throw
the old scoundrel who used his back without paying for it, until
he discovered a mode (slightly immoral, perhaps, though some think
not) of murdering the old fraudulent jockey, and so circuitously of
unhorsing him.

22 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

a-fox-hunting before breakfast. And it is pretty certain
that any crocodile who has been regularly hunted through
the season, and is master of the weight he carries, will take
a six-barred gate now as well as ever he would have done
5 in the infancy of the pyramids.

If, therefore, the crocodile does not change, all things else
undeniably do : even the shadow of the pyramids grows less.
And often the restoration in vision of Fanny and the Bath
road makes me too pathetically sensible of that truth. Out

io of the darkness, if I happen to call back the image of Fanny,
up rises suddenly from a gulf of forty years a rose in June ;
or, if I think for an instant of the rose in June, up rises
the heavenly face of Fanny. One after the other, like the
antiphonies in the choral service, rise Fanny and the rose in

15 June, then back again the rose in June and Fanny. Then
come both together, as in a chorus — roses and Fannies,
Fannies and roses, without end, thick as blossoms in para-
dise. Then comes a venerable crocodile, in a royal livery
of scarlet and gold, with sixteen capes ; and the crocodile

20 is driving four-in-hand from the box of the Bath mail. And
suddenly we upon the mail are pulled up by a mighty dial,
sculptured with the hours, that mingle with the heavens
and the heavenly host. Then all at once we are arrived at
Marlborough forest, amongst the lovely households x of the

25 roe-deer; the deer and their fawns retire into the dewy
thickets ; the thickets are rich with roses ; once again the
roses call up the sweet countenance of Fanny ; and she,

1 " Households " ; — Roe-deer do not congregate in herds like the
fallow or the red deer, but by separate families, parents and children ;
which feature of approximation to the sanctity of human hearths,
added to their comparatively miniature and graceful proportions, con-
ciliates to them an interest of peculiar tenderness, supposing even that
this beautiful creature is less characteristically impressed with the
grandeurs of savage and forest life.

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 23

being the granddaughter of a crocodile, awakens a dreadful
host of semi-legendary animals — griffins, dragons, basilisks,
sphinxes — till at length the whole vision of fighting images
crowds into one towering armorial shield, a vast emblazonry
of human charities and human loveliness that have perished, 5
but quartered heraldically with unutterable and demoniac
natures, whilst over all rises, as a surmounting crest, one
fair female hand, with the forefinger pointing, in sweet,
sorrowful admonition, upwards to heaven, where is sculp-
tured the eternal writing which proclaims the frailty of 10
earth and her children.

Going Down with Victory

But the grandest chapter of our experience within the
whole mail-coach service was on those occasions when we
went down from London with the news of victory. A
period of about ten years stretched from Trafalgar to 15
Waterloo ; the second and third years of which period
(1806 and 1807) were comparatively sterile; but the other
nine (from 1805 to 18 15 inclusively) furnished a long suc-
cession of victories, the least of which, in such a contest of
Titans, had an inappreciable value of position : partly for 20
its absolute interference with the plans of our enemy, but
still more from its keeping alive through central Europe
the sense of a deep-seated vulnerability in France. Even
to tease the coasts of our enemy, to mortify them by con-
tinual blockades, to insult them by capturing if it were but 25
a baubling schooner under the eyes of their arrogant armies,
repeated from time to time a sullen proclamation of power
lodged in one quarter to which the hopes of Christendom
turned in secret. How much more loudly must this procla-
mation have spoken in the audacity1 of having bearded the 30

Xu Audacity" : — Such the French accounted it; and it has struck
me that Soult would not have been so popular in London, at the period

24 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

elite of their troops, and having beaten them in pitched
battles ! Five years of life it was worth paying down for
the privilege of an outside place on a mail-coach, when
carrying down the first tidings of any such event. And it
5 is to be noted that, from our insular situation, and the mul-
titude of our frigates disposable for the rapid transmission
of intelligence, rarely did any unauthorised rumour steal
away a prelibation from the first aroma of the regular
despatches. The government news was generally the

10 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,1 and not in St. Martin's-le-Grand, was seated
the General Post-Office. In what exact strength we mus-

15 tered I do not remember; but, from the length of each sep-
arate attclagc, we filled the street, though a long one, and
though we were drawn up in double file. On any night the
spectacle was beautiful. The absolute perfection of all the
appointments about the carriages and the harness, their

20 strength, their brilliant cleanliness, their beautiful sim-
plicity— but, more than all, the royal magnificence of the
horses- — were what might first have fixed the attention.

of her present Majesty's coronation, or in Manchester, on occasion of
his visit to that town, if they had been aware of the insolence with which
he spoke of us in notes written at intervals from the field of Waterloo.
As though it had been mere felony in our army to look a French one
in the face, he said in more notes than one, dated from two to four P.M.
on the field of Waterloo, " Here are the English — we have them ; they
are caught en flagrant delit." Yet no man should have known us better ;
no man had drunk deeper from the cup of humiliation than Soult had
in 1S09, 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.
1 " At that time " : — I speak of the era previous to Waterloo.

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 25

Every carriage on every morning in the year was taken
down to an official inspector for examination : wheels,
axles, linchpins, pole, glasses, lamps, were all critically
probed and tested. Every part of every carriage had been
cleaned, every horse had been groomed, with as much rigour 5
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 dis-
play what a heart-shaking addition! — horses, men, car-
riages, all are dressed in laurels and flowers, oak-leaves and 10
ribbons. The guards, as being officially his Majesty's ser-
vants, and of the coachmen such as are within the privilege
of the post-office, wear the royal liveries of course ; and, as
it is summer (for all the land victories were naturally won
in summer), they wear, on this fine evening, these liveries 15
exposed to view, without any covering of upper coats.
Such a costume, and the elaborate arrangement of the
laurels in their hats, dilate their hearts, by giving to them
openly a personal connexion with the great news in which
already they have the general interest of patriotism. That 20
great national sentiment surmounts and quells all sense of
ordinary distinctions. Those passengers who happen to
be gentlemen are now hardly to be distinguished as such
except by dress ; for the usual reserve of their manner in
speaking to the attendants has on this night melted away. 25
One heart, one pride, one glory, connects every man by the
transcendent bond of his national blood. The spectators,
who are numerous beyond precedent, express their sym-
pathy with these fervent feelings by continual hurrahs.
Every moment are shouted aloud by the post-office ser- 30
vants, and summoned to draw up, the great ancestral names
of cities known to history through a thousand years —
Lincoln, Winchester, Portsmouth, Gloucester, Oxford, Bris-
tol, Manchester, York, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow,

26 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY

Perth, Stirling, Aberdeen — expressing the grandeur of the
empire by the antiquity of its towns, and the grandeur of
the mail establishment by the diffusive radiation of its sep-
arate missions. Every moment you hear the thunder of

5 lids locked down upon the mail-bags. That sound to each
individual mail is the signal for drawing off ; which process
is the finest part of the entire spectacle. Then come the
horses into play. Horses ! can these be horses that bound
off with the action and gestures of leopards ? What stir ! —

io what sea-like ferment! — what a thundering of wheels! —
what a trampling of hoofs ! — what a sounding of trumpets !
— what farewell cheers — what redoubling peals of brotherly
congratulation, connecting the name of the particular mail
— " Liverpool for ever ! " — with the name of the particular

15 victory — "Badajoz for ever!" or "Salamanca for ever!"
The half-slumbering consciousness that all night long, and
all the next day — perhaps for even a longer period — many
of these mails, like fire racing along a train of gunpowder,
will be kindling at every instant new successions of burn-

20 ing joy, has an obscure effect of multiplying the victory
itself, by multiplying to the imagination into infinity the
stages of its progressive diffusion. A fiery arrow seems to
be let loose, which from that moment is destined to travel,
without intermission, westwards for three hundred x miles

1" Three hundred" : — Of necessity, this scale of measurement, to
an American, if he happens to be a thoughtless man, must sound ludi-
crous. Accordingly, I remember a case in which an American writer
indulges himself in the luxury of a little fibbing, by ascribing to an
Englishman a pompous account of the Thames, constructed entirely
upon American ideas of grandeur, and concluding in something like
these terms: — "And, sir, arriving at Ixmdon, 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

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 27

— northwards for six hundred; and the sympathy of our
Lombard Street friends at parting is exalted a hundredfold
by a sort of visionary sympathy with the yet slumbering
sympathies which in so vast a succession we are going to
awake. • 5

Liberated from the embarrassments of the city, and
issuing into the broad uncrowded avenues of the northern
suburbs, we soon begin to enter upon our natural pace of
ten miles an hour. In the broad light of the summer even-
ing, the sun, perhaps, only just at the point of setting, we 10
are seen from every storey of every house. Heads of every
age crowd to the windows ; young and old understand the
language of our victorious symbols ; and rolling volleys of
sympathising cheers run along us, behind us, and before us.
The beggar, rearing himself against the wall, forgets his 15

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 conti-
nent, nor, consequently, could have thought of looking for the peculiar
grandeur of the Thames in the length of its course, or in the extent of
soil which it drains. Yet, if he had been so absurd, the American might
have recollected that a river, not to be compared with the Thames even
as to volume of water — viz., the Tiber — has contrived to make itself
heard of in this world for twenty-five centuries to an extent not reached
as yet by any river, however corpulent, of his own land. The glory of
the Thames is measured by the destiny of the population to which it
ministers, by the commerce which it supports, by the grandeur of the
empire in which, though far from the largest, it is the most influential
stream. Upon some such scale, and not by a transfer of Columbian
standards, is the course of our English mails to be valued. The
American may fancy the effect of his own valuations to our English
ears by supposing the case of a Siberian glorifying his country in these
terms : — " These wretches, sir, in France and England, cannot march
half a mile in any direction without finding a house where food can be
had and lodging ; whereas such is the noble desolation of our magnifi-
cent country that in many a direction for a thousand miles I will engage
that a dog shall not find shelter from a snow-storm, nor a wren find an
apology for breakfast."

28 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

lameness — real or assumed — thinks not of his whining
trade, but stands erect, with bold exulting smiles, as we
pass him. The victory has healed him, and says, Be thou
whole ! Women and children, from garrets alike and cellars,
5 through infinite London, look down or look up with loving
eyes upon our gay ribbons and our martial laurels ; some-
times kiss their hands ; sometimes hang out, as signals of
affection, pocket-handkerchiefs, aprons, dusters, anything
that, by catching the summer breezes, will express an aerial

10 jubilation. On the London side of Barnet, to which we
draw near within a few minutes after nine, observe that
private carriage which is approaching us. The weather
being so warm, the glasses are all down ; and one may read,
as on the stage of a theatre, everything that goes on within.

15 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 unpre-
meditated pantomime, explaining to us every syllable that
passes, in these ingenuous girls ! By the sudden start

20 and raising of the hands on first discovering our laurelled
equipage, by the sudden movement and appeal to the elder
lady from both of them, and by the heightened colour on
their animated countenances, we can almost hear them
saying, "See, see! Look at their laurels! Oh, mamma!

25 there has been a great battle in Spain ; and it has been a
great victory." In a moment we are on the point of pass-
ing them. We passengers — I on the box. and the two
on the roof behind me — raise our hats to the ladies; the
coachman makes his professional salute with the whip; the

30 guard even, though punctilious on the matter of his dignity
as an officer under the crown, touches his hat. The ladies
move to us, in return, with a winning graciousness of
gesture ; all smile on each side in a way that nobody could
misunderstand, and that nothing short of a grand national

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 29

sympathy could so instantaneously prompt. Will these
ladies say that we are nothing to them ? Oh no ; they will
not say that. They cannot deny- — they do not deny —
that for this night they are our sisters ; gentle or simple,
scholar or illiterate servant, for twelve hours to come, 5
we on the outside have the honour to be their brothers.
Those poor women, again, who stop to gaze upon us with
delight at the entrance of Barnet, and seem, by their air of
weariness, to be returning from labour — do you mean to
say that they are washerwomen and charwomen ? Oh, my 10
poor friend, you are quite mistaken. I assure you they
stand in a far higher rank; for this one night they feel
themselves by birthright to be daughters of England, and
answer to no humbler title.

Every joy, however, even rapturous joy — such is the sad 15
law of earth — may carry with it grief, or fear of grief, to
some. Three miles beyond Barnet, we see approaching us
another private carriage, nearly repeating the circumstances
of the former case. Here, also, the glasses are all down ;
here, also, is an elderly lady seated ; but the two daughters 20
are missing ; for the single young person sitting by the lady's
side seems to be an attendant — so I judge from her dress,
and her air of respectful reserve. The lady is in mourning ;
and her countenance expresses sorrow. At first she does not
look up ; so that I believe she is not aware of our approach, 25
until she hears the measured beating of our horses' hoofs.
Then she raises her eyes to settle them painfully on our
triumphal equipage. Our decorations explain the case to her
at once ; but she beholds them with apparent anxiety, or
even with terror. Some time before this, I, finding it diffi- 30
cult 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. Accordingly he tossed it

30 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

in, so folded that the huge capitals expressing some such
legend as glorious victory might catch the eye at once.
To see the paper, however, at all, interpreted as it was by
our ensigns of triumph, explained everything; and, if the
5 guard were right in thinking the lady to have received it
with a gesture of horror, it could not be doubtful that she
had suffered some deep personal affliction in connexion with
this Spanish war.

Here, now, was the case of one who, having formerly

10 suffered, might, erroneously perhaps, be distressing herself
with anticipations of another similar suffering. That same
night, and hardly three hours later, occurred the reverse
case. A poor woman, who too probably would find herself, in
a day or two, to have suffered the heaviest of afflictions by

15 the battle, blindly allowed herself to express an exultation
so unmeasured in the news and its details as gave to her the
appearance which amongst Celtic Highlanders is called fey.
This was at some little town where we changed horses an
hour or two after midnight. Some fair or wake had kept

20 the people up out of their beds, and had occasioned a partial
illumination of the stalls and booths, presenting an unusual
but very impressive effect. We saw many lights moving
about as we drew near ; and perhaps the most striking scene
on the whole route was our reception at this place. The

25 flashing of torches and the beautiful radiance of blue lights
(technically, Bengal lights) upon the heads of our horses ;
the fine effect of such a showery and ghostly illumination
falling upon our flowers and glittering laurels1; whilst all
around ourselves, that formed a centre of light, the darkness

30 gathered on the rear and flanks in massy blackness : these
optical splendours, together with the prodigious enthusiasm

1 " Glittering laurels" : — I must observe that the colour of green
suffers almost a spiritual change and exaltation under the effect of
llengal lights.

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 31

of the people, composed a picture at once scenical and affect-
ing, theatrical and holy. As we staid for three or four
minutes, I alighted ; and immediately from a dismantled
stall in the street, where no doubt she had been presiding
through the earlier part of the night, advanced eagerly a 5
middle-aged woman. The sight of my newspaper it was
that had drawn her attention upon myself. The victory
which we were carrying down to the provinces on this
occasion was the imperfect one of Talavera — imperfect for
its results, such was the virtual treachery of the Spanish 10
general, Cuesta, but not imperfect in its ever-memorable
heroism. I told her the main outline of the battle. The
agitation of her enthusiasm had been so conspicuous when
listening, and when first applying for information, that I
could not but ask her if she had not some relative in the 15
Peninsular army. Oh yes ; her only son was there. In
what regiment ? He was a trooper in the 23d Dragoons.
My heart sank within me as she made that answer. This
sublime regiment, which an Englishman should never men-
tion without raising his hat to their memory, had made the 20
most memorable and effective charge recorded in military
annals. They leaped their horses — over a tfench where
they could ; into it, and with the result of death or muti-
lation, when they could not. What proportion cleared the
trench is nowhere stated. Those who did closed up and 25
went down upon the enemy with such divinity of fervour
(I use the word divinity by design : the inspiration of God
must have prompted this movement for those whom even
then He was calling to His presence) that two results fol-
lowed. As regarded the enemy, this 23d Dragoons, not, I 30
believe, originally three hundred and fifty strong, paralysed
a French column six thousand strong, then ascended the
hill, and fixed the gaze of the whole French army. As
regarded themselves, the 23d were supposed at first to have

32 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

been barely not annihilated ; but eventually, I believe, about
one in four survived. And this, then, was the regiment —
a regiment already for some hours glorified and hallowed
to the ear of all London, as lying stretched, by a large
5 majority, upon one bloody aceldama — in which the young
trooper served whose mother was now talking in a spirit
of such joyous enthusiasm. Did I tell her the truth ? Had
I the heart to break up her dreams ? No. To-morrow, said
I to myself — to-morrow, or the next day, will publish the

10 worst. For one night more wherefore should she not sleep
in peace ? After to-morrow the chances are too many that
peace will forsake her pillow. This brief respite, then, let
her owe to my gift and my forbearance. But, if I told her
not of the bloody price that had been paid, not therefore

15 was I silent on the contributions from her son's regiment
to that day's service and glory. I showed her not the
funeral banners under which the noble regiment was sleep-
ing. I lifted not the overshadowing laurels from the bloody
trench in which horse and rider lay mangled together. But

20 I told her how these dear children of England, officers and
privates, had leaped their horses over all obstacles as gaily
as hunters to the morning's chase. I told her how they
rode their horses into the midst of death, — saying to
myself, but not saying to her, " and laid down their young

25 lives for thee, O mother England! as willingly — poured
out their noble blood as cheerfully — as ever, after a long
day's sport, when infants, they had rested their weary heads
upon their mother's knees, or had sunk to sleep in her arms."
Strange it is, yet true, that she seemed to have no fears for

30 her son's safety, even after this knowledge that the 23d
Dragoons had been memorably engaged ; but so much was
she enraptured by the knowledge that his regiment, and
therefore that he, had rendered conspicuous service in the
dreadful conflict — a service which had actually made them,

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 2>Z

within the last twelve hours, the foremost topic of conver-
sation in London — so absolutely was fear swallowed up in
joy — that, in the mere simplicity of her fervent nature, the
poor woman threw her arms round my neck, as she thought
of her son, and gave to me the kiss which secretly was meant 5
for him.

Section II — The Vision of Sudden Death

What is to be taken as the predominant opinion of man,
reflective and philosophic, upon sudden death ? It is
remarkable that, in different conditions of society, sudden
death has been variously regarded as the consummation 10
of an earthly career most fervently to be desired, or, again,
as that consummation which is with most horror to be
deprecated. Caesar the Dictator, at his last dinner-party
(ccena), on the very evening before his assassination, when
the minutes of his earthly career were numbered, being 15
asked what death, in his judgment, might be pronounced
the most eligible, replied "That which should be most
sudden." On the other hand, the divine Litany of our
English Church, when breathing forth supplications, as if
in some representative character, for the whole human race 20
prostrate before God, places such a death in the very van
of horrors: "From lightning and tempest; from plague,
pestilence, and famine ; from battle and murder, and from
sudden death — Good Lord, deliver us." Sudden death is
here made to crown the climax in a grand ascent of calam- 25
ities ; it is ranked among the last of curses ; and yet by the
noblest of Romans it was ranked as the first of blessings.
In that difference most readers will see little more than the
essential difference between Christianity and Paganism.
But this, on consideration, I doubt. The Christian Church 3°
may be right in its estimate of sudden death ; and it is a

34 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

natural feeling, though after all it may also be an infirm
one, to wish for a quiet dismissal from life, as that which
seems most reconcilable with meditation, with penitential
retrospects, and with the humilities of farewell prayer.
5 There does not, however, occur to me any direct scriptural
warrant for this earnest petition of the English Litany,
unless under a special construction of the word "sudden."
It seems a petition indulged rather and conceded to human
infirmity than exacted from human piety. It is not so much

10 a doctrine built upon the eternities of the Christian sys-
tem as a plausible opinion built upon special varieties of
physical temperament. Let that, however, be as it may,
two remarks suggest themselves as prudent restraints upon
a doctrine which else may wander, and has wandered, into

15 an uncharitable superstition. The first is this: that many
people are likely to exaggerate the horror of a sudden death
from the disposition to lay a false stress upon words or acts
simply because by an accident they have become final words
or acts. If a man dies, for instance, by some sudden death

zo when he happens to be intoxicated, such a death is falsely
regarded with peculiar horror ; as though the intoxication
were suddenly exalted into a blasphemy. But that is
unphilosophic. The man was, or he was not, habitually a
drunkard. If not, if his intoxication were a solitary acci-

25 dent, there can be no reason for allowing special emphasis
to this act simply because through misfortune it became
his final act. Nor, on the other hand, if it were no acci-
dent, but one of his Jiabitual transgressions, will it be the
more habitual or the more a transgression because some

30 sudden calamity, surprising him, has caused this habitual
transgression to be also a final one. Could the man have
had any reason even dimly to foresee his own sudden death,
there would have been a new feature in his act of intem-
perance— a feature of presumption and irreverence, as in

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 35

one that, having known himself drawing near to the pres-
ence of God, should have suited his demeanour to an
expectation so awful. But this is no part of the case
supposed. And the only new element in the man's act
is not any element of special' immorality, but simply of 5
special misfortune.

The other remark has reference to the meaning of the
word sudden. Very possibly Caesar and the Christian
Church do not differ in the way supposed, — that is, do
not differ by any difference of doctrine as between Pagan 10
and Christian views of the moral temper appropriate to
death ; but perhaps they are contemplating different cases.
Both contemplate a violent death, a Bia6avaTo<s — death
that is /3«xios, or, in other words, death that is brought
about, not by internal and spontaneous change, but by 15
active force having its origin from without. In this
meaning the two authorities agree. Thus far they are in
harmony. But the difference is that the Roman by the
word " sudden " means unlingering, whereas the Christian
Litany by "sudden death" means a death without warning, 20
consequently without any available summons to religious
preparation. The poor mutineer who kneels down to gather
into his heart the bullets from twelve firelocks of his pity-
ing comrades dies by a most sudden death in Caesar's sense ;
one shock, one mighty spasm, one (possibly not one) groan, 25
and all is over. But, in the sense of the Litany, the muti-
neer's death is far from sudden : his offence originally, his
imprisonment, his trial, the interval between his sentence
and its execution, having all furnished him with separate
warnings of his fate — having all summoned him to meet 30
it with solemn preparation.

Here at once, in this sharp verbal distinction, we
comprehend the faithful earnestness with which a holy
Christian Church pleads on behalf of her poor departing

36 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY

children that God would vouchsafe to them the last great
privilege and distinction possible on a death-bed, viz.,
the opportunity of untroubled preparation for facing this
mighty trial. Sudden death, as a mere variety in the modes
5 of dying where death in some shape is inevitable, proposes
a question of choice which, equally in the Roman and the
Christian sense, will be variously answered according to
each man's variety of temperament. Meantime, one aspect
of sudden death there is, one modification, upon which no

io doubt can arise, that of all martyrdoms it is the most agi-
tating— viz., where it surprises a man under circumstances
which offer (or which seem to offer) some hurrying, flying,
inappreciably minute chance of evading it. Sudden as the
danger which it affronts must be any effort by which such

15 an evasion can be accomplished. Even that, even the sick-
ening necessity for hurrying in extremity where all hurry
seems destined to be vain, — even that anguish is liable to
a hideous exasperation in one particular case : viz., where
the appeal is made not exclusively to the instinct of self-

20 preservation, but to the conscience, on behalf of some other
life besides your own, accidentally thrown upon your pro-
tection. To fail, to collapse in a service merely your own,
might seem comparatively venial ; though, in fact, it is far
from venial. But to fail in a case where Providence has

25 suddenly thrown into your hands the final interests of
another, — a fellow-creature shuddering between the gates
of life and death : this, to a man of apprehensive conscience,
would mingle the misery of an atrocious criminality with
the misery of a bloody calamity. You are called upon, by

30 the case supposed, possibly to die, but to die at the very
moment when, by any even partial failure or effeminate
collapse of your energies, you will be self-denounced as a
murderer. You had but the twinkling of an eye for your
effort, and that effort might have been unavailing; but to

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH

37

have risen to the level of such an effort would have rescued
you, though not from dying, yet from dying as a traitor to
your final and farewell duty.

The situation here contemplated exposes a dreadful ulcer,
lurking far down in the depths of human nature. It is not 5
that men generally are summoned to face such awful trials.
But potentially, and in shadowy outline, such a trial is mov-
ing subterraneously in perhaps all men's natures. Upon the
secret mirror of our dreams such a trial is darkly projected,
perhaps, to every one of us. That dream, so familiar to 10
childhood, of meeting a lion, and, through languishing pros-
tration in hope and the energies of hope, that constant sequel
of lying down before the lion publishes the secret frailty of
human nature — reveals its deep-seated falsehood to itself —
records its abysmal treachery. Perhaps not one of us escapes 15
that dream ; perhaps, as by some sorrowful doom of man,
that dream repeats for every one of us, through every gen-
eration, 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 20
tempting him into captivity to a luxury of ruin ; once again,
as in aboriginal Paradise, the man falls by his own choice ;
again, by infinite iteration, the ancient earth groans to
Heaven, through her secret caves, over the weakness of her
child. " Nature, from her seat, sighing through all her 25
works," again " gives signs of woe that all is lost " ; and again
the counter-sigh is repeated to the sorrowing heavens for the
endless rebellion against God. It is not without probability
that in the world of dreams every one of us ratifies for him-
self the original transgression. In dreams, perhaps under 30
some secret conflict of the midnight sleeper, lighted up to the
consciousness at the time, but darkened to the memory as
soon as all is finished, each several child of our mysterious
race completes for himself the treason of the aboriginal fall.

38 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

The incident, so memorable in itself by its features of
horror, and so scenical by its grouping for the eye, which
furnished the text for this reverie upon Sudden Death
occurred to myself in the dead of night, as a solitary spec-
5 tator, when seated on the box of the Manchester and Glas-
gow mail, in the second or third summer after Waterloo. I
find it necessary to relate the circumstances, because they
are such as could not have occurred unless under a singular
combination of accidents. In those days, the oblique and
io lateral communications with many rural post-offices were so
arranged, either through necessity or through defect of sys-
tem, as to make it requisite for the main north-western mail
(i.e., the down mail) on reaching Manchester to halt for a
number of hours; how many, I do not remember; six or
15 seven, I think; but the result was that, in the ordinary
course, the mail recommenced its journey northwards about
midnight. Wearied with the long detention at a gloomy
hotel, I walked out about eleven o'clock at night for the
sake of fresh air; meaning to fall in with the mail and
20 resume my seat at the post-office. The night, however,
being yet dark, as the moon had scarcely risen, and the
streets being at that hour empty, so as to offer no oppor-
tunities for asking the road, I lost my way, and did not
reach the post-office until it was considerably past mid-
25 night; but, to my great relief (as it was important for me
to be in Westmoreland by the morning), I saw in the huge
saucer eyes of the mail, blazing through the gloom, an evi-
dence that my chance was not yet lost. Past the time it
was; but, by some rare accident, the mail was not even
30 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 nautical
discoverer, who leaves a bit of bunting on the shore of
his discovery, by way of warning off the ground the whole

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 39

human race, and notifying to the Christian and the heathen
worlds, with his best compliments, that he has hoisted his
pocket-handkerchief once and for ever upon that virgin
soil : thenceforward claiming the jus dominii to the top of
the atmosphere above it, and also the right of driving 5
shafts to the centre of the earth below it ; so that all
people found after this warning either aloft in upper cham-
bers of the atmosphere, or groping in subterraneous shafts,
or squatting audaciously on the surface of the soil, will be
treated as trespassers — kicked, that is to say, or decap- 10
itated, as circumstances may suggest, by their very faithful
servant, the owner of the said pocket-handkerchief. In the
present case, it is probable that my cloak might not have
been respected, and the jus gentium might have been cruelly
violated in my person — for, in the dark, people commit 15
deeds of darkness, gas being a great ally of morality; but
it so happened that on this night there was no other out-
side passenger ; and thus the crime, which else was but
too probable, missed fire for want of a criminal.

Having mounted the box, I took a small quantity of 20
laudanum, having already travelled two hundred and fifty
miles — viz., from a point seventy miles beyond London. In
the taking of laudanum there was nothing extraordinary.
But by accident it drew upon me the special attention of my
assessor on the box, the coachman. And in that also there 25
was nothing extraordinary. But by accident, and with great
delight, it drew my own attention to the fact that this
coachman was a monster in point of bulk, and that he had
but one eye. In fact, he had been foretold by Virgil as

" Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademption." 30

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 ?

40 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

Had he been one of the Calendars in the "Arabian Nights,"
and had paid down his eye as the price of his criminal curi-
osity, what right had / to exult in his misfortune ? I did
not exult ; I delighted in no man's punishment, though it
5 were even merited. But these personal distinctions (Xos. i,
2> 3> 4> 5) identified in an instant an old friend of mine
whom I had known in the south for some years as the most
masterly of mail-coachmen. He was the man in all Europe
that could (if any could) have driven six-in-hand full gallop

10 over Al Sirat — that dreadful bridge of Mahomet, with no
side battlements, and of extra room not enough for a razor's
edge — leading right across the bottomless gulf. Under
this eminent man, whom in Greek I cognominated Cyclops
Diphrelates (Cyclops the Charioteer), I, and others known

15 to me, studied the diphrelatic art. Excuse, reader, a word
too elegant to be pedantic. As a pupil, though I paid extra
fees, it is to be lamented that I did not stand high in his
esteem. It showed his dogged honesty (though, observe,
not his discernment) that he could not see my merits. Let

20 us excuse his absurdity in this particular by remembering
his want of an eye. Doubtless that made him blind to my
merits. In the art of conversation, however, he admitted
that I had the whip-hand of him. On the present occasion
great joy was at our meeting. But what was Cyclops doing

25 here ? Had the medical men recommended northern air,
or how ? I collected, from such explanations as he volun-
teered, that he had an interest at stake in some suit-at-law
now pending at Lancaster ; so that probably he had got
himself transferred to this station for the purpose of con-

30 necting with his professional pursuits an instant readiness
for the calls of his lawsuit.

Meantime, what are we stopping for ? Surely we have
now waited long enough. Oh, this procrastinating mail, and
this procrastinating post-office ! Can't they take a lesson

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 41

upon that subject from me ? Some people have called me
procrastinating. Yet you are witness, reader, that I was
here kept waiting for the post-office. Will the post-office lay
its hand on its heart, in its moments of sobriety, and assert
that ever it waited for me? What are they about? The 5
guard tells me that there is a large extra accumulation of
foreign mails this night, owing to irregularities caused by
war, by wind, by weather, in the packet service, which as
yet does not benefit at all by steam. For an extra hour, it
seems, the post-office has been engaged in threshing out the 10
pure wheaten correspondence of Glasgow, and winnowing
it from the chaff of all baser intermediate towns. But at
last all is finished. Sound your horn, guard ! Manchester,
good-bye ! we've lost an hour by your criminal conduct at
the post-office: which, however, though I do not mean to 15
part with a serviceable ground of complaint, and one which
really is such for the horses, to me secretly is an advantage,
since it compels us to look sharply for this lost hour
amongst the next eight or nine, and to recover it (if we
can) at the rate of one mile extra per hour. Off we are at 20
last, and at eleven miles an hour ; and for the moment I
detect no changes in the energy or in the skill of Cyclops.

From Manchester to Kendal, which virtually (though not
in law) is the capital of Westmoreland, there were at this
time seven stages of eleven miles each. The first five of 25
these, counting from Manchester, terminate in Lancaster ;
which is therefore fifty-five miles north of Manchester, and
the same distance exactly from Liverpool. The first three
stages terminate in Preston (called, by way of distinction
from other towns of that name, Proud Preston ) ; at which 30
place it is that the separate roads from Liverpool and from
Manchester to the north become confluent.1 Within these

1" Confluent" : — Suppose a capital Y (the Pythagorean letter):
Lancaster is at the foot of this letter; Liverpool at the top of the

42 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

first three stages lay the foundation, the progress, and termi-
nation of our night's adventure. During the first stage, I
found out that Cyclops was mortal : he was liable to the
shocking affection of sleep — a thing which previously I had
5 never suspected. If a man indulges in the vicious habit of
sleeping, all the skill in aurigation of Apollo himself, with
the horses of Aurora to execute his notions, avails him noth-
ing. " Oh, Cyclops ! " I exclaimed, " thou art mortal. My
friend, thou snorest." Through the first eleven miles, how-

10 ever, this infirmity — which I grieve to say that he shared
with the whole Pagan Pantheon — betrayed itself only by
brief snatches. On waking up, he made an apology for
himself which, instead of mending matters, laid open a
gloomy vista of coming disasters. The summer assizes, he

15 reminded me, were now going on at Lancaster: in conse-
quence 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

20 critical moment, was drinking with the other witnesses
under the pastoral surveillance of the attorneys. During
the night, or that part of it which at sea would form the
middle watch, he was driving. This explanation certainly
accounted for his drowsiness, but in a way which made it

25 much more alarming ; since now, after several days' resist-
ance to this infirmity, at length he was steadily giving way.
Throughout the second stage he grew more and more
drowsy. In the second mile of the third stage he sur-
rendered himself finally and without a struggle to his

right branch ; Manchester at the top of the left ; Proud Preston at
the centre, where the two branches unite. It is thirty-three miles
along either of the two branches ; it is twenty-two miles along the
stem, — viz., from Preston in the middle to Lancaster at the root.
There's a lesson in geography for the reader 1

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 43

perilous temptation. All his past resistance had but deepened
the weight of this final oppression. Seven atmospheres of
sleep rested upon him ; and, to consummate the case, our
worthy guard, after singing "Love amongst the Roses"
for perhaps thirty times, without invitation and without 5
applause, had in revenge moodily resigned himself to
slumber — not so deep, doubtless, as the coachman's, but
deep enough for mischief. And thus at last, about ten
miles from Preston, it came about that I found myself left
in charge of his Majesty's London and Glasgow mail, then 10
running at the least twelve miles an hour.

What made this negligence less criminal than else it must
have been thought was the condition of the roads at night
during the assizes. At that time, all the law business of
populous Liverpool, and also of populous Manchester, with 15
its vast cincture of populous rural districts, was called up
by ancient usage to the tribunal of Lilliputian Lancaster.
To break up this old traditional usage required, 1, a
conflict with powerful established interests, 2, a large sys-
tem of new arrangements, and 3, a new parliamentary 20
statute. But as yet this change was merely in contem-
plation. As things were at present, twice in the year 1 so
vast a body of business rolled northwards from the south-
ern quarter of the county that for a fortnight at least it
occupied the severe exertions of two judges in its despatch. 25
The consequence of this was that every horse available for
such a service, along the whole line of road, was exhausted
in carrying down the multitudes of people who were parties
to the different suits. By sunset, therefore, it usually hap-
pened that, through utter exhaustion amongst men and 3°
horses, the road sank into profound silence. Except the

ll' 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.

44 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

exhaustion in the vast adjacent county of York from a
contested election, no such silence succeeding to no such
fiery uproar was ever witnessed in England.

On this occasion the usual silence and solitude prevailed

5 along the road. Not a hoof nor a wheel was to be heard.
And, to strengthen this false luxurious confidence in the
noiseless roads, it happened also that the night was one of
peculiar solemnity and peace. For my own part, though
slightly alive to the possibilities of peril, I had so far

10 yielded to the influence of the mighty calm as to sink
into a profound reverie. The month was August ; in the
middle of which lay my own birthday — a festival to every
thoughtful man suggesting solemn and often sigh-born1
thoughts. The county was my own native county —

15 upon which, in its southern section, more than upon any
equal area known to man past or present, had descended
the original curse of labour in its heaviest form, not master-
ing the bodies only of men, as of slaves, or criminals in
mines, but working through the fiery will. Upon no equal

20 space of earth was, or ever had been, the same energy of
human power put forth daily. At this particular season
also of the assizes, that dreadful hurricane of flight and
pursuit, as it might have seemed to a stranger, which swept
to and from Lancaster all day long, hunting the county

25 up and down, and regularly subsiding back into silence
about sunset, could not fail (when united with this perma-
nent distinction of Lancashire as the very metropolis and
citadel of labour) to point the thoughts pathetically upon
that counter-vision of rest, of saintly repose from strife and

3° sorrow, towards which, as to their secret haven, the pro-
founder aspirations of man's heart are in solitude continually

1" Sigh-born" : — I owe the suggestion of this word to an obscure
remembrance of a beautiful phrase in " Giraldus Cambrensis " — viz.,
suspiriosic cogitationes.

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 45

travelling. Obliquely upon our left we were nearing the
sea ; which also must, under the present circumstances, be
repeating the general state of halcyon repose. The sea,
the atmosphere, the light, bore each an orchestral part in
this universal lull. Moonlight and the first timid trem- 5
blings of the dawn were by this time blending ; and the
blendings were brought into a still more exquisite state of
unity by a slight silvery mist, motionless and dreamy, that
covered the woods and fields, but with a veil of equable
transparency. Except the feet of our own horses, — which, 10
running on a sandy margin of the road, made but little
disturbance, — there was no sound abroad. In the clouds
and on the earth prevailed the same majestic peace ; and,
in spite of all that the villain of a schoolmaster has done for
the ruin of our sublimer thoughts, which are the thoughts 15
of our infancy, we still believe in no such nonsense as a
limited atmosphere. Whatever we may swear with our false
feigning lips, in our faithful hearts we still believe, and must
for ever believe, in fields of air traversing the total gulf
between earth and the central heavens. Still, in the con- 20
fidence of children that tread without fear every chamber
in their father's house, and to whom no door is closed, we,
in that Sabbatic vision which sometimes is revealed for
an hour upon nights like this, ascend with easy steps from
the sorrow-stricken fields of earth upwards to the sandals 25
of God.

Suddenly, from thoughts like these I was awakened to a
sullen sound, as of some motion on the distant road. It
stole upon the air for a moment ; I listened in awe ; but
then it died away. Once roused, however, I could not but 3°
observe with alarm the quickened motion of our horses.
Ten years' experience had made my eye learned in the
valuing of motion ; and I saw that we were now running
thirteen miles an hour. I pretend to no presence of mind.

46 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

On the contrary, my fear is that I am miserably and shame-
fully deficient in that quality as regards action. The palsy
of doubt and distraction hangs like some guilty weight of
dark unfathomed remembrances upon my energies when
5 the signal is flying for action. But, on the other hand, this
accursed gift I have, as regards thought, that in the first
step towards the possibility of a misfortune I see its total
evolution ; in the radix of the series I see too certainly
and too instantly its entire expansion ; in the first syllable

10 of the dreadful sentence I read already the last. It was
not that I feared for ourselves. Us our bulk and impetus
charmed against peril in any collision. And I had ridden
through too many hundreds of perils that were frightful to
approach, that were matter of laughter to look back upon,

15 the first face of which was horror, the parting face a jest —
for any anxiety to rest upon our interests. The mail was
not built, I felt assured, nor bespoke, that could betray ?nc
who trusted to its protection. But any carriage that we
could meet would be frail and light in comparison of our-

20 selves. And I remarked this ominous accident of our
situation, — we were on the wrong side of the road. But
then, it may be said, the other party, if other there was,
might also be on the wrong side ; and two wrongs might
make a right. That was not likely. The same motive which

25 had drawn us to the right-hand side of the road — viz., the
luxury of the soft beaten sand as contrasted with the paved
centre — would prove attractive to others. The two adverse
carriages would therefore, to a certainty, be travelling on
the same side ; and from this side, as not being ours in

30 law, the crossing over to the other would, of course, be
looked for from us.1 Our lamps, still lighted, would give

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, and therefore before the mail as one of them. But this

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 47

the impression of vigilance on our part. And every crea-
ture that met us would rely upon us for quartering.1 All
this, and if the separate links of the anticipation had been
a thousand times more, I saw, not discursively, or by effort,
or by succession, but by one flash of horrid simultaneous 5
intuition.

Under this steady though rapid anticipation of the evil
which might be gathering ahead, ah ! what a sullen mystery
of fear, what a sigh of woe, was that which stole upon the
air, as again the far-off sound of a wheel was heard ! A 10
whisper it was — a whisper from, perhaps, four miles off —
secretly announcing a ruin that, being foreseen, was not the
less inevitable ; that, being known, was not therefore healed.
What could be done — who was it that could do it — to check
the storm-flight of these maniacal horses? Could I not 15
seize the reins from the grasp of the slumbering coachman ?
You, reader, think that it would have been in your power to
do so. And I quarrel not with your estimate of yourself.
But, from the way in which the coachman's hand was viced
between his upper and lower thigh, this was impossible. 20
Easy was it ? See, then, that bronze equestrian statue. The
cruel rider has kept the bit in his horse's mouth for two cen-
turies. Unbridle him for a minute, if you please, and wash
his mouth with water. Easy was it ? Unhorse me, then,
that imperial rider; knock me those marble feet from those 25
marble stirrups of Charlemagne.

The sounds ahead strengthened, and were now too clearly
the sounds of wheels. Who and what could it be ? Was it
industry in a taxed cart ? Was it youthful gaiety in a gig ?

only increased the danger, as being a regulation very imperfectly made
known, very unequally enforced, and therefore often embarrassing the
movements on both sides.

1 " Quartering'1'' : — This is the technical word, and, I presume, derived
from the French cartayer, to evade a rut or any obstacle.

48 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

Was it sorrow that loitered, or joy that raced ? For as yet
the snatches of sound were too intermitting, from distance,
to decipher the character of the motion. Whoever were the
travellers, something must be done to warn them. Upon
5 the other party rests the active responsibility, but upon us
— and, woe is me! that us was reduced to my frail opium-
shattered self — rests the responsibility of warning. Yet,
how should this be accomplished ? Might I not sound the
guard's horn ? Already, on the first thought, I was making

10 my way over the roof of the guard's seat. But this, from
the accident which I have mentioned, of the foreign mails
being piled upon the roof, was a difficult and even danger-
ous attempt to one cramped by nearly three hundred miles
of outside travelling. And, fortunately, before I had lost

15 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 catas-
trophe sealed. All was apparently finished. The court was
sitting ; the case was heard ; the judge had finished ; and

20 only the verdict was yet in arrear.

Before us lay an avenue straight as an arrow, six hundred
yards, perhaps, in length ; and the umbrageous trees, which
rose in a regular line from either side, meeting high over-
head, gave to it the character of a cathedral aisle. These

25 trees lent a deeper solemnity to the early light ; but there
was still light enough to perceive, at the further end of this
Gothic aisle, a frail reedy gig, in which were seated a young
man, and by his side a young lady. Ah, young sir ! what
are you about ? If it is requisite that you should whisper

30 your communications to this young lady — though really I
see nobody, at an hour and on a road so solitary, likely to
overhear you — is it therefore requisite that you should
carry your lips forward to hers ? The little carriage is
creeping on at one mile an hour ; and the parties within it,

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 49

being thus tenderly engaged, are naturally bending down
their heads. Between them and eternity, to all human
calculation, there is but a minute and a half. Oh heavens !
what is it that I shall do ? Speaking or acting, what help
can I offer ? Strange it is, and to a mere auditor of the 5
tale might seem laughable, that I should need a suggestion
from the "Iliad" to prompt the sole resource that remained.
Yet so it was. Suddenly I remembered the shout of Achilles,
and its effect. But could I pretend to shout like the son of
Peleus, aided by Pallas ? No : but then I needed not the 10
shout that should alarm all Asia militant ; such a shout
would suffice as might carry terror into the hearts of two
thoughtless young people and one gig-horse. I shouted —
and the young man heard me not. A second time I shouted
— and now he heard me, for now he raised his head. 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 stranger is a brave man, and if indeed
he loves the young girl at his side — or, loving her not, if 20
he feels the obligation, pressing upon every man worthy to
be called a man, of doing his utmost for a woman confided
to his protection — he will at least make some effort to save
her. If that fails, he will not perish the more, or by a death
more cruel, for having made it ; and he will die as a brave 25
man should, with his face to the danger, and with his arm
about the woman that he sought in vain to save. But, if
he makes no effort, — shrinking without a struggle from his
duty, — he himself will not the less certainly perish for this
baseness of poltroonery. He will die no less : and why not ? 30
Wherefore should we grieve that there is one craven less in
the world ? No -'let him perish, without a pitying thought
of ours wasted upon him; and, in that case, all our grief
will be reserved for the fate of the helpless girl who now,

50 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE V

upon the least shadow of failure in him, must by the fiercest
of translations — must without time for a prayer — must
within seventy seconds — stand before the judgment-seat
of God.
5 But craven he was not : sudden had been the call upon
him, and sudden was his answer to the call. He saw, he
heard, he comprehended, the ruin that was coming down :
already its gloomy shadow darkened above him ; and already
he was measuring his strength to deal with it. Ah ! what a

10 vulgar thing does courage seem when we see nations buying
it and selling it for a shilling a-day : ah ! what a sublime
thing does courage seem when some fearful summons on
the great deeps of life carries a man, as if running before a
hurricane, up to the giddy crest of some tumultuous crisis

15 from which lie two courses, and a voice says to him audibly,
"One way lies hope; take the other, and mourn for ever!"
How grand a triumph if, even then, amidst the raving of all
around him, and the frenzy of the danger, the man is able to
confront his situation — is able to retire for a moment into

20 solitude with God, and to seek his counsel from Him !

For seven seconds, it might be, of his seventy, the stranger
settled his countenance steadfastly upon us, as if to search
and value every element in the conflict before him. For
five seconds more of his seventy he sat immovably, like one

25 that mused on some great purpose. For five more, perhaps,
he sat with eyes upraised, like one that prayed in sorrow,
under some extremity of doubt, for light that should guide
him to the better choice. Then suddenly he rose ; stood
upright ; and, by a powerful strain upon the reins, raising

30 his horse's fore-feet from the ground, he slewed him round
on the pivot of his hind-legs, so as to plant the little equi-
page in a position nearly at right angles to ours. Thus far
his condition was not improved ; except as a first step had
been taken towards the possibility of a second. If no more

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 51

were done, nothing was done ; for the little carriage still
occupied the very centre of our path, though in an altered
direction. Yet even now it may not be too late : fifteen
of the seventy seconds may still be unexhausted ; and one
almighty bound may avail to , clear the ground. Hurry, 5
then, hurry! for the flying moments • — they hurry. Oh,
hurry, hurry, my brave young man ! for the cruel hoofs of
our horses — they also hurry ! Fast are the flying moments,
faster are the hoofs of our horses. But fear not for him,
if human energy can suffice; faithful was he that drove to 10
his terrific duty ; faithful was the horse to his command.
One blow, one impulse given with voice and hand, by the
stranger, one rush from the horse, one bound as if in the
act of rising to a fence, landed the docile creature's fore-
feet upon the crown or arching centre of the road. The 15
larger half of the little equipage had then cleared our over-
towering shadow: that was evident even to my own agitated
sight. But it mattered little that one wreck should float off
in safety if upon the wreck that perished were embarked
the human freightage. The rear part of the carriage — 20
was that certainly beyond the line of absolute ruin ? What
power could answer the question ? Glance of eye, thought
of man, wing of angel, which of these had speed enough to
sweep between the question and the answer, and divide the
one from the other ? Light does not tread upon the steps 25
of light more indivisibly than did our all-conquering arrival
upon the escaping efforts of the gig. That must the young
man have felt too plainly. His back was now turned to
us ; not by sight could he any longer communicate with the
peril ; but, by the dreadful rattle of our harness, too truly 30
had his ear been instructed that all was finished as regarded
any effort of his. Already in resignation he had rested
from his struggle ; and perhaps in his heart he was whisper-
ing, "Father, which art in heaven, do Thou finish above

52 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

what I on earth have attempted." Faster than ever mill-
race we ran past them in our inexorable flight. Oh, raving
of hurricanes that must have sounded in their young ears
at the moment of our transit ! Even in that moment the
S thunder of collision spoke aloud. Either with the swingle-
bar, or with the haunch of our near leader, we had struck
the off-wheel of the little gig ; which stood rather obliquely,
and not quite so far advanced as to be accurately parallel
with the near-wheel. The blow, from the fury of our pas-

io sage, resounded terrifically. I rose in horror, to gaze upon
the ruins we might have caused. From my elevated station
I looked down, and looked back upon the scene ; which in
a moment told its own tale, and wrote all its records on
my heart for ever.

15 Here was the map of the passion that now had finished.
The horse was planted immovably, with his fore-feet upon
the paved crest of the central road. He of the whole party
might be supposed untouched by the passion of death. The
little cany carriage — partly, perhaps, from the violent tor-

20 sion of the wheels in its recent movement, partly from the
thundering blow we had given to it — as if it sympathised
with human horror, was all alive with tremblings and shiver-
ings. The young man trembled not, nor shivered. He sat
like a rock. But his was the steadiness of agitation frozen

25 into rest by horror. As yet he dared not to look round ; for
he knew that, if anything remained to do, by him it could
no longer be done. And as yet he knew not for certain if

their safety were accomplished. But the lady

But the lady ! Oh, heavens! will that spectacle ever

30 depart from my dreams, as she rose and sank upon her seat,
sank and rose, threw up her arms wildly to heaven, clutched
at some visionary object in the air, fainting, praying, raving,
despairing ? Figure to yourself, reader, the elements of the
case ; suffer me to recall before your mind the circumstances

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 53

of that unparalleled situation. From the silence and deep
peace of this saintly summer night — from the pathetic
blending of this sweet moonlight, dawnlight, dreamlight —
from the manly tenderness of this flattering, whispering,
murmuring love — suddenly as1 from the woods and fields 5
— suddenly as from the chambers of the air opening in
revelation — suddenly as from the ground yawning at her
feet, leaped upon her, with the flashing of cataracts, Death
the crowned phantom, with all the equipage of his terrors,
and the tiger roar of his voice. 10

The moments were numbered ; the strife was finished ;
the vision was closed. In the twinkling of an eye, our
flying horses had carried us to the termination of the
umbrageous aisle ; at the right angles we wheeled into our
former direction; the turn of the road carried the scene 15
out of my eyes in an instant, and swept it into my dreams
for ever.

Section III — Dream-Fugue:

FOUNDED ON THE PRECEDING THEME OF SUDDEN DEATH

" Whence the sound
Of instruments, that made melodious chime,
Was heard, of harp and organ ; and who moved 20

Their stops and chords was seen ; his volant touch
Instinct through all proportions, low and high,
Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue."

Par. Lost, Bk. XI.

Tumultuosissimatnente

Passion of sudden death ! that once in youth I read and
interpreted by the shadows of thy averted signs l ! — rapture 25

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.

54 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

of panic taking the shape (which amongst tombs in churches
I have seen) of woman bursting her sepulchral bonds — of
woman's Ionic form bending forward from the ruins of her
grave with arching foot, with eyes upraised, with clasped

5 adoring hands — waiting, watching, trembling, praying for
the trumpet's call to rise from dust for ever I Ah, vision
too fearful of shuddering humanity on the brink of almighty
abysses ! — vision that didst start back, that didst reel away,
like a shrivelling scroll from before the wrath of fire racing

10 on the wings of the wind ! Epilepsy so brief of horror,
wherefore is it that thou canst not die ? Passing so sud-
denly into darkness, wherefore is it that still thou shed-
dest thy sad funeral blights upon the gorgeous mosaics of
dreams ? Fragment of music too passionate, heard once,

15 and heard no more, what aileth thee, that thy deep rolling
chords come up at intervals through all the worlds of sleep,
and after forty years have lost no element of horror ?

Lo, it is summer — almighty summer! The everlasting
gates of life and summer are thrown open wide ; and on the

20 ocean, tranquil and verdant as a savannah, the unknown
lady from the dreadful vision and I myself are floating —
she upon a fairy pinnace, and I upon an English three-
decker. Both of us are wooing gales of festal happiness
within the domain of our common country, within that

25 ancient watery park, within the pathless chase of ocean,
where England takes her pleasure as a huntress through
winter and summer, from the rising to the setting sun.
Ah, what a wilderness of lloral beauty was hidden, or was
suddenly revealed, upon the tropic islands through which

30 the pinnace moved ! And upon her deck what a bevy of
human flowers : young women how lovely, young men how

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 55

noble, that were dancing together, and slowly drifting
towards us amidst music and incense, amidst blossoms
from forests and gorgeous corymbi from vintages, amidst
natural carolling, and the echoes of sweet girlish laughter.
Slowly the pinnace nears us, gaily she hails us, and silently 5
she disappears beneath the shadow of our mighty bows.
But then, as at some signal from heaven, the music, and
the carols, and the sweet echoing of girlish laughter — all
are hushed. What evil has smitten the pinnace, meeting
or overtaking her ? Did ruin to our friends couch within 10
our own dreadful shadow ? Was our shadow the shadow
of death ? I looked over the bow for an answer, and,
behold ! the pinnace was dismantled ; the revel and the
revellers were found no more ; the glory of the vintage was
dust; and the forests with their beauty were left without a 15
witness upon the seas. "But where," and I turned to our
crew — "where are the lovely women that danced beneath
the awning of flowers and clustering corymbi ? Whither
have fled the noble young men that danced with them ? "
Answer there was none. But suddenly the man at the 20
mast-head, whose countenance darkened with alarm, cried
out, " Sail on the weather beam ! Down she comes upon
us : in seventy seconds she also will founder."

II

I looked to the weather side, and the summer had
departed. The sea was rocking, and shaken with gather- 25
ing wrath. Upon its surface sat mighty mists, which
grouped themselves into arches and long cathedral aisles.
Down one of these, with the fiery pace of a quarrel from a
cross-bow, ran a frigate right athwart our course. " Are
they mad?" some voice exclaimed from our deck. "Do 30
they woo their ruin ? " But in a moment, as she was close

56 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY

upon us, some impulse of a heady current or local vortex
gave a wheeling bias to her course, and off she forged with-
out a shock. As she ran past us, high aloft amongst the
shrouds stood the lady of the pinnace. The deeps opened

5 ahead in malice to receive her, towering surges of foam
ran after her, the billows were fierce to catch her. But
far away she was borne into desert spaces of the sea:
whilst still by sight I followed her, as she ran before the
howling gale, chased by angry sea-birds and by madden-

10 ing billows ; still I saw her, as at the moment when she
ran past us, standing amongst the shrouds, with her white
draperies streaming before the wind. There she stood,
with hair dishevelled, one hand clutched amongst the tack-
ling— rising, sinking, fluttering, trembling, praying; there

15 for leagues I saw her as she stood, raising at intervals one
hand to heaven, amidst the fiery crests of the pursuing
waves and the raving of the storm ; until at last, upon a
sound from afar of malicious laughter and mockery, all
was hidden for ever in driving showers ; and afterwards,

20 but when I knew not, nor how,

III

Sweet funeral bells from some incalculable distance, wail-
ing over the dead that die before the dawn, awakened me
as I slept in a boat moored to some familiar shore. The
morning twilight even then was breaking ; and, by the

25 dusky revelations which it spread, I saw a girl, adorned
with a garland of white roses about her head for some
great festival, running along the solitary strand in extrem-
ity of haste. Her running was the running of panic ; and
often she looked back as to some dreadful enemy in the

30 rear. But, when I leaped ashore, and followed on her steps
to warn her of a peril in front, alas ! from me she lied as

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 57

from another peril, and vainly I shouted to her of quick-
sands that lay ahead. Faster and faster she ran ; round a
promontory of rocks she wheeled out of sight ; in an instant
I also wheeled round it, but only to see the treacherous
sands gathering above her head. Already her person was 5
buried ; only the fair young head and the diadem of white
roses around it were still visible to the pitying heavens ;
and, last of all, was visible one white marble arm. I saw
by the early twilight this fair young head, as it was sinking
down to darkness — saw this marble arm, as it rose above 10
her head and her treacherous grave, tossing, faltering, ris-
ing, clutching, as at some false deceiving hand stretched
out from the clouds — saw this marble arm uttering her
dying hope, and then uttering her dying despair. The
head, the diadem, the arm- — these all had sunk; at last 15
over these also the cruel quicksand had closed ; and no
memorial of the fair young girl remained on earth, except
my own solitary tears, and the funeral bells from the desert
seas, that, rising again more softly, sang a requiem over
the grave of the buried child, and over her blighted dawn. 20

I sat, and wept in secret the tears that men have ever
given to the memory of those that died before the dawn,
and by the treachery of earth, our mother. But suddenly
the tears and funeral bells were hushed by a shout as of
many nations, and by a roar as from some great king's 25
artillery, advancing rapidly along the valleys, and heard
afar by echoes from the mountains. " Hush! " I said, as I
bent my ear earthwards to listen — "hush! — this either is
the very anarchy of strife, or else " — and then I listened
more profoundly, and whispered as I raised my head — 30
"or else, oh heavens! it is victory that is final, victory that
swallows up all strife."

5S SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY

IV

Immediately, in trance, I was carried over land and sea
to some distant kingdom, and placed upon a triumphal car,
amongst companions crowned with laurel. The darkness
of gathering midnight, brooding over all the land, hid from
5 us the mighty crowds that were weaving restlessly about
ourselves as a centre : we heard them, but saw them not.
Tidings had arrived, within an hour, of a grandeur that
measured itself against centuries ; too full of pathos they
were, too full of joy, to utter themselves by other language

io than by tears, by restless anthems, and Te Dcums reverber-
ated from the choirs and orchestras of earth. These tid-
ings we that sat upon the laurelled car had it for our
privilege to publish amongst all nations. And already,
by signs audible through the darkness, by snortings and

15 tramplings, our angry horses, that knew no fear or fleshly
weariness, upbraided us with delay. Wherefore was it that
we delayed ? We waited for a secret word, that should
bear witness to the hope of nations as now accomplished
for ever. At midnight the secret word arrived; which

20 word was — Waterloo and Recovered Christendom ! The
dreadful word shone by its own light ; before us it went ;
high above our leaders' heads it rode, and spread a golden
light over the paths which we traversed. Every city, at
the presence of the secret word, threw open its gates. The

25 rivers were conscious as we crossed. All the forests, as we
ran along their margins, shivered in homage to the secret
word. And the darkness comprehended it.

Two hours after midnight we approached a mighty
Minster. Its gates, which rose to the clouds, were closed.

30 Hut, when the dreadful word that rode before us reached
them with its golden light, silently they moved back upon
their hinges ; and at a flying gallop our equipage entered

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 59

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 sick-
ening, kindled anew in sympathy with the secret word that
was flying past. Forty leagues we might have run in the 5
cathedral, and as yet no strength of morning light had
reached us, when before us we saw the aerial galleries
of organ and choir. Every pinnacle of fretwork, every
station of advantage amongst the traceries, was crested
by white-robed choristers that sang deliverance; that wept 10
no more tears, as once their fathers had wept ; but at
intervals that sang together to the generations, saying,

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

and receiving answers from afar,

" Such as once in heaven and earth were sung." 15

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

Thus as we ran like torrents — thus as we swept with
bridal rapture over the Campo Santo x of the cathedral
graves — suddenly we became aware of a vast necropolis 20
rising upon the far-off horizon — a city of sepulchres, built
within the saintly cathedral for the warrior dead that

1 "Campo Santo": — It is probable that most of my readers will
be acquainted with the history of the Campo Santo (or cemetery) at
Pisa, composed of earth brought from Jerusalem from a bed of sanc-
tity as the highest prize which the noble piety of crusaders could
ask or imagine. To readers who are unacquainted with England, or
who (being English) are yet unacquainted with the cathedral cities of
England, it may be right to mention that the graves within-side the
cathedrals often form a flat pavement over which carriages and horses
might run ; and perhaps a boyish remembrance of one particular cathe-
dral, 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.

60 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

rested from their feuds on earth. Of purple granite was
the necropolis ; yet, in the first minute, it lay like a purple
stain upon the horizon, so mighty was the distance. In
the second minute it trembled through many changes,
5 growing into terraces and towers of wondrous altitude,
so mighty was the pace. In the third minute already, with
our dreadful gallop, we were entering its suburbs. Vast
sarcophagi rose on every side, having towers and turrets
that, upon the limits of the central aisle, strode forward

10 with haughty intrusion, that ran back with mighty shad-
ows into answering recesses. Every sarcophagus showed
many bas-reliefs — bas-reliefs of battles and of battle-fields;
battles from forgotten ages, battles from yesterday ; battle-
fields that, long since, nature had healed and reconciled to

15 herself with the sweet oblivion of flowers; battle-fields that
were yet angry and crimson with carnage. Where the
terraces ran, there did we run ; where the towers curved,
there did we curve. With the flight of swallows our horses
swept round every angle. Like rivers in flood wheeling

20 round headlands, like hurricanes that ride into the secrets
of forests, faster than ever light unwove the mazes of dark-
ness, 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

25 from Cre'cy to Trafalgar. And now had we reached the
last sarcophagus, now were we abreast of the last bas-relief,
already had we recovered the arrow-like flight of the illim-
itable central aisle, when coming up this aisle to meet us
we beheld afar off a female child, that rode in a carriage

30 as frail as flowers. The mists which went before her hid
the fawns that drew her, but could not hide the shells and
tropic flowers with which she played — but could not hide
the lovely smiles by which she uttered her trust in the
mighty cathedral, and in the cherubim that looked down

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 6t

upon her from the mighty shafts of its pillars. Face to
face she was meeting us; face to face she rode, as if danger
there were none. "Oh, baby!" I exclaimed, "shalt thou
be the ransom for Waterloo ? Must we, that carry tidings
of great joy to every people, be messengers of ruin to 5
thee ! " In horror I rose at the thought ; but then also, in
horror at the thought, rose one that was sculptured on a
bas-relief — a Dying Trumpeter. Solemnly from the field
of battle he rose to his feet ; and, unslinging his stony
trumpet, carried it, in his dying anguish, to his stony lips 10
— sounding once, and yet once again ; proclamation that,
in thy ears, oh baby ! spoke from the battlements of death.
Immediately deep shadows fell between us, and aboriginal
silence. The choir had ceased to sing. The hoofs of
our horses, the dreadful rattle of our harness, the groan- 15
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 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 20
sounded ; the seals were taken off all pulses ; life, and the
frenzy of life, tore into their channels again ; again the
choir burst forth in sunny grandeur, as from the muffling
of storms and darkness ; again the thunderings of our
horses carried temptation into the graves. One cry burst 25
from our lips, as the clouds, drawing off from the aisle,
showed it empty before us. — " Whither has the infant
fled ? — is the young child caught up to God ? " Lo ! afar
off, in a vast recess, rose three mighty windows to the
clouds ; and on a level with their summits, at height 30
insuperable to man, rose an altar of purest alabaster.
On its eastern face was trembling a crimson glory. A
glory was it from the reddening dawn that now streamed
through the windows ? Was it from the crimson robes of

62 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

the martyrs painted on the windows ? Was it from the
bloody bas-reliefs of earth ? There, suddenly, within that
crimson radiance, rose the apparition of a woman's head,
and then of a woman's figure. The child it was — grown
5 up to woman's height. Clinging to the horns of the altar,
voiceless she stood — sinking, rising, raving, despairing ;
and behind the volume of incense that, night and day,
streamed upwards from the altar, dimly was seen the fiery
font, and the shadow of that dreadful being who should

10 have baptized her with the baptism of death. But by her
side was kneeling her better angel, that hid his face with
wings; that wept and pleaded for her; that prayed when
she could not; that fought with Heaven by tears for her
deliverance; which also, as he raised his immortal counte-

15 nance from his wings, I saw, by the glory in his eye, that
from Heaven he had won at last.

V

Then was completed the passion of the mighty fugue.
The golden tubes of the organ, which as yet had but mut-
tered at intervals — gleaming amongst clouds and surges

20 of incense — threw up, as from fountains unfathomable,
columns of heart-shattering music. Choir and anti-choir
were filling fast with unknown voices. Thou also, Dying
Trumpeter, with thy love that was victorious, and thy
anguish that was finishing, didst enter the tumult; trum-

25 pet and echo — farewell love, and farewell anguish — rang
through the dreadful sanctus. Oh, darkness of the grave!
that from the crimson altar and from the fiery font wert
visited and searched by the effulgence in the angel's eye —
were these indeed thy children ? Pomps of life, that, from

30 the burials of centuries, rose again to the voice of perfect
joy, did ye indeed mingle with the festivals of Death ? Lc !

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH

63

as I looked back for seventy leagues through the mighty
cathedral, I saw the quick and the dead that sang together
to God, together that sang to the generations of man. All
the hosts of jubilation, like armies that ride in pursuit,
moved with one step. Us, that, with laurelled heads, were 5
passing from the cathedral, they overtook, and, as with a
garment, they wrapped us round with thunders greater than
our own. As brothers we moved together ; to the dawn
that advanced, to the stars that fled ; rendering thanks to
God in the highest — that, having hid His face through 10
one generation behind thick clouds of War, once again
was ascending, from the Campo Santo of Waterloo was
ascending, in the visions of Peace ; rendering thanks for
thee, young girl ! whom having overshadowed with His
ineffable passion of death, suddenly did God relent, suffered 15
thy angel to turn aside His arm, and even in thee, sister
unknown ! shown to me for a moment only to be hidden
for ever, found an occasion to glorify His goodness. A
thousand times, amongst the phantoms of sleep, have I
seen thee entering the gates of the golden dawn, with the 20
secret word riding before thee, with the armies of the
grave behind thee, — seen thee sinking, rising, raving,
despairing ; a thousand times in the worlds of sleep have I
seen thee followed by God's angel through storms, through
desert seas, through the darkness of quicksands, through 25
dreams and the dreadful revelations that are in dreams ;
only that at the last, with one sling of His victorious arm,
He might snatch thee back from ruin, and might emblazon
in thy deliverance the endless resurrections of His love !

JOAN OF ARC1

What is to be thought of her? What is to be thought of
the poor shepherd girl from the hills and forests of Lor-
raine, that — like the Hebrew shepherd boy from the hills
and forests of Judea — rose suddenly out of the quiet, out
5 of the safety, out of the religious inspiration, rooted in deep
pastoral solitudes, to a station in the van of armies, and to
the more perilous station at the right hand of kings ? The
Hebrew boy inaugurated his patriotic mission by an act, by
a victorious act, such as no man could deny. But so did
10 the girl of Lorraine, if we read her story as it was read by
those who saw her nearest. Adverse armies bore witness

1 " Are " : — Modern France, that should know a great deal better
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 defer-
entially, and submits. But, if, unhappily for himself, won by this
docility, he relents too amiably into reasons and arguments, probably
one raises an insurrection against him that may never be crushed ; for
in the fields of logic one can skirmish, perhaps, as well as he. Had he
confined himself to dogmatism, he would have intrenched his position
in darkness, and have hidden his own vulnerable points. But coming
down to base reasons he lets in light, and one sees where to plant the
blows. Now, the worshipful reason of modern France for disturb-
ing the old received spelling is that Jean Ilordal, 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 amongst man in the seventeenth century
was all monopolised by printers ; now, M. Ilordal was not a printer.

64

JOAN OF ARC 65

to the boy as no pretender ; but so they did to the gentle
girl. Judged by the voices of all who saw them from a
station of good will, both were found true and loyal to any
promises involved in their first acts. Enemies it was that
made the difference between their subsequent fortunes. The 5
boy rose to a splendour and a noonday prosperity, both
personal and public, that rang through the records of his
people, and became a byword among his posterity for a
thousand years, until the sceptre was departing from Judah.
The poor, forsaken girl, on the contrary, drank not herself 10
from that cup of rest which she had secured for France. She
never sang together with the songs that rose in her native
Domre'my as echoes to the departing steps of invaders.
She mingled not in the festal dances at Vaucouleurs which
celebrated in rapture the redemption of France. No! for 15
her voice was then silent ; no ! for her feet were dust.
Pure, innocent, noble-hearted girl ! whom, from earliest
youth, ever I believed in as full of truth and self-sacrifice,
this was amongst the strongest pledges for thy truth, that
never once — no, not for a moment of weakness — didst 20
thou revel in the vision of coronets and honour from man.
Coronets for thee ! Oh, no ! Honours, if they come when
all is over, are for those that share thy blood.1 Daughter
of Domremy, when the gratitude of thy king shall awaken,
thou wilt be sleeping the sleep of the dead. Call her, King 25
of France, but she will not hear thee. Cite her by the
apparitors to come and receive a robe of honour, but she
will be found en contumace. When the thunders of uni-
versal France, as even yet may happen, shall proclaim the
grandeur of the poor shepherd girl that gave up all for her 30
country, thy ear, young shepherd girl, will have been deaf
for five centuries. To suffer and to do, that was thy

lu Those that share thy blood" : — A collateral relative of Joanna's
was subsequently ennobled by the title of Du Lys.

66 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

portion in this life ; that was thy destiny ; and not for a
moment was it hidden from thyself. Life, thou saidst, is
short ; and the sleep which is in the grave is long ; let me
use that life, so transitory, for the glory of those heavenly
5 dreams destined to comfort the sleep which is so long !
This pure creature — pure from every suspicion of even a
visionary self-interest, even as she was pure in senses more
obvious — never once did this holy child, as regarded her-
self, relax from her belief in the darkness that was travel-

10 ling to meet her. She might not prefigure the very manner
of her death ; she saw not in vision, perhaps, the aerial
altitude of the fiery scaffold, the spectators without end,
on every road, pouring into Rouen as to a coronation, the
surging smoke, the volleying flames, the hostile faces all

15 around, the pitying eye that lurked but here and there,
until nature and imperishable truth broke loose from arti-
ficial restraints — these might not be apparent through the
mists of the hurrying future. But the voice that called
her to death, that she heard for ever.

20 Great was the throne of France even in those days, and
great was He that sat upon it ; but well Joanna knew that
not the throne, nor he that sat upon it, was for her ; but,
on the contrary, that she was for them; not she by them,
but they by her, should rise from the dust. Gorgeous were

25 the lilies of France, and for centuries had the privilege to
spread their beauty over land and sea, until, in another
century, the wrath of God and man combined to wither
them ; but well Joanna knew, early at Domremy she had
read that bitter truth, that the lilies of France would

30 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 sub-
ject of Joanna precisely in the spring of 1847 ? Might it

JOAN OF ARC 67

not have been left till the spring of 1947, or, perhaps, left
till called for ? Yes, but it is called for, and clamorously.
You are aware, reader, that amongst the many original
thinkers whom modern France has produced, one of the
reputed leaders is M. Michelet. All these writers are of 5
a revolutionary cast ; not in a political sense merely, but
in all senses ; mad, oftentimes, as March hares ; crazy
with the laughing gas of recovered liberty ; drunk with the
wine cup of their mighty Revolution, snorting, whinnying,
throwing up their heels, like wild horses in the boundless 10
pampas, and running races of defiance with snipes, or with
the winds, or with their own shadows, if they can find noth-
ing else to challenge. Some time or other, I, that have
leisure to read, may introduce you, that have not, to two
or three dozen of these writers; of whom I can assure 15
you beforehand that they are often profound, and at inter-
vals are even as impassioned as if they were come of our
best English blood. But now, confining our attention to
M. Michelet, we in England — who know him best by his
worst book, the book against priests, etc. — know him dis- 20
advantageously. That book is a rhapsody of incoherence.
But his " History of France " is quite another thing. A
man, in whatsoever craft he sails, cannot stretch away out
of sight when he is linked to the windings of the shore by
towing-ropes of History. Facts, and the consequences 25
of facts, draw the writer back to the falconer's lure from
the giddiest heights of speculation. Here, therefore — in
his " France " — if not always free from Mightiness, if now
and then off like a rocket for an airy wheel in the clouds,
M. Michelet, with natural politeness, never forgets that 30
he has left a large audience waiting for him on earth, and
gazing upward in anxiety for his return ; return, therefore,
he does. But History, though clear of certain temptations
in one direction, has separate dangers of its own. It is

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impossible so to write a history of France, or of England
— works becoming every hour more indispensable to the
inevitably political man of this day — without perilous
openings for error. If I, for instance, on the part of
5 England, should happen to turn my labours into that
channel, and (on the model of Lord Percy going to
Chevy Chase)

♦'A vow to God should make

My pleasure in the Michelet woods
10 Three summer days to take,"

probably, from simple delirium, I might hunt M. Michelet
into delirium tremens. Two strong angels stand by the side
of History, whether French history or English, as heraldic
supporters : the angel of research on the left hand, that

15 must read millions of dusty parchments, and of pages
blotted with lies ; the angel of meditation on the right
hand, that must cleanse these lying records with fire, even
as of old the draperies of asbestos were cleansed, and must
quicken them into regenerated life. Willingly I acknowl-

20 edge that no man will ever avoid innumerable errors of
detail; with so vast a compass of ground to traverse,
this is impossible ; but such errors (though I have a
bushel on hand, at M. Michelet's service) are not the
game I chase ; it is the bitter and unfair spirit in which

25 M. Michelet writes against England. Even that, after all,
is but my secondary object; the real one is Joanna, the
Pucelle d'Orleans herself.

I am not going to write the history of La Pucelle : to do
this, or even circumstantially to report the history of her

30 persecution and bitter death, of her struggle with false
witnesses and with ensnaring judges, it would be neces-
sary to have before us all the documents, and therefore

JOAN OF ARC 69

the collection only now forthcoming in Paris.1 But my
purpose is narrower. There have been great thinkers,
disdaining the careless judgments of contemporaries, who
have thrown themselves boldly on the judgment of a far
posterity, that should have had, time to review, to ponder, 5
to compare. There have been great actors on the stage
of tragic humanity that might, with the same depth of
confidence, have appealed from the levity of compatriot
friends — too heartless for the sublime interest of their
story, and too impatient for the labour of sifting its per- 10'
plexities — to the magnanimity and justice of enemies.
To this class belongs the Maid of Arc. The ancient
Romans were too faithful to the ideal of grandeur in
themselves not to relent, after a generation or two, before
the grandeur of Hannibal. Mithridates, a more doubtful 15
person, yet, merely for the magic perseverance of his
indomitable malice, won from the same Romans the only
real honour that ever he received on earth. And we Eng-
lish have ever shown the same homage to stubborn
enmity. To work unflinchingly for the ruin of England ; 20
to say through life, by word and by deed, Delenda est
Anglia Victrix ! — that one purpose of malice, faithfully
pursued, has quartered some people upon our national
funds of homage as by a perpetual annuity. Better than
an inheritance of service rendered to England herself has 25
sometimes proved the most insane hatred to England.
Hyder AH, even his son Tippoo, though so far inferior,
and Napoleon, have all benefited by this disposition
among ourselves to exaggerate the merit of diabolic
enmity. Not one of these men was ever capable, in a 30
solitary instance, of praising an enemy (what do you say

1 " 0?ily now forthcoming" : — In 1847 began the publication (from
official records) of Joanna's trial. It was interrupted, I fear, by the
convulsions of 1S48 ; and whether even yet finished I do not know.

70 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

to that, reader ?) ; and yet in their behalf, we consent to
forget, not their crimes only, but (which is worse) their
hideous bigotry and anti-magnanimous egotism — for
nationality it was not. Suffren, and some half dozen of
5 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'Orle'ans, the victorious enemy of
England, has been destined to receive her deepest com-

•io memoration from the magnanimous justice of Englishmen.

Joanna, as we in England should call her, but according

to her own statement, Jeanne (or, as M. Michelet asserts,

Jean1) D'Arc was born at Domremy, a village on the

marches of Lorraine and Champagne, and dependent upon

15 the town of Vaucouleurs. I have called her a Lorrainer,
not simply because the word is prettier, but because
Champagne too odiously reminds us English of what are
for us imaginary wines — which, undoubtedly, La Pucelle
tasted as rarely as we English: we English, because the

20 champagne of London is chiefly grown in Devonshire; La
Pucelle, because the champagne of Champagne never, by any

l"Jean": — M. Michelet asserts that there was a mystical meaning
at that era in calling a child Jean ; it implied a secret commendation of
a child, if not a* dedication, to St. John the evangelist, the beloved
disciple, the apostle of love and mysterious visions. But, .really, as the
name was so exceedingly common, few people will detect a mystery in
calling a boy by the name of Jack, though it docs seem mysterious to call
a girl Jack. It may be less so in France, where a beautiful practice
has always prevailed of giving a boy his mother's name — preceded and
strengthened by a male name, as Charles Anne, Victor Victoire. In
cases where a mother's memory has been unusually dear to a son, this
vocal memento of her, locked into the circle of his own name, gives to
it the tenderness of a testamentary relic, or a funeral ring. I presume,
therefore, that La Pucelle must have borne the baptismal name of
Jeanne Jean ; the latter with no reference, perhaps, to so sublime a
person as St. John, but simply to some relative.

JOAN OF ARC 71

chance, flowed into the fountain of Domre'my, from which
only she drank. M. Michelet will have her to be a Cham-
penoise, and for no better reason than that she " took after
her father," who happened to be a Champenois.

These disputes, however, tur,n on refinements too nice. 5
Domrt'my stood upon the frontiers, and, like other fron-
tiers, produced a mixed race, representing the cis and the
trans. A river (it is true) formed the boundary line at
this point — the river Meuse ; and that, in old days, might
have divided the populations ; but in these days it did 10
not ; there were bridges, there were ferries, and weddings
crossed from the right bank to the left. Here lay two
great roads, not so much for travellers that were few, as
for armies that were too many by half. These two roads,
one of which was the great highroad between France and 15
Germany, decussated at this very point ; which is a learned
way of saying that they formed a St. Andrew's Cross, or
letter X. I hope the compositor will choose a good large
X; in which case the point of intersection, the locus of
conflux and intersection for these four diverging arms, 20
will finish the reader's geographical education, by showing
him to a hair's-breadth where it was that Domre'my stood.
These roads, so grandly situated, as great trunk arteries
between two mighty realms,1 and haunted for ever by wars
or rumours of wars, decussated (for anything I know to 25
the contrary) absolutely under Joanna's bedroom window ;
one rolling away to the right, past M. D 'Arc's old barn,
and the other unaccountably preferring to sweep round
that odious man's pig-sty to the left.

On whichever side of the border chance had thrown 30
Joanna, the same love to France would have been nurtured.

1 And reminding one of that inscription, so justly admired by Paul
Richter, which a Russian Czarina placed on a guide-post near Moscow :
litis is the road that leads to Constantinople.

72 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

For it is a strange fact, noticed by M. Michelet and
others, that the Dukes of Bar and Lorraine had for
generations pursued the policy of eternal warfare with
France on their own account, yet also of eternal amity
5 and league with France in case anybody else presumed
to attack her. Let peace settle upon France, and before
long you might rely upon seeing the little vixen Lorraine
flying at the throat of France. Let France be assailed
by a formidable enemy, and instantly you saw a Duke of

10 Lorraine insisting on having his own throat cut in sup-
port of France ; which favour accordingly was cheerfully
granted to him in three great successive battles: twice
by the English, viz., at Crccy and Agincourt, once by
the Sultan at Nicopolis.

15 This sympathy with France during great eclipses, in
those that during ordinary seasons were always teasing
her with brawls and guerilla inroads, strengthened the
natural piety to France of those that were confessedly
the children of her own house. The outposts of France,

20 as one may call the great frontier provinces, were of all
localities the most devoted to the Fleurs de Lys. To wit-
ness, at any great crisis, the generous devotion to these
lilies of the little fiery cousin that in gentler weather was
for ever tilting at the breast of France, could not but fan

25 the zeal of France's legitimate daughters ; while to occupy
a post of honour on the frontiers against an old hereditary
enemy of France would naturally stimulate this zeal by a
sentiment of martial pride, by a sense of danger always
threatening, and of hatred always smouldering. That great

30 four-headed road was a perpetual memento to patriotic
ardour. To say "This way lies the road to Paris, and that
other way to Aix-la-Chapelle ; this to Prague, that to
Vienna," nourished the warfare of the heart by daily min-
istrations of sense. The eye that watched for the gleams

JOAN OF ARC 73

of lance or helmet from the hostile frontier, the ear that
listened for the groaning of wheels, made the highroad
itself, with its relations to centres so remote, into a
manual of patriotic duty.

The situation, therefore, locally, of Joanna was full of 5
profound suggestions to a heart that listened for the
stealthy steps of change and fear that too surely were
in motion. But, if the place were grand, the time, the
burden of the time, was far more so. The air overhead
in its upper chambers was hurtlingwith the obscure sound; 10
was dark with sullen fermenting of storms that had been
gathering for a hundred and thirty years. The battle of
Agincourt in Joanna's childhood had reopened the wounds
of France. Cre'cy and Poictiers, those withering over-
throws for the chivalry of France, had, before Agincourt 15
occurred, been tranquilised by more than half a century ;
but this resurrection of their trumpet wails made the whole
series of battles and endless skirmishes take their stations
as parts in one drama. The graves that had closed sixty
years ago seemed to fly open in sympathy with a sorrow 20
that echoed their own. The monarchy of France laboured
in extremity, rocked and reeled like a ship fighting with
the darkness of monsoons. The madness of the poor king
(Charles VI), falling in at such a crisis, like the case of
women labouring in child-birth during the storming of a 25
city, trebled the awfulness of the time. Even the wild
story of the incident which had immediately occasioned
the explosion of this madness — the case of a man un-
known, gloomy, and perhaps maniacal himself, coming out
of a forest at noonday, laying his hand upon the bridle of 3°
the king's horse, checking him for a moment to say, "Oh,
king, thou art betrayed," and then vanishing, no man knew
whither, as he had appeared for no man knew what — -fell
in with the universal prostration of mind that laid France

74 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

on her knees, as before the slow unweaving of some ancient
prophetic doom. The famines, the extraordinary diseases,
the insurrections of the peasantry up and down Europe —
these were chords struck from the same mysterious harp ;
5 but these were transitory chords. There had been others
of deeper and more ominous sound. The termination of
the Crusades, the destruction of the Templars, the Papal
interdicts, the tragedies caused or suffered by the house of
Anjou, and by the Emperor — - these were full of a more

10 permanent significance. But, since then, the colossal fig-
ure of feudalism was seen standing, as it were on tiptoe, at
Cre'cy, for flight from earth : that was a revolution unparal-
leled ; yet that was a trifle by comparison with the more
fearful revolutions that were mining below the Church. By

15 her own internal schisms, by the abominable spectacle of
a double Pope — so that no man, except through political
bias, could even guess which was Heaven's vicegerent, and
which the creature of Hell — the Church was rehearsing,
as in still earlier forms she had already rehearsed, those

20 vast rents in her foundations which no man should ever
heal.

These were the loftiest peaks of the cloudland in the
skies that to the scientific gazer first caught the colors of
the new morning in advance. But the whole vast range

25 alike of sweeping glooms overhead dwelt upon all medi-
tative minds, even upon those that could not distinguish
the tendencies nor decipher the forms. It was, therefore, not
her own age alone, as affected by its immediate calamities,
that lay with such weight upon Joanna's mind, but her own

30 age as one section in a vast mysterious drama, unweaving
through a century back, and drawing nearer continually to
some dreadful crisis. Cataracts and rapids were heard
roaring ahead ; and signs were seen far back, by help of
old men's memories, which answered secretly to signs now

JOAN OF ARC 75

coming forward on the eye, even as locks answer to keys.
It was not wonderful that in such a haunted solitude, with
such a haunted heart, Joanna should see angelic visions,
and hear angelic voices. These voices whispered to her
for ever the duty, self-imposed, of delivering France. Five 5
years she listened to these monitory voices with internal
struggles. At length she could resist no longer. Doubt
gave way ; and she left her home for ever in order to
present herself at the dauphin's court.

The education of this poor girl was mean according to 10
the present standard : was ineffably grand, according to a
purer philosophic standard : and only not good for our
age because for us it would be unattainable. She read noth-
ing, for she could not read ; but she had heard others read
parts of the Roman martyrology. She wept in sympathy 15
with the sad " Misereres " of the Romish Church ; she rose
to heaven with the glad triumphant " Te Deums " of
Rome ; she drew her comfort and her vital strength from
the rites of the same Church. But, next after these spirit-
ual advantages, she owed most to the advantages of her 20
situation. The fountain of Domre'my was on the brink of
a boundless forest ; and it was haunted to that degree by
fairies that the parish priest (cure) was obliged to read
mass there once a year, in order to keep them in any
decent bounds. Fairies are important, even in a statistical 25
view : certain weeds mark poverty in the soil ; fairies mark
its solitude. As surely as the wolf retires before cities
does the fairy sequester herself from the haunts of the
licensed victualer. A village is too much for her nervous
delicacy ; at most, she can tolerate a distant view of a 30
hamlet. We may judge, therefore, by the uneasiness and
extra trouble which they gave to the parson, in what
strength the fairies mustered at Domre'my, and, by a satis-
factory consequence, how thinly sown with men and women

76 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

must have been that region even in its inhabited spots.
But the forests of Domre'my — those were the glories of
the land : for in them abode mysterious powers and ancient
secrets that towered into tragic strength. " Abbeys there
5 were, and abbey windows " — " like Moorish temples of
the Hindoos " — that exercised even princely power both in
Lorraine and in the German Diets. These had their sweet
bells that pierced the forests for many a league at matins
or vespers, and each its own dreamy legend. Few enough,

10 and scattered enough, were these abbeys, so as in no
degree to disturb the deep solitude of the region ; yet
many enough to spread a network or awning of Christian
sanctity over what else might have seemed a heathen wil-
derness. This sort of religious talisman being secured, a

15 man the most afraid of ghosts (like myself, suppose, or the
reader) becomes armed into courage to wander for days in
their sylvan recesses. The mountains of the Vosges, on
the eastern frontier of France, have never attracted much
notice from Europe, except in 18 13-14 for a few brief

20 months, when they fell within Napoleon's line of defence
against the Allies. But they are interesting for this among
other features, that they do not, like some loftier ranges,
repel woods ; the forests and the hills are on sociable
terms. " Live and let live " is their motto. For this

25 reason, in part, these tracts in Lorraine were a favourite
hunting-ground with the Carlovingian princes. About six
hundred years before Joanna's childhood, Charlemagne
was known to have hunted there. That, of itself, was a
grand incident in the traditions of a forest or a chase.

,30 In these vast forests, also, were to be found (if anywhere
to be found) those mysterious fawns that tempted solitary
hunters into visionary and perilous pursuits. Here was
seen (if anywhere seen) that ancient stag who was already
nine hundred years old, but possibly a hundred or two more,

JOAN OF ARC 77

when met by Charlemagne ; and the thing was put beyond
doubt by the inscription upon his golden collar. I believe
Charlemagne knighted the stag ; and, if ever he is met again
by a king, he ought to be made an earl, or, being upon the
marches of France, a marquis. Observe, I don't absolutely 5
vouch for all these things : my own opinion varies. On a
fine breezy forenoon I am audaciously sceptical ; but as
twilight sets in my credulity grows steadily, till it becomes
equal to anything that could be desired. And I have heard
candid sportsmen declare that, outside of these very forests, 10
they laughed loudly at all the dim tales connected with
their haunted solitudes, but, on reaching a spot notoriously
eighteen miles deep within them, they agreed with Sir
Roger de Coverley that a good deal might be said on both
sides. 15

Such traditions, or any others that (like the stag) con-
nect distant generations with each other, are, for that
cause, sublime ; and the sense of the shadowy, connected
with such appearances that reveal themselves or not accord-
ing to circumstances, leaves a colouring of sanctity over 20
ancient forests, even in those minds that utterly reject the
legend as a fact.

But, apart from all distinct stories of that order, in any
solitary frontier between two great empires — as here, for
instance, or in the desert between Syria and the Euphrates 25
— there is an inevitable tendency, in minds of any deep
sensibility, to people the solitudes with phantom images of
powers that were of old so vast. Joanna, therefore, in her
quiet occupation of a shepherdess, would be led continually
to brood over the political condition of her country by the 30
traditions of the past no less than by the mementoes of the
local present.

M. Michelet, indeed, says that La Pucelle was not a
shepherdess. I beg his pardon ; she was. What he rests

78 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

upon I guess pretty well : it is the evidence of a woman
called Haumette, the most confidential friend of Joanna.
Now, she is a good witness, and a good girl, and I like
her ; for she makes a natural and affectionate report of
5 Joanna's ordinary life. But still, however good she may
be as a witness, Joanna is better ; and she, when speaking
to the dauphin, calls herself in the Latin report Bcrgereta.
Even Haumette confesses that Joanna tended sheep in her
girlhood. And I believe that, if Miss Haumette were tak-

10 ing coffee along with me this very evening (February 12,
1847) — in which there would be no subject for scandal or
for maiden blushes, because I am an intense philosopher,
and Miss H. would be hard upon 450 years old — she
would admit the following comment upon her evidence

15 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 watched
by himself in chivalrous France not very long before the
French Revolution : A peasant was plowing ; and the team

20 that drew his plow was a donkey and a woman. Both were
regularly harnessed ; both pulled alike. This is bad enough ;
but the Frenchman adds that, in distributing his lashes,
the peasant was obviously desirous of being impartial ; or,
if either of the yokefellows had a right to complain, cer-

25 tainly it was not the donkey. Now, in any country where
such degradation of females could be tolerated by the
state of manners, a woman of delicacy would shrink from
acknowledging, either for herself or her friend, that she
had ever been addicted to any mode of labour not strictly

30 domestic ; because, if once owning herself a prandial ser-
vant, she would be sensible that this confession extended
by probability in the hearer's thoughts to the having in-
curred indignities of this horrible kind. Haumette clearly
thinks it more dignified for Joanna to have been darning

JOAN OF ARC 79

the stockings of her horny-hoofed father, M. D'Arc, than
keeping sheep, lest she might then be suspected of having
ever done something worse. But, luckily, there was no dan-
ger of that : Joanna never was in service; and my opinion
is that her father should have mended his own stockings, 5
since probably he was the party to make the holes in them,
as many a better man than D'Arc does — meaning by that
not myself, because, though probably a better man than
D'Arc, I protest against doing anything of the kind. If I
lived even with Friday in Juan Fernandez, either Friday 10
must do all the darning, or else it must go undone. The
better men that I meant were the sailors in the British navy,
every man of whom mends his own stockings. Who else is
to do it ? Do you suppose, reader, that the junior lords of
the admiralty are under articles to darn for the navy ? 15

The reason, meantime, for my systematic hatred of D'Arc
is this : There was a story current in France before the
Revolution, framed to ridicule the pauper aristocracy, who
happened to have long pedigrees and short rent rolls : viz.,
that a head of such a house, dating from the Crusades, was 20
overheard saying to his son, a Chevalier of St. Louis,
" Chevalier, as-tu dowie 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 Jille,
as-tu donne au cochon a manger ?" to saying, " Pucelle 25
d' Orleans, as-tu saure ks Jleurs-dc-lys ? " There is an old
English copy of verses which argues thus :

"If the man that turnips cries
Cry not when his father dies,

Then 'tis plain the man had rather 30

Have a turnip than his father."

I cannot say that the logic of these verses was ever entirely
to my satisfaction. I do not see my way through it as

80 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

clearly as could be wished. But I see my way most clearly
through D'Arc ; and the result is — that he would greatly
have preferred not merely a turnip to his father, but the
saving a pound or so of bacon to saving the Oriflamme of
S France.

It is probable (as M. Michelet suggests) that the title of
Virgin or Pucelle had in itself, and apart from the miracu-
lous stories about her, a secret power over the rude soldiery
and partisan chiefs of that period ; for in such a person

10 they saw a representative manifestation of the Virgin Mary,
who, in a course of centuries, had grown steadily upon the
popular heart.

As to Joanna's supernatural detection of the dauphin
(Charles VII) among three hundred lords and knights, I

15 am surprised at the credulity which could ever lend itself
to that theatrical juggle. Who admires more than myself
the sublime enthusiasm, the rapturous faith in herself, of
this pure creature ? But I am far from admiring stage
artifices which not La Pucelle, but the court, must have

20 arranged; nor can surrender myself to the conjurer's leger-
demain, such as may be seen every day for a shilling.
Southey's "Joan of Arc" was published in 1796. Twenty
years after, talking with Southey, I was surprised to find
him still owning a secret bias in favor of Joan, founded on

25 her detection of the dauphin. The story, for the benefit
of the reader new to the case, was this : La Pucelle was
first made known to the dauphin, and presented to his
court, at Chinon ; and here came her first trial. By way
of testing her supernatural pretensions, she was to find out

30 the royal personage amongst the whole ark of clean and
unclean creatures. Failing in this coup d'essai, she would
not simply disappoint many a beating heart in the glitter-
ing crowd that on different motives yearned for her success,
but she would ruin herself, and, as the oracle within had

JOAN OF ARC gx

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 dif-
ference : our own Lady pricks for two men out of three ; 5
Joanna for one man out of three hundred. Happy Lady
of the Islands and the Orient! — she can go astray in her
choice only by one-half : to the extent of one-half she must
have the satisfaction of being right. And yet, even with
these tight limits to the misery of a boundless discretion, 10
permit me, Liege Lady, with all loyalty, to submit that
now and then you prick with your pin the wrong man.
But the poor child from Domremy, shrinking under the
gaze of a dazzling court — not because dazzling (for in vis-
ions she had seen those that were more so), but because 15
some of them wore a scoffing smile on their features —
how should she throw her line into so deep a river to angle
for a king, where many a gay creature was sporting that
masqueraded as kings in dress ! Nay, even more than any
true king would have done : for, in Southey's version of 20
the story, the dauphin says, by way of trying the virgin's
magnetic sympathy with royalty,

" On the throne,
I the while mingling with the menial throng,
Some courtier shall be seated." 25

This usurper is even crowned : " the jeweled crown shines
on a menial's head." But, really, that is " tin peu fort" ;
and the mob of spectators might raise a scruple whether
our friend the jackdaw upon the throne, and the dauphin
himself, were not grazing the shins of treason. For the dau- 30
phin could not lend more than belonged to him. Accord-
ing to the popular notion, he had no crown for himself;
consequently none to lend, on any pretence whatever, until

82 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

the consecrated Maid should take him to Rheims. This
was the popular notion in France. But certainly it was
the dauphin's interest to support the popular notion, as he
meant to use the services of Joanna. For if he were king
5 already, what was it that she could do for him beyond
Orle'ans ? That is to say, what more than a merely military
service could she render him ? And, above all, if he were
king without a coronation, and without the oil from the
sacred ampulla, what advantage was yet open to him by

10 celerity above his competitor, the English boy ? Now was
to be a race for a coronation : he that should win that
race carried the superstition of France along with him : he
that should first be drawn from the ovens of Rheims was
under that superstition baked into a king.

15 La Pucelle, before she could be allowed to practise as a
warrior, was put through her manual and platoon exercise,
as a pupil in divinity, at the bar of six eminent men in
wigs. According to Southey (v. 393, bk. iii., in the original
edition of his "Joan of Arc,") she "appalled the doctors."

20 It's not easy to do that: but they had some reason to feel
bothered, as that surgeon would assuredly feel bothered
who, upon proceeding to dissect a subject, should find the
subject retaliating as a dissector upon himself, especially
if Joanna ever made the speech to them which occupies

25 v. 354-391, bk. iii. It is a double impossibility: 1st,
because a piracy from Tindal's "Christianity as old as the
Creation " — a piracy a parte ante, and by three centuries ;
2d, it is quite contrary to the evidence on Joanna's trial.
Southey's "Joan" of a.d. 1796 (Cottle, Bristol) tells the

30 doctors, among other secrets, that she never in her life
attended — 1st, Mass; nor 2d, the Sacramental Table; nor
3d, Confession. In the meantime, all this deistical con-
fession of Joanna's, besides being suicidal for the interest
of her cause, is opposed to the depositions upon both trials.

JOAN OF ARC 83

The very best witness called from first to last deposes that
Joanna attended these rites of her Church even too often ;
was taxed with doing so ; and, by blushing, owned the
charge as a fact, though certainly not as a fault. Joanna
was a girl of natural piety, that saw God in forests and hills 5
and fountains, but did not the less seek him in chapels and
consecrated oratories.

This peasant girl was self-educated through her own
natural meditativeness. If the reader turns to that divine
passage in " Paradise Regained " which Milton has put 10
into the mouth of our Saviour when first entering the
wilderness, and musing upon the tendency of those great
impulses growing within himself

" Oh, what a multitude of thoughts at once
Awakened in me swarm, while I consider 15

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
To me was pleasing ; all my mind was set 20

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 wrhich brooded
over the heart of Joanna in early girlhood, when the wings 25
were budding that should carry her from Orleans to Rheims ;
when the golden chariot was dimly revealing itself that
should carry her from the kingdom of France Delivered to
the Eternal Kingdom.

It is not requisite for the honour of Joanna, nor is there 30
in this place room, to pursue her brief career of action.
That, though wonderful, forms the earthly part of her
story ; the spiritual part is the saintly passion of her

84 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY

imprisonment, trial, and execution. It is unfortunate, there-
fore, for Southey's " Joan of Arc " (which, however, should
always be regarded as a juvenile effort), that precisely when
her real glory begins the poem ends. But this limitation
5 of the interest grew, no doubt, from the constraint insep-
arably attached to the law of epic unity. Joanna's history
bisects into two opposite hemispheres, and both could not
have been presented to the eye in one poem, unless by sac-
rificing all unity of theme, or else by involving the earlier

10 half, as a narrative episode, in the latter ; which, however,
might have been done, for it might have been communi-
cated 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

15 restoration of the prostrate throne. France had become
a province of England, and for the ruin of both, if such a
yoke could be maintained. Dreadful pecuniary exhaustion
caused the English energy to droop ; and that critical
opening La Pucelle used with a corresponding felicity of

20 audacity and suddenness (that were in themselves porten-
tous) for introducing the wedge of French native resources,
for rekindling the national pride, and for planting the dau-
phin once more upon his feet. When Joanna appeared, he
had been on the point of giving up the struggle with the

25 English, distressed as they were, and of flying to the
south of France. She taught him to blush for such abject
counsels. She liberated Orleans, that great city, so deci-
sive by its fate for the issue of the war, and then beleaguered
by the English with an elaborate application of engineer-

30 ing skill unprecedented in Europe. Entering the city after
sunset on the 29th of April, she sang mass on Sunday, May
8th, for the entire disappearance of the besieging force.
On the 29th of June she fought and gained over the English
the decisive battle of Patay ; on the 9th of July she took

JOAN OF ARC 85

Troyes by a coup-de-main from a mixed garrison of English
and Burgundians ; on the 15th of that month she carried
the dauphin into Rheims ; on Sunday the 17th she crowned
him ; and there she rested from her labour of triumph.
All that was to be done she had now accomplished ; what 5
remained was — to suffer.

All this forward movement was her own ; excepting one
man, the whole council was against her. Her enemies were
all that drew power from earth. Her supporters were her
own strong enthusiasm, and the headlong contagion by 10
which she carried this sublime frenzy into the hearts
of women, of soldiers, and of all who lived by labour.
Henceforward she was thwarted ; and the worst error that
she committed was to lend the sanction of her presence to
counsels which she had ceased to approve. But she had 15
now accomplished the capital objects which her own visions
had dictated. These involved all the rest. Errors were
now less important ; and doubtless it had now become
more difficult for herself to pronounce authentically what
were errors. The noble girl had achieved, as by a rapture 20
of motion, the capital end of clearing out a free space
around her sovereign, giving him the power to move his
arms with effect, and, secondly, the inappreciable end of
winning for that sovereign what seemed to all France the
heavenly ratification of his rights, by crowning him with 25
the ancient solemnities. She had made it impossible for
the English now to step before her. They were caught
in an irretrievable blunder, owing partly to discord among
the uncles of Henry AT, partly to a want of funds, but
partly to the very impossibility which they believed to 30
press with tenfold force upon any French attempt to fore-
stall theirs. They laughed at such a thought ; and, while
they laughed, she did it. Henceforth the single redress
for the English of this capital oversight, but which never

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could have redressed it effectually, was to vitiate and taint
the coronation of Charles VII as the work of a witch.
That policy, and not malice (as M. Michelet is so happy
to believe), was the moving principle in the subsequent

S prosecution of Joanna. Unless they unhinged the force of
the first coronation in the popular mind by associating
it with power given from hell, they felt that the sceptre of
the invader was broken.

But she, the child that, at nineteen, had wrought wonders

10 so great for France, was she not elated ? Did she not lose,
as men so often have lost, all sobriety of mind when stand-
ing upon the pinnacle of success so giddy ? Let her
enemies declare. During the progress of her movement,
and in the centre of ferocious struggles, she had mani-

15 fested the temper of her feelings by the pity which she
had everywhere expressed for the suffering enemy. She
forwarded to the English leaders a touching invitation
to unite with the French, as brothers, in a common cru-
sade against infidels — thus opening the road for a soldierly

20 retreat. She interposed to protect the captive or the
wounded ; she mourned over the excesses of her coun-
trymen ; she threw herself off her horse to kneel by the
dying English soldier, and to comfort him with such min-
istrations, physical or spiritual, as his situation allowed.

25 " Nolebat," says the evidence, "uti ense suo, aut quem-
quam interficere." She sheltered the English that invoked
her aid in her own quarters. She wept as she beheld,
stretched on the field of battle, so many brave enemies
that had died without confession. And, as regarded her-

30 self, her elation expressed itself thus: on the day when she
had finished her work, she wept ; for she knew that, when
her triumphal task was done, her end must be approach-
ing. Her aspirations pointed only to a place which seemed
to her more than usually full of natural piety, as one in

JOAN OF ARC 87

which it would give her pleasure to die. And she uttered,
between smiles and tears, as a wish that inexpressibly
fascinated her heart, and yet was half fantastic, a broken
prayer that God would return her to the solitudes from
which he had drawn her, and suffer her to become a shep- 5
herdess once more. It was a natural prayer, because
nature has laid a necessity upon every human heart to
seek for rest and to shrink from torment. Yet, again,
it was a half-fantastic prayer, because, from childhood
upward, visions that she had no power to mistrust, and the 10
voices which sounded in her ear for ever, had long since
persuaded her mind that for her no such prayer could be
granted^ Too well she felt that her mission must be
worked out to the end, and that the end was now at hand.
All went wrong from this time. She herself had created 15
the funds out of which the French restoration should grow;
but she was not suffered to witness their development or
their prosperous application. More than one military plan
was entered upon which she did not approve. But she
still continued to expose her person as before. Severe 20
wounds had not taught her caution. And at length, in a
sortie from Compiegne (whether through treacherous col-
lusion on the part of her own friends is doubtful to this
day), she was made prisoner by the Burgundians, and
finally surrendered to the English. 25

Now came her trial. This trial, moving of course under
English influence, was conducted in chief by the Bishop of
Beauvais. He was a Frenchman, sold to English interests,
and hoping, by favour of the English leaders, to reach the
highest preferment. " Bishop that art, Archbishop that 3°
shalt be, Cardinal that mayest be," were the words that
sounded continually in his ear ; and doubtless a whisper
of visions still higher, of a triple crown, and feet upon the
necks of kings, sometimes stole into his heart. M. Michelet

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is anxious to keep us in mind that this bishop was but
an agent of the English. True. But it does not better
the case for his countryman that, being an accomplice
in the crime, making himself the leader in the persecution
5 against the helpless girl, he was willing to be all this in
the spirit, and with the conscious vileness of a cat's-paw.
Never from the foundations of the earth was there such a
trial as this, if it were laid open in all its beauty of defence
and all its hellishness of attack. Oh, child of France !

10 shepherdess, peasant girl! trodden under foot by all around
thee, how I honour thy flashing intellect, quick as God's
lightning, and true as God's lightning to its mark, that ran
before France and laggard Europe by many a century, con-
founding the malice of the ensnarer, and making dumb the

15 oracles of falsehood ! Is it not scandalous, is it not humili-
ating to civilization, that, even at this day, France exhibits
the horrid spectacle of judges examining the prisoner against
himself ; seducing him, by fraud, into treacherous conclu-
sions against his own head ; using the terrors of their power

20 for extorting confessions from the frailty of hope; n;iy
(which is worse), using the blandishments of condescension
and snaky kindness for thawing into compliances of grati-
tude those whom they had failed to freeze into terror ?
Wicked judges! barbarian jurisprudence ! — that, sitting in

25 your own conceit on the summits of social wisdom, have
yet failed to learn the first principles of criminal justice —
sit ye humbly and with docility at the feet of this girl from
Domremy, that tore your webs of cruelty into shreds and
dust. " Would you examine me as a witness against

30 myself ? " was the question by which many times she defied
their arts. Continually she showed that their interrogations
were irrelevant to any business before the court, or that
entered into the ridiculous charges against her. General
questions were proposed to her on points of casuistical

JOAN OF ARC 89

divinity; two-edged questions, which not one of them-
selves could have answered, without, on the one side, land-
ing himself in heresy (as then interpreted), or, on the
other, in some presumptuous expression of self-esteem.
Next came a wretched Dominican, that pressed her with 5
an objection, which, if applied to the Bible, would tax
every one of its miracles with unsoundness. The monk
had the excuse of never having read the Bible. M. Michelet
has no such excuse ; and it makes one blush for him, as a
philosopher, to find him describing such an argument as 10
"weighty," whereas it is but a varied expression of rude
Mahometan metaphysics. Her answer to this, if there
were room to place the whole in a clear light, was as shat-
tering as it was rapid. Another thought to entrap her by
asking what language the angelic visitors of her solitude 15
had talked — as though heavenly counsels could want
polyglot interpreters for every word, or that God needed
language at all in whispering thoughts to a human heart.
Then came a worse devil, who asked her whether the Arch-
angel Michael had appeared naked. Not comprehending 20
the vile insinuation, Joanna, whose poverty suggested to her
simplicity that it might be the costliness of suitable robes
which caused the demur, asked them if they fancied God,
who clothed the flowers of the valleys, unable to find
raiment for his servants. The answer of Joanna moves a 25
smile of tenderness, but the disappointment of her judges
makes one laugh exultingly. Others succeeded by troops,
who upbraided her with leaving her father ; as if that greater
Father, whom she believed herself to have been serving, did
not retain the power of dispensing with his own rules, or 30
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 pro-
ceeding, the poor girl fell so ill as to cause a belief that

90 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

she had been poisoned. It was not poison. Nobody had
any interest in hastening a death so certain. M. Michelet,
whose sympathies with all feelings are so quick that one
would gladly see them always as justly directed, reads the

5 case most truly. Joanna had a twofold malady. She was
visited by a paroxysm of the complaint called homesickness.
The cruel nature of her imprisonment, and its length, could
not but point her solitary thoughts, in darkness and in
chains (for chained she was), to Domre'my. And the

io season, which was the most heavenly period of the spring,
added stings to this yearning. That was one of her mala-
dies— nostalgia, as medicine calls it; the other was weari-
ness and exhaustion from daily combats with malice. She
saw that everybody hated her and thirsted for her blood ;

15 nay, many kind-hearted creatures that would have pitied
her profoundly, as regarded all political charges, had their
natural feelings warped by the belief that she had dealings
with fiendish powers. She knew she was to die ; that was
not the misery ! the misery was that this consummation

20 could not be reached without so much intermediate strife,
as if she were contending for some chance (where chance
was none) of happiness, or were dreaming for a moment
of escaping the inevitable. Why, then, did she contend ?
Knowing that she would reap nothing from answering her

25 persecutors, why did she not retire by silence from the
superfluous contest? It was because her quick and eager
loyalty to truth would not suffer her to see it darkened by
frauds which she could expose, but others, even of candid
listeners, perhaps, could not; it was through that imperish-

30 able grandeur of soul which taught her to submit meekly
and without a struggle to her punishment, but taught her
not to submit — no, not for a moment — to calumny as to
facts, or to misconstruction as to motives. Besides, there
were secretaries all around the court taking down her words.

JOAN OF ARC 91

That was meant for no good to her. But the end does not
always correspond to the meaning. And Joanna might say to
herself, " These words that will be used against me to-morrow
and the next day, perhaps, in some nobler generation, may
rise again for my justification." Yes, Joanna, they are rising 5
even now in Paris, and for rnore than justification !

Woman, sister, there are some things which you do not
execute as well as your brother, man ; no, nor ever will.
Pardon me if I doubt whether you will ever produce a
great poet from your choirs, or a Mozart, or a Phidias, or ic
a Michael Angelo, or a great philosopher, or a great scholar.
By which last is meant — not one who depends simply on
an infinite memory, but also on an infinite and electrical
power of combination ; bringing together from the four
winds, like the angel of the resurrection, what else were 15
dust from dead men's bones, into the unity of breathing
life. If you can create yourselves into any of these great
creators, why have you not ?

Yet, sister woman, though I cannot consent to find a
Mozart or a Michael Angelo in your sex, cheerfully, and 20
with the love that burns in depths of admiration, I acknowl-
edge that you can do one thing as well as the best of us
men — a greater thing than even Milton is known to have
done, or Michael Angelo ; you can die grandly, and as
goddesses would die, were goddesses mortal. If any dis- 25
tant worlds (which may be the case) are so far ahead of us
Tellurians in optical resources as to see distinctly through
their telescopes all that, we do on earth, what is the
grandest sight to which we ever treat them ? St. Peter's
at Rome, do you fancy, on Easter Sunday, or Luxor, or 3°
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 same kind.
These, take my word for it, are nothing. Do you give it

92 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

up ? The finest thing, then, we have to show them is a
scaffold on the morning of execution. I assure you there
is a strong muster in those far telescopic worlds, on any
such morning, of those who happen to find themselves

5 occupying the right hemisphere for a peep at us. How,
then, if it be announced in some such telescopic world by
those who make a livelihood of catching glimpses at our
newspapers, whose language they have long since deci-
phered, that the poor victim in the morning's sacrifice is a

10 woman ? How, if it be published in that distant world
that the sufferer wears upon her head, in the eyes of many,
the garlands of martyrdom ? How, if it should be some
Marie Antoinette, the widowed queen, coming forward on
the scaffold, and presenting to the morning air her head,

15 turned gray by sorrow — daughter of Caesars kneeling down
humbly to kiss the guillotine, as one that worships death ?
How, if it were the noble Charlotte Corday, that in the
bloom of youth, that with the loveliest of persons, that
with homage waiting upon her smiles wherever she turned

20 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 sun-
beams over the hills — yet thought all these things cheaper
than the dust upon her sandals, in comparison of deliver-

25 ance from hell for her dear suffering France ! Ah ! these
were spectacles indeed for those sympathising people in
distant worlds; and some, perhaps, would suffer a sort of
martyrdom themselves, because they could not testify their
wrath, could not bear witness to the strength of love and to

30 the fury of hatred that burned within them at such scenes,
could not gather into golden urns some of that glorious
dust which rested in the catacombs of earth.

On the Wednesday after Trinity Sunday in 1 43 1, being
then about nineteen years of age, the Maid of Arc under-

JOAN OF ARC 93

went her martyrdom. She was conducted before mid-day,
guarded by eight hundred spearmen, to a platform of pro-
digious height, constructed of wooden billets supported by
occasional walls of lath and plaster, and traversed by hollow
spaces in every direction for the creation of air currents. 5
The pile " struck terror," says M. Michelet, " by its height " ;
and, as usual, the English purpose in this is viewed as one
of pure malignity. But there are two ways of explaining
all that. It is probable that the purpose was merciful.
On the circumstances of the execution I shall not linger. 10
Yet, to mark the almost fatal felicity of M. Michelet in
finding out whatever may injure the English name, at a
moment when every reader will be interested in Joanna's
personal appearance, it is really edifying to notice the inge-
nuity by which he draws into light from a dark corner a 15
very unjust account of it, and neglects, though lying upon
the highroad, a very pleasing one. Both are from English
pens. Grafton, a chronicler, but little read, being a stiff-
necked John Bull, thought fit to say that no wonder Joanna
should be a virgin, since her " foule face " was a satis- 20
factory solution of that particular merit. Holinshead, on
the other hand, a chronicler somewhat later, every way
more important, and at one time universally read, has given
a very pleasing testimony to the interesting character of
Joanna's person and engaging manners. Neither of these 25
men lived till the following century, so that personally this
evidence is none at all. Grafton sullenly and carelessly
believed as he wished to believe ; Holinshead took pains
to inquire, and reports undoubtedly the general impression
of France. But I cite the case as illustrating M. Michelet's 30
candour.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

94 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

The circumstantial incidents of the execution, unless

with more space than I can now command, I should be

unwilling to relate. I should fear to injure, by imperfect

report, a martyrdom which to myself appears so unspeak-

5 ably grand. Yet, for a purpose, pointing not at Joanna,

sometimes does us, and the very indignant admiration which, under
some aspects, he grants to us.

i. Our English literature he admires with some gnashing of teeth.
He pronounces it " fine and sombre," but, I lament to add, " skeptical,
Judaic, Satanic — in a word, antichristian." That Lord Byron should
figure as a member of this diabolical corporation will not surprise men.
It will surprise them to hear that Milton is one of its Satanic leaders.
Many are the generous and eloquent Frenchmen, besides Chateau-
briand, who have, in the course of the last thirty years, nobly suspended
their own burning nationality, in order to render a more rapturous
homage at the feet of Milton ; and some of them have raised Milton
almost to a level with angelic natures. Not one of them has thought
of looking for him below the earth. As to Shakspere, M. Michelet
detects in him a most extraordinary mare's nest. It is this : he does
" not recollect to have seen the name of God " in any part of his
works. On reading such words, it is natural to rub one's eyes, and sus-
pect that all one has ever seen in this world may have been a pure
ocular delusion. In particular, I begin myself to suspect that the
word "la gloire" never occurs in any Parisian journal. "The great
English nation," says M. Michelet, " has one immense profound vice "
— to wit, "pride." Why, really, that may be true; but we have a
neighbour not absolutely clear of an " immense profound vice," as like
ours in colour and shape as cherry to cherry. In short, M. Michelet
thinks us, by fits and starts, admirable — only that we are detestable ;
and he would adore some of our authors, were it not that so intensely
he could have wished to kick them.

2. M. Michelet thinks to lodge an arrow in our sides by a very odd
remark upon Thomas a Kempis : which is, that a man of any conceiv-
able European blood — a Finlander, suppose, or a Zantiote — might
have written Tom; only not an Englishman. Whether an Englishman
could have forged Tom must remain a matter of doubt, unless the
thing had been tried long ago. That problem was intercepted for ever
by Tom's perverseness in choosing to manufacture himself. Yet, since
nobody is better aware than M. Michelet that this very point of Kempis

JOAN OF ARC 95

but at M. Michelet — viz., to convince him that an English-
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 demeanour on the scaffold,
and to one or two in that of the bystanders, which authorise 5

having manufactured Kempis is furiously and hopelessly litigated, three
or four nations claiming to have forged his work for him, the shocking
old doubt will raise its snaky head once more — whether this forger,
who rests in so much darkness, might not, after all, be of English
blood. Tom, it may be feared, is known to modern English literature
chiefly by an irreverent mention of his name in a line of Peter Pindar's
(Ur. Wolcot) fifty years back, where he is described as

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

Few in these days can have read him, unless in the Methodist version of
John Wesley. Among those few, however, happens to be myself;
which arose from the accident of having, when a boy of eleven, received
a copy of the " De Imitatione Christi " as a bequest from a relation
who died very young ; from which cause, and from the external pretti-
ness of the book — being a Glasgow reprint by the celebrated Foulis,
and gaily bound — I was induced to look into it, and finally read it
many times over, partly out of some sympathy which, even in those
days, I had with its simplicity and devotional fervour, but much more
from the savage delight I found in laughing at Tom's Latinity. That, I
freely grant to M. Michelet, is inimitable. Yet, after all, it is not cer-
tain whether the original was Latin. But, however that may have
been, if it is possible that M. Michelet* can be accurate in saying that
there are no less than sixty French versions (not editions, observe, but
separate versions) existing of the " De Imitatione," how prodigious

* " If M. Jilickelet can be accurate": — However, on consideration, this statement
does not depend on Michelet. The bibliographer Barbier has absolutely specified
sixty in a separate dissertation, soixante traductions, among those even that have not
escaped the search. The Italian translations are said to be thirty. As to mere
editions, not counting the early MSS. for half a century before printing was introduced,
those in Latin amount to 2000, and those in French to 1000. Meantime, it is very dear
to me that this astonishing popularity, so entirely unparalleled in literature, could not
have existed except in Roman Catholic times, nor subsequently have lingered in any
Protestant land. It was the denial of Scripture fountains to thirsty lands which made
this slender rill of Scripture truth so passionately welcome.

96 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

me in questioning an opinion of his upon this martyr's firm-
ness. The reader ought to be reminded that Joanna D'Arc
was subjected to an unusually unfair trial of opinion. Any
of the elder Christian martyrs had not much to fear of per-
5 sonal rancour. The martyr was chiefly regarded as the

must have been the adaptation of the book to the religious heart of the
fifteenth century ! Excepting the Bible, but excepting that only in
Protestant lands, no book known to man has had the same distinction.
It is the most marvellous bibliographical fact on record.

3. Our English girls, it seems, are as faulty in one way as we English
males in another. None of us men could have written the Opera Omnia
of Mr. a Kempis ; neither could any of our girls have assumed male
attire like La Pucelle. But why ? Because, says Michelet, English
girls and German think so much of an indecorum. Well, that is a
good fault, generally speaking. But M. Michelet ought to have remem-
bered a fact in the martyrologies which justifies both parties — the
French heroine for doing, and the general choir of English girls for
not doing. A female saint, specially renowned in France, had, for a
reason as weighty as Joanna's — viz., expressly to shield her modesty
among men — worn a male military harness. That reason and that
example authorised La Pucelle ; but our English girls, as a body, have
seldom any such reason, and certainly no such saintly example, to
plead. This excuses them. Yet, still, if it is indispensable to the
national character that our young women should now and then tres-
pass over the frontier of decorum, it then becomes a patriotic duty in
me to assure M. Michelet that we have such ardent females among us,
and in a long series ; some detected in naval hospitals when too sick to
remember their disguise ; some on fields of battle ; multitudes never
detected at all ; some only suspected ; and others discharged without
noise by war offices and other absurd people. In our navy, both royal
and commercial, and generally from deep remembrances of slighted
love, women have sometimes served in disguise for many years, taking
contentedly their daily allowance of burgoo, biscuit, or cannon-balls —
anything, in short, digestible or indigestible, that it might please Provi-
dence to send. One thing, at least, is to their credit : never any of
these poor masks, with their deep silent remembrances, have been
detected through murmuring, or what is nautically understood by
"skulking." So, for once, M. Michelet has an erratum to enter upon
the flyleaf of his book in presentation copies.

JOAN OF ARC 97

enemy of Caesar ; at times, also, where any knowledge of
the Christian faith and morals existed, with the enmity
that arises spontaneously in the worldly against the spirit-
ual. But the martyr, though disloyal, was not supposed
to be therefore anti-national ; and still less was individually
hateful. What was hated (if anything) belonged to his
class, not to himself separately. Now, Joanna, if hated at
all, was hated personally, and in Rouen on national grounds.

4. But the last of these ebullitions is the most lively. We English,
at Orleans, and after Orleans (which is not quite so extraordinary, if all
were told), fled before the Maid of Arc. Yes, says M. Michelet, you
did: deny it, if you can. Deny it, nton cher ? I don't mean to deny
it. Running away, in many cases, is a thing so excellent that no phil-
osopher would, at times, condescend to adopt any other step. All of
us nations in Europe, without one exception, have shown our phil-
osophy in that way at times. Even people " qui ne se rendent pas "
have deigned both to run and to shout, " Sauve qui peut ! " at odd
times of sunset ; though, for my part, I have no pleasure in recalling
unpleasant remembrances to brave men ; and yet, really, being so phil-
osophic, they ought not to be unpleasant. But the amusing feature in
M. Michelet's reproach is the way in which he improves and varies
against us the charge of running, as if he were singing a catch. Listen
to him: They "showed their backs" did these English. (Hip, hip,
hurrah! three times three!) " Behind good walls they let themselves be
taken." (Hip, hip ! nine times nine !) They " ran as fast as their legs
could carry them" (Hurrah ! twenty-seven times twenty-seven !) They
"ran before a girl"; they did. (Hurrah! eighty-one times eighty-
one !) This reminds one of criminal indictments on the old model
in English courts, where (for fear the prisoner should escape) the crown
lawyer varied the charge perhaps through forty counts. The law laid
its guns so as to rake the accused at every possible angle. While the
indictment was reading, he seemed a monster of crime in his own
eyes ; and yet, after all, the poor fellow had but committed one offence,
and not always that. N. B. — Not having the French original at
hand, I make my quotations from a friend's copy of Mr. Walter Kelly's
translation ; which seems to me faithful, spirited, and idiomatically
English — liable, in fact, only to the single reproach of occasional
provincialisms.

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Hence there would be a certainty of calumny arising
against her such as would not affect martyrs in general.
That being the case, it would follow of necessity that some
people would impute to her a willingness to recant. No
5 innocence could escape that. Now, had she really testified
this willingness on the scaffold, it would have argued noth-
ing at all but the weakness of a genial nature shrinking
from the instant approach of torment. And those will
often pity that weakness most who, in their own persons,

10 would yield to it least. Meantime, there never was a
calumny uttered that drew less support from the recorded
circumstances. It rests upon no positive testimony, and
it has a weight of contradicting testimony to stem. And
yet, strange to say, M. Michelet, who at times seems to

15 admire the Maid of Arc as much as I do, is the one sole
writer among her friends who lends some countenance to
this odious slander. His words are that, if she did not
utter this word recant with her lips, she uttered it in her
heart. " Whether she said the word is uncertain ; but I

20 affirm that she thought it."

Now, I affirm that she did not ; not in any sense of the
word "thought" applicable to the case. Here is France
calumniating La Pucelle ; here is England defending her.
M. Michelet can only mean that, on a priori principles,

25 every woman must be presumed liable to such a weak-
ness; that Joanna was a woman; ergo, that she was liable
to such a weakness. That is, he only supposes her to
have uttered the word by an argument which presumes it
impossible for anybody to have done otherwise. I, on the

30 contrary, throw the onus of the argument not on presum-
able tendencies of nature, but on the known facts of that
morning's execution, as recorded by multitudes. What
else, I demand, than mere weight of metal, absolute nobil-
ity of deportment, broke the vast line of battle then

JOAN OF ARC 99

arrayed against her ? What else but her meek, saintly
demeanour won, from the enemies that till now had believed
her a witch, tears of rapturous admiration ? " Ten thou-
sand men," says M. Michelet himself — " ten thousand
men wept " ; and of these ten thousand the majority were 5
political enemies knitted together by cords of superstition.
What else was it but her constancy, united with her angelic
gentleness, that drove the fanatic English soldier — who
had sworn to throw a fagot on her scaffold as his tribute
of abhorrence, that did so, that fulfilled his vow — sud- 10
denly to turn away a penitent for life, saying everywhere
that he had seen a dove rising upon wings to heaven from
the ashes where she had stood ? What else drove the exe-
cutioner to kneel at every shrine for pardon to his share in
the tragedy? And, if all this were insufficient, then I cite 15
the closing act of her life as valid on her behalf, were
all other testimonies against her. The executioner had
been directed to apply his torch from below. He did
so. The fiery smoke rose upward in billowing volumes.
A Dominican monk was then standing almost at her side. 20
Wrapped up in his sublime office, he saw not the danger,
but still persisted in his prayers. Even then, when the
last enemy was racing up the fiery stairs to seize her, even
at that moment did this noblest of girls think only for him,
the one friend that would not forsake her, and not for her- 25
self ; bidding him with her last breath to care for his own
preservation, but to leave her to God. That girl, whose
latest breath ascended in this sublime expression of self-
oblivion, did not utter the word recant either with her lips
or in her heart. No ; she did not, though one should rise 30
from the dead to swear it.

Bishop of Beauvais ! thy victim died in fire upon a
scaffold — thou upon a down bed. But, for the departing

ioo SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

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
5 sink together into sleep ; together both sometimes kindle
into dreams. When the mortal mists were gathering fast
upon you two, bishop and shepherd girl — when the pavil-
ions of life were closing up their shadowy curtains about
you — let us try, through the gigantic glooms, to decipher

10 the flying features of your separate visions.

The shepherd girl that had delivered France — she, from
her dungeon, she, from her baiting at the stake, she, from
her duel with fire, as she entered her last dream — saw
Domremy, saw the fountain of Domre'my, saw the pomp of

15 forests in which her childhood had wandered. That Easter
festival which man had denied to her languishing heart —
that resurrection of springtime, which the darkness of dun-
geons had intercepted from her, hungering after the glorious
liberty of forests — were by God given back into her hands

20 as jewels that had been stolen from her by robbers. With
those, perhaps (for the minutes of dreams can stretch into
ages), was given back to her by God the bliss of childhood.
By special privilege for her might be created, in this fare-
well dream, a second childhood, innocent as the first; but

25 not, like that, sad with the gloom of a fearful mission in
the rear. This mission had now been fulfilled. The storm
was weathered ; the skirts even of that mighty storm were
drawing off. The blood that she was to reckon for had
been exacted ; the tears that she was to shed in secret had

30 been paid to the last. The hatred to herself in all eyes
had been faced steadily, had been suffered, had been sur-
vived. And in her last fight upon the scaffold she had
triumphed gloriously; victoriously she had tasted the
stings of death. For all, except this comfort from her

JOAN OF ARC ioi

farewell dream, she had died — died amid the tears of ten
thousand enemies — died amid the drums and trumpets of
armies — died amid peals redoubling upon peals, volleys
upon .volleys, from the saluting clarions of martyrs.

Bishop of Beauvais ! because the guilt-burdened man is 5
in dreams haunted and waylaid by the most frightful of his
crimes, and because upon that fluctuating mirror — rising
(like the mocking mirrors of mirage in Arabian deserts)
from the fens of death — most of all are reflected the sweet
countenances which the man has laid in ruins ; therefore I 10
know, bishop, that you also, entering your final dream, saw
Domremy. That fountain, of which the witnesses spoke
so much, showed itself to your eyes in pure morning dews ;
but neither dews, nor the holy dawn, could cleanse away
the bright spots of innocent blood upon its surface. By 15
the fountain, bishop, you saw a woman seated, that hid
her face. But, as you draw near, the woman raises her
wasted features. Would Domremy know them again for
the features of her child ? Ah, but you know them, bishop,
well ! Oh, mercy ! what a groan was that which the ser- 20
vants, waiting outside the bishop's dream at his bedside,
heard from his labouring heart, as at this moment he turned
away from the fountain and the woman, seeking rest in the
forests afar off. Yet not so to escape the woman, whom
once again he must behold before he dies. In the forests 25
to which he prays for pity, will he find a respite ? What a
tumult, what a gathering of feet is there ! In glades where
only wild deer should run armies and nations are assem-
bling ; towering in the fluctuating crowd are phantoms
that belong to departed hours. There is the great English 30
Prince, Regent of France. There is my Lord of Win-
chester, the princely cardinal, that died and made no sign.
There is the bishop of Beauvais, clinging to the shelter of
thickets. What building is that which hands so rapid are

102 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

raising ? Is it a martyr's scaffold ? Will they burn the
child of Domremy a second time ? No ; it is a tribunal
that rises to the clouds ; and two nations stand around it,
waiting for a trial. Shall my Lord of Beauvais sit again

5 upon the judgment-seat, and again number the hours for
the innocent ? Ah, no ! he is the prisoner at the bar.
Already all is waiting : the mighty audience is gathered,
the Court is hurrying to their seats, the witnesses are
arrayed, the trumpets are sounding, the judge is taking his

10 place. Oh, but this is sudden ! My lord, have you no
counsel ? " Counsel I have none ; in heaven above, or on
earth beneath, counsellor there is none now that would take
a brief from me : all are silent." Is it, indeed, come to this ?
Alas ! the time is short, the tumult is wondrous, the crowd

15 stretches away into infinity; but yet I will search in it for
somebody to take your brief ; I know of somebody that will
be your counsel. Who is this that cometh from Domre'my ?
Who is she in bloody coronation robes from Rheims ? Who
is she that cometh with blackened flesh from walking the

20 furnaces of Rouen ? This is she, the shepherd girl, coun-
sellor that had none for herself, whom I choose, bishop, for
yours. She it is, I engage, that shall take my lord's brief.
She it is, bishop, that would plead for you ; yes, bishop, she
— when heaven and earth are silent.

NOTES

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH

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

1 6 He had married the daughter of a duke : " Mr. John Palmer, a
native of Bath, and from about 1768 the energetic proprietor of the
Theatre Royal in that city, had been led, by the wretched state in those
days of the means of intercommunication between Bath and London,
and his own consequent difficulties in arranging for a punctual succes-
sion of good actors at his theatre, to turn his attention to the improve-
ment of the whole system of Post-Office conveyance, and of locomotive
machinery generally, in the British Islands. The result was a scheme
for superseding, on the great roads at least, the then existing system of
sluggish and irregular stage-coaches, the property of private persons
and companies, by a new system of government coaches, in connexion
with the Post-Office, carrying the mails and also a regulated number

i°3

104 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY

of passengers, with clockwork precision, at a rate of comparative speed,
which he hoped should ultimately be not less than ten miles an hour.
The opposition to the scheme was, of course, enormous ; coach pro-
prietors, innkeepers, the Post-Office officials themselves, were all against
Mr. Palmer; he was voted a crazy enthusiast and a public bore. Pitt,
however, when the scheme was submitted to him, recognized its feasi-
bility ; on the 8th of August 1784 the first mail-coach on Mr. Palmer's
plan started from London at S o'clock in the morning and reached
Bristol at 11 o'clock at night; and from that day the success of the
new system was assured. — Mr. Palmer himself, having been appointed
Surveyor and Comptroller-General of the Post-Office, took rank as an
eminent and wealthy public man, M. P. for Bath and what not, and
lived till 1818. De Quincey makes it one of his distinctions that he
'had married the daughter of a duke,' and in a footnote to that para-
graph he gives the lady's name as ' Lady Madeline Gordon.' From an
old Debrett, however, I learn that Lady Madelina Gordon, second
daughter of Alexander, fourth Duke of Gordon, was first married, on
the 3d of April 17S9, to Sir Robert Sinclair, Bart., and next, on the
25th of November 1805, to Charles Palmer, of Lockley Park, Berks, Esq.
If Debrett is right, her second husband was not John Palmer of Mail-
Coach celebrity, and De Quincey is wrong." — Masson.

1 (footnote) Invention of the cross : Concerning the Inventio sanctae
crucis, see Smith, Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, Vol. I, p. 503.

2 4 National result : Cf. De Quincey's paper on Travelling, Works,
Riverside ed., Vol. II, especially pp. 313-314 ; Masson's ed., Vol. I, espe-
cially pp. 270-271.

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

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

3 :i(i Posting-houses : inns where relays of horses were furnished
for coaches and carriages. Cf. De Quincey on Travelling, loc. cit.

NOTES 105

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

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

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

5 6 Objects not appearing, etc. : De non apparentibus et uon existen-
tibus eadem est lex, a Roman legal phrase.

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

7 33 Fo Fo . . . Fi Fi : " This paragraph is a caricature of a story
told in Staunton's Account of the Earl of Macartney's Embassy to
China in 1792." — • Masson.

8 4 Ca ira ("This will do," "This is the go "): "a proverb of the
French Revolutionists when they were hanging the aristocrats in the
streets, &c, and the burden of one of the most popular revolutionary
songs, ' Ca ira, ca ira, ca ira.' " — Masson.

8 18 All morality, — Aristotle's, Zeno's, Cicero's : Each of these
three has a high place in the history of ethical teaching. Aristotle
wrote the so-called Nicomachean Ethics. According to his teaching,
" ethical virtue is that permanent direction of the will which guards
the mean \rb /xiaov] proper for us. . . . Bravery is the mean between
cowardice and temerity ; temperance, the mean between inordinate
desire and stupid indifference ; etc." (Ueberweg, History of Philos-
ophy, Vol. I, p. 169). Zeno, who died about 264 B.C., founded about
308 the Stoic sect, which took its name from the " Painted Porch "
(Ztool TloiidXr)) in the Agora at Athens, where the master taught. The
Stoics held that men should be free from passion, and undisturbed by
joy or grief, submitting themselves uncomplainingly to their fate. Such

106 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

austere views are, of course, as far as possible removed from those of
the Euda;monist, who sought happiness as the end of life. Cicero was
the author of De Officiis, " Of Duties."

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

9 24 Von Troil's Iceland : The Letters on Iceland (Pinkerton's Voy-
ages and Travels, Vol. I, p. 621), containing Observations . . . made dur-
ing a Voyage undertaken in the year 1772, by Uno Von Troil, D.D.,
of Stockholm, contains no chapter of the kind. Such a chapter had
appeared, however, in N. Horrebow's (Danish, 1758) Natural History of
Iceland: "Chap. LXXII. Concerning snakes. No snakes of any kind
are to be met with throughout the whole island." In Boswell's_/<:>//M.f0//,
Vol. IV, p. 314, Temple ed., there is a much more correct allusion,
which may have been in De Quincey's mind : " Langton said very well
to me afterwards, that he could repeat Johnson's conversation before
dinner, as Johnson had said that he could repeat a complete chapter
of The Natural History of Iceland, from the Danish of Horrebow, the
whole of which was exactly thus: 'Chap. LXXII. Concerning Snakes.
There are no snakes to be met with throughout the whole island.' "

9 25 A parliamentary rat : one who deserts his own party when it
is losing.

10 10 "Jam proximus," etc. : ALneid, II, lines 311-312 : " Xow next
(to Deiphobus' house) Ucalegon (i.e. his house) blazes ! "

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

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

12 'j Quarter Sessions : This court is held in England in the coun-
ties by justices of the peace for the trial of minor criminal offenses and
to administer the poor laws, etc.

12 20 False echoes of Marengo: General Desaix was shot through
the heart at the battle of Marengo (June 14, 1800); he died without a
word, and his body was found by Kovigo (of. Memoirs of the Duke of
A'ovigo, London, 1835, Vol. I, p. 181), "stripped of his clothes, and
surrounded by other naked bodies." Napoleon, however, published
three different versions of an heroic and devoted message from Desaix
to himself, the original version being: "Go, tell the First Consul that
I die with this regret, — that I have not done enough for posterity."
(Cf. Lanfrey, History of Napoleon the First, 2d ed., London, 18S6,

NOTES 107

Vol. IT, p. 39.) Napoleon himself was credited likewise with the words
De Quincey adopts. " Why is it not permitted me to weep " is one
version (Bussey, History of Napoleon, London, 1840, Vol. I, p. 302).
Cf. Hazlitt, Life of Napoleon, 2d ed., London, 1852, Vol. II, p. 317,
footnote.

12 (footnote) The cry of the foundering line-of-battle ship " Vengeur ":
On the 1st of June, 1794, the English fleet under Lord Howe defeated
the French under Villaret-Joyeuse, taking six ships and sinking a sev-
enth, the Vengeur. This ship sank, as a matter of fact, with part of her
crew on board, imploring aid which there was not time to give them.
Some two hundred and fifty men had been taken off by the English ;
the rest were lost. On the 9th of July Barrere published a report set-
ting forth " how the Vengeur, . . . being entirely disabled, . . . refused to
strike, though sinking; how the enemies fired on her, but she returned
their fire, shot aloft all her tricolor streamers, shouted Vive la Republique,
. . . and so, in this mad whirlwind of fire and shouting and invincible
despair, went down into the ocean depths ; Vive la Republique and a
universal volley from the upper deck being the last sounds she made."
Cf. Carlyle, Sinking of the Vengeur, and French Revolution, Book XVIII,
Chap. VI.

12 (footnote) La Garde meurt, etc. : " This phrase, attributed to Cam-
bronne, who was made prisoner at Waterloo, was vehemently denied by
him. It was invented by Rougemont, a prolific author of mots, two
days after the battle, in the Indipendant." — Fournier's U Esprit dans
VHistoire, trans. Bartlett, Familiar Quotations, p. 661.

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

False, fleeting, perjured Clarence.

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

14 9 But on our side . . . was a tower of moral strength, etc. : Cf.
Shakespeare, Richard III, Act V, sc. iii, 11. 12-13:

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

14 20 Felt my heart burn within me : Cf. Luke xxiv. 32.
14 32 A very fine story from one of our elder dramatists : The dram-
atist in question has not been identified. I am indebted indirectly to

108 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

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

15 l Omrahs . . . from Agra and Lahore : There seems to be a remi-
niscence here of Wordsworth's Prelude, Book X, 11. 18-20:

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

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

15 23 The 6th of Edward Longshanks : a De Quinceyan jest, of
course. This would refer to a law of the sixth year of Fdward I, or
1278, but there are but fifteen chapters in the laws of that year.

16 8 Not magna loquimur, . . . but vivimus : not "we speak great
things," but " we live " them.

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

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

19 .") About Waterloo: i.e. about 181 5. This phrase is one of many
that indicate the deep impression made by this event upon the English
mind. Cf. p. 58.

19 17 " Say, all our praises," etc. : Cf. Pope, Moral Essays: Epistle
III, Of the Use of Riches, 11. 249-250:

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

20 :t Turrets : " Tourettes fyled rounde " appears in Chaucer's
Knight's Tale, 1. 1294, where it means the ring on a dog's collar

NOTES 109

through which the leash was passed. Skeat explains torets as " prob-
ably eyes in which rings will turn round, because each eye is a little
larger than the thickness of the ring." Cf. Chaucer's Treatise on the
Astrolabe, Part I, sec. 2, " This ring renneth in a maner turet," " this
ring runs in a kind of eye." But Chaucer does not refer to harness.

21 2 Mr. Waterton tells me : Charles Waterton, the naturalist, was
born in 1782 and died in 1865. His tVaiideri/igs in South America was
published in 1825.

23 11 Earth and her children: This paragraph is about one fifth of
the length of the corresponding paragraph as it appeared in Blackwood.
For the longer version see Masson's ed., Vol. XIII, p. 2S9, note 2.

24 14 The General Post-Office : The present office was opened Sept.
23, 1829. St. Martin's-le-Grand is a church within the "city" of Lon-
don, so named to distinguish it from St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, which
faces what is now Trafalgar Square, and is, as the name indicates, out-
side the " city." The street takes its name from the church.

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

29 33 A "Courier" evening paper, containing the gazette: A gazette
was originally one of the three official papers of the kingdom ; afterwards
any official announcement, as this of a great victory.

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

31 27 The inspiration of God, etc.: This is an indication — more
interesting than agreeable, perhaps — of the heights to which the martial
ardor of De Quincey's toryism rises.

33 13 Caesar the Dictator, at his last dinner-party, etc.: related by Sue-
tonius in his life of Julius Caesar, Chap. LXXXVII: "The day before
he died, some discourse occurring at dinner in M. Lepidus' house upon
that subject, which was the most agreeable way of dying, he expressed
his preference for what is sudden and unexpected " {repentinum inopina-
tumque praetulerat). The story is told by Plutarch and Appian also.

35 13 Bia.0ava.TOs : "De Quincey has evidently taken this from John
Donne's treatise: BIA9ANAT02, A Declaration 0/ that Paradoxe or

no SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

Thesis, That Self-homicide is not so naturally Sin, that it may never be
otherwise, 1644. See his paper on Suicide, etc., Masson's ed., VIII, 398
[Riverside, IX, 209]. But not even Donne's precedent justifies the word
formation. The only acknowledged compounds are piato-davaaia, ' violent
death,' and Picuo-ddvaros, ' dying a violent death.' Even fily. ddvaros,
' death by violence,' is not classical." — Hart. But the form fiiaddvaros
is older than Donne and is said to be common in MSS. It should be
further remarked that neither of the two compounds cited is classical.
As to De Quincey's interpretation of Caesar's meaning here, cf. Meri-
vale's History of the Romans under the Empire, Chap. XXI, where
he translates Caesar's famous reply: "That which is least expected."
Cf. also Shakespeare, Julius Casar, Act II, sc. ii, 1. 33.

37 25 "Nature, from her seat," etc.: Cf. Milton's Paradise Lost,
Book IX, 11. 780-784 :

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

38 2 So scenical, etc. : De Quincey's love for effects of this sort
appears everywhere. Cf. the opening paragraphs of the Revolt of the
Tartars, Masson's ed., Vol. VII ; Riverside ed., Vol. XII.

39 \ Jus dominii : " the law of ownership," a legal term.

39 14 Jus gentium : " the law of nations," a legal term.

39:30 " Monstrum horrendum," etc. : &neid, III, 658. Polyphemus,
one of the Cyclopes, whose eye was put out by Ulysses, is meant. Cf.
Odyssey, IX, 371 et sea. ; sEneid, III, 630 et sec/.

40 l One of the Calendars, etc. : The histories of the three Calenders,
sons of kings, will be found in most selections from the Arabian Nights.
A Calender is one of an order of Dervishes founded in the fourteenth
century by an Andalusian Arab; they are wanderers who preach in
market places and live by alms.

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

40 12 Under this eminent man, etc. : For these two sentences the
original in Blackwood had this, with its addition of good De Quinceyan
doctrine : " I used to call him Cyclops Afastii,rophorus, Cyclops the Whip-
bearer, until I observed that his skill made whips useless, except to
fetch off an impertinent fly from a leader's head, upon which I changed
his Grecian name to Cyclops Diphrelates (Cyclops the Charioteer). I,

NOTES in

and others known to me, studied under him the diphrelatic art. Excuse,
reader, a word too elegant to be pedantic. And also take this remark
from me as a gage d'amitie — that no word ever was or can be pedantic
which, by supporting a distinction, supports the accuracy of logic, or
which fills up a chasm for the understanding."

41 l Some people have called me procrastinating : Cf. Page's (Japp's)
Life, Chap. XIX, and Japp's De Quincey Memorials, Vol. II, pp. 45, 47, 49.

42 11 The whole Pagan Pantheon: i.e. all the gods put together;
from the Greek lldvdewv, a temple dedicated to all the gods.

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

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

44 (footnote) " Giraldus Cambrensis," or Gerald de Barry (n 46-1 220),
was a Welsh historian ; one of his chief works is the Itinerarium Cambrice,
or Voyage in Wales.

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

49 8 The shout of Achilles : Cf. Homer, Iliad, XVIII, 217 et sea.

50 10 Buying it, etc. : De Quincey refers, no doubt, to the pay of
common soldiers and to the practice of employing mercenaries.

52 1 Faster than ever mill-race, etc. : the change in the wording of
this sentence in De Quincey's revision is, as Masson remarks, particu-
larly characteristic of his sense of melody ; it read in Blackwood, " We
ran past them faster than ever mill-race in our inexorable flight."

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

53 18 " Whence the sound," etc. : Paradise Lost, Book XI, 11. 558-563.

54 3 Woman's Ionic form : In thus using the word Ionic, De Quincey
doubtless has in mind the character of Ionic architecture, with its tall
and graceful column, differing from the severity of the Doric on the
one hand and from the floridity of the Corinthian on the other. Prob-
ably he is thinking of a caryatid. Cf. the following version of the old
story of the origin of the styles of Greek architecture in Vitruvius, IV,

112 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

Chap. I (Gwilt's translation), quoted by Hart : " They measured a man's
foot, and finding its length the sixth part of his height, they gave the
column a similar proportion, that is, they made its height six times the
thickness of the shaft measured at the base. Thus the Doric order
obtained its proportion, its strength, and its beauty from the human
figure. With a similar feeling they afterward built the Temple of Diana.
But in that, seeking a new proportion, they used the female figure as a
standard ; and for the purpose of producing a more lofty effect they
first made it eight times its thickness in height. Under it they placed
a base, after the manner of a shoe to the foot ; they also added volutes
to its capita], like graceful curling hair hanging on each side, and the
front they ornamented with cymatia and festoons in the place of hair.
On the shafts they sunk channels, which bear a resemblance to the folds
of a matronal garment. Thus two orders were invented, one of a mas-
culine character, without ornament, the other bearing a character which
resembled the delicacy, ornament, and proportion of a female. The
successors of these people, improving in taste, and preferring a more
slender proportion, assigned seven diameters to the height of the Doric
column, and eight and a half to the Ionic."

55 3 Corymbi : clusters of fruit or flowers.

55 28 Quarrel : the bolt of a crossbow, an arrow having a square,
or four-edged head (from Middle Latin quadrellus, diminutive of quaJ-
rum, a square).

58 20 Waterloo and Recovered Christendom! Cf. note 19 3.

61 20 Then a third time the trumpet sounded : There are throughout
this passage, as Dr. Cooper remarks, many reminiscences of the language
of the Book of Revelation. Cf. this with Revelation viii. io; cf. 61 28
with Revelation xii. 5, and 62 5 with ix. 13.

63 29 The endless resurrections of His love : The following, which
Masson prints as a postscript, was a part of Do Quincey's introduction
to the volume of the Collective Edition containing this piece:

"'The English M ail-Coach.'— This little paper, according to my origi-
nal intention, formed part of the ' Suspiria de Profundi* ' ; from which, for a
momentary purpose, I did not scruple to detach it, and to publish it apart, as
sufficiently intelligible even when dislocated from its place in a larger whole.
To my surprise, however, one or two critics, not carelessly in conversation, but
deliberately in print, professed their inability to apprehend the meaning of the
whole, or to follow the links of the connexion between its several parts. I am
myself as little able to understand where the difficulty lies, or to detect any
lurking obscurity, as these critics found themselves to unravel my logic. Possi-
bly I may not be an indifferent and neutral judge in such a case. I will therefore

NOTES 113

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 1 was able to give
them a most hurried warning of their danger; but even that not until they
stood within the very shadow of the catastrophe, being divided from the most
frightful of deaths by scarcely more, if more at all, than seventy seconds.

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

" But a movement of horror, and of spontaneous recoil from this dreadful
scene, naturally carried the whole of that scene, raised and idealised, into my
dreams, and very soon into a rolling succession of dreams. The actual scene,
as looked down upon from the box of the mail, was transformed into a dream, as
tumultuous and changing as a musical fugue. This troubled dream is circum-
stantially reported in Section the Third, entitled ' Dream-Fugue on the theme
of Sudden Death.' What I had beheld from my seat upon the mail, — the
scenical strife of action and passion, of anguish and fear, as I had there witnessed
them moving in ghostly silence, — this duel between life and death narrowing
itself to a point of such exquisite evanescence as the collision neared : all these
elements of the scene blended, under the law of association, with the pre-
vious and permanent features of distinction investing the mail itself ; which
features at that time lay — 1st, in velocity unprecedented, 2dly, in the power
and beauty of the horses, 3dly, in the official connexion with the government of a
great nation, and, 4thly, in the function, almost a consecrated function, of pub-
lishing 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 combina-
tion of features which grouped themselves together at the point of approaching

114 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

collision — viz. an arrow-like section of the road, six hundred yards long, under
the solemn lights described, with lofty trees meeting overhead in arches. The
guard's horn, again — a humble instrument in itself — was yet glorified as the
organ of publication for so many great national events. And the incident of
the Dying Trumpeter, who rises from a marble bas-relief, and carries a marble
trumpet to his marble lips for the purpose of warning the female infant, was
doubtless secretly suggested by my own imperfect effort to seize the guard's
horn, and to blow the warning blast. Hut the Dream knows best; and the
Dream, I say again, is the responsible party."'

JOAN OF ARC

This article appeared originally in Taifs Magazine for March and
August, 1847 ; it was reprinted by De Quincey in 1S54 in the third
volume of his Collected Writings. It is found in Works, Masson's ed.,
Vol. V, pp. 384-416; Riverside ed., Vol. VI, pp. 178-215.

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

65 14 Vaucouleurs : a town near Domremy; cf. p. 70.

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

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

66 -J5 The lilies of France : the royal emblem of France from very
early times until the Revolution of 17S9, when "the wrath of God and
man combined to wither them."

67 5 M. Michelet: Jules Michelet (17^8-1874) is said to have spent
forty years in the preparation of his great work, the History of France.
Cf. the same, translated by G. II. Smith, 2 vols., Appleton, Vol. II,
pp. 119-169; ox Joan of Arc, from Michelet's History of France, trans-
lated by O. W. Wight, New Vork, 1858.

67 8 Recovered liberty: The Revolution of 1830 had expelled the
restored Bourbon kings.

67 20 The book against priests : Michelet's lectures as professor of
history in the College de France, in which he attacked the Jesuits,
were published as follows : Des fesuites, 1843 '■> &u Frctre, Je la Femme
et de la Famille, 1844; Du Feufle, 1845. To the second De Quincey
apparently refers.

67 26 Back to the falconer's lure: The lure was a decoy used to
recall the hawk to its perch, — sometimes a dead pigeon, sometimes an
artificial bird, with some meat attached.

NOTES 115

68 6 On the model of Lord Percy: These lines, as Professor Hart
notes, in Percy's Folio, ed. Hales and Furnivall, Vol. II, p. 7, run:

The stout Erie of Northumberland

a vow to God did make,
his pleasure in the Scottish woods

3 somwers days to take.

68 27 Pucelle d'Orleans : Maid of Orleans (the city on the Loire which
Joan saved).

69 l The collection, etc. : The work meant is Quicherat, Prods de
Condamnation et Rehabilitation de Jeatuie d'Arc, 5 vols., Paris, 1841-
1849. Cf. De Quincey's note.

69 21 Delenda est Anglia Victrix ! " Victorious England must be de-
stroyed ! " Cf. Delenda est Carthago ! " Carthage must be destroyed ! "
Delenda est Karthago is the version of Floras (II, 15) of the words used
by Cato the Censor, just before the Third Punic War, whenever he was
called upon to record his vote in the Senate on any subject under
discussion.

69 27 Hyder Ali (1 702-1 782), a Mahometan adventurer, made himself
maharajah of Mysore and gave the English in India serious trouble;
he was defeated in 1782 by Sir Eyre Coote. Tippoo Sahib, his son and
successor, proved less dangerous and was finally killed at Seringapatam
in 1799.

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

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

70 10 Magnanimous justice of Englishmen : As Professor Hart ob-
serves, the treatment of Joan in Henry VI is hardly magnanimous.

71 29 That odious man : Cf. pp. 79-80.

72 12 Three great successive battles: Rudolf of Lorraine fell at
Crecy (1346) ; Frederick of Lorraine at Agincourt (141 5) ; the battle of
Nicopolis, which sacrificed the third Lorrainer, took place in 1396.

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

u6 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

74 2 The famines, etc. : Horrible famines occurred in France and
England in 131 5, 1336, and 1353. Such insurrections as Wat Tyler's,
in 1 38 1, are probably in De Quincey's mind.

74 G The termination of the Crusades : The Crusades came to an end
about 1 27 1. "The ulterior results of the crusades," concludes Cox in
Encyclopaedia Britannica, " were the breaking up of the feudal system,
the abolition of serfdom, the supremacy of a common law over the
independent jurisdiction of chiefs who claimed the right of private wars."

74 7 The destruction of the Templars: This most famous of the mili-
tary orders, founded in the twelfth century for the defense of the Latin
kingdom of Jerusalem, having grown so powerful as to be greatly feared,
was suppressed at the beginning of the fourteenth century.

74 7 The Papal interdicts: " Ue Quincey has probably in mind
such an interdict as that pronounced in 1200, by Innocent III, against
France. All ecclesiastical functions were suspended and the land was
in desolation." — Mart. England was put under interdict several times,
as in 1 1 70 (for the murder of Becket) and 1208.

74 8 The tragedies caused or suffered by the house of Anjou, and by
the Emperor : " The Emperor is Konradin, the last of the Hohenstaufen,
beheaded by Charles of Anjou at Naples, 1268. The subsequent cruel-
ties of Charles in Sicily caused the popular uprising known as the
Sicilian Vespers, 1282, in which many thousands of Frenchmen were
assassinated." — Hart.

74 10 The colossal figure of feudalism, etc. : The English yeomen at
Crecy, overpowering the mounted knights of France, took from feudal-
ism its chief support, — the superiority of the mounted knight to the
unmounted yeoman. Cf. Green, History of the English People, Book IV,
Chap. II.

74 la The abominable spectacle of a double Pope: For thirty-eight
years this paradoxical state of things endured.

75 15 The Roman martyrology : a list of the martyrs of the Church,
arranged according to the order of their festivals, and with accounts of
their lives and sufferings.

76 4 "Abbeys there were," etc. : Cf. Wordsworth, Peter Bell, Part

Second: ,

Temples like those among the Hindoos,

And mosques, and spires, and abbey windows,

And castles all with ivy green.

76 )7 The Vosges . . . have never attracted much notice, etc. : They
came into like prominence after De Quincey's day in the Franco- Prussian
War of 1S70.

NOTES 117

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

76 33 That ancient stag : See Englische Studien, Vol. V, p. 16, where
additions are made to the following account from Hardwicke's Tradi-
tions, Superstitions, and Folk-Lore, Manchester and London, 1872, p. 154 :

This chasing of the white doe or the white hart by the spectre huntsman has
assumed various forms. According to Aristotle a white hart was killed by
Agathocles, King of Sicily, which a thousand years beforehand had been conse-
crated to Diana by Diomedes. Alexander the Great is said by Pliny to have
caught a white stag, placed a collar of gold about its neck, and afterwards set it
free. Succeeding heroes have in after days been announced as the capturers of
this famous white hart. Julius Ca:sar took the place of Alexander, and Charle-
magne caught a white hart at both Magdeburg, and in the Holstein woods. In
1 1 72 William [Henry] the Lion is reported to have accomplished a similar feat,
according to a Latin inscription on the walls of Lubeck Cathedral. Tradition
says the white hart has been caught on Rothwell Hay Common, in Yorkshire,
and in Windsor Forest.

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

77 4 Or, being upon the marches of France, a marquis : Marquis is
derived from march, and was originally the title of the guardian of the
frontier, or march.

77 13 Agreed with Sir Roger de Coverley that a good deal might be
said on both sides : This expression, as has been pointed out to me, is
from the middle of Spectator No. 122, where Sir Roger, having been
appealed to on a question of fishing privileges, replied, " with an air of
a man who would not give his judgment rashly, that much might be said
on both sides." It is likely, however, that De Quincey may have con-
nected it in his mind with the discussion of witchcraft at the beginning
of Spectator No. 117, where Addison balances the grounds for belief
and unbelief somewhat as De Quincey does here.

78 7 Bergereta : a very late Latin form of PYench bergcrette, "a
shepherdess."

78 15 M. Simond, in his " Travels " : The reference is to Journal of
a Tour and Residence in Great Britain during the years 1810 and
1811, by Louis Simond, 2d ed. (Edinburgh, 1817), to which is added

Il8 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

an appendix on France, written in December, 1 Si 5, and October, 1816.
De Quincey refers to this story with horror several times, but such
scenes are not yet wholly unknown.

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

79 22 " Chevalier, as-tu donne," etc. : "Chevalier, have you fed the
hog?" "Ma fille," etc. : " My daughter, have you," etc. "Pucelle,"
etc. : " Maid of Orleans, have you saved the lilies (i.e. France)? "

79 28 If the man that turnips cries : Cf. Johnsoniana, ed. R. Napier,
London, 1884, where, in Anecdotes of Johnson, by Mrs. Piozzi, p. 29, is
found : " 'T is a mere play of words (added he) " — Johnson is speak-
ing of certain " verses by Lopez de Vega " — " and you might as well

say, that

" If the man who turnips cries,

Cry not when his father dies,

'T is a proof that he had rather

Have a turnip than his father."

This reference is given in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.

80 1 The Oriflamme of France : the red banner of St. Denis, pre-
served in the abbey of that name, near Paris, and borne before the
French king as a consecrated flag.

80 22 Twenty years after, talking with Southey : In 1816 De Quin-
cey was a resident of Grasmere ; Southey lived for many years at
Keswick, a few miles away; they met first in 1807. For De Quincey's
estimate of Southey's Joan of Arc, see Works, Riverside ed., Vol. VI,
pp. 262-266; Masson's ed., Vol. V, pp. 23S-242.

80 26 Chinon is a little town near Tours.

81 3 She " pricks " for sheriffs : The old custom was to prick with
a pin the names of those chosen by the sovereign for sheriffs.

82 9 Ampulla: the flask containing the sacred oil used at corona-
tions.

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

82 in Drawn from the ovens of Rheims : Rheims, where the kings of
France were crowned, was famous for its biscuits and gingerbread.

NOTES ng

82 26 Tindal's " Christianity as old as the Creation " : Matthew Tindal
( 1 657-1 732) published this work in 1732 ; its greatest interest lies in the
fact that to this book more than to any other Butler's Analogy was a
reply. Tindal's argument was that natural religion, as taught by the
deists, was complete ; that no revelation was necessary. A life accord-
ing to nature is all that the best religion can teach. Such doctrine as
this Joan preached in the speech ascribed to her.

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

83 9 That divine passage in "Paradise Regained": from Book I,
11. 196-205.

84 34 Patay is near Orleans ; Troyes was the capital of the old
province of Champagne.

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

87 24 Made prisoner by the Burgundians : The English have accused
the French officers of conniving at Joan's capture through jealousy of
her successes. Compiegne is fifty miles northeast of Paris.

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

87 :so "Bishop that art," etc.: Cf. Shakespeare's Macbeth, Act I,
sc. v, 1. 13.

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

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

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

89 31 For a less cause than martyrdom : Cf. Genesis ii. 24.

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

120 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y

91 30 Luxor. See note 13 27.

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

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

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

93 20 " Foule face " : Foule formerly meant " ugly. "

93 21 Holinshead : Raphael Holinshed died about 15S0. His great
work, Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, was used by Shake-
speare as the source of several plays. He writes of Joan : "Of favor
[appearance] was she counted likesome ; of person stronglie made, and
manlie ; of courage, great, hardie, and stout withall."

94 (footnote) Satanic: This epithet was applied to the work of
some of his contemporaries by Southey in the preface to his Vision of
Judgement, 182 1. It has been generally assumed that Byron and Shelley
are meant. See Introduction to Byron's Vision of Judgment in the new
Murray edition of Byron, Vol. IV.

96 (footnote) Burgoo : a thick oatmeal gruel or porridge used by sea-
men. According to the New English Dictionary the derivation is un-
known; but in the Athenceum, Oct. 6, 188S, quoted by Hart, the word is
explained as a corruption of Arabic burghul.

101 30 English Prince, Regent of France : John, Duke of Bedford,
uncle of Henry VI. " In genius for war as in political capacity," says
J. R. Green, " John was hardly inferior to Henry [the Fifth, his brother]
himself" (A History of the English People, Book IV, Chap. VI).

101 31 My Lord of Winchester: Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Win-
chester, half-brother of Henry IV. lie was the most prominent Eng-
lish prelate of his time and was the only Englishman in the Court that
condemned Joan. As to the story of his death, to which De Quincey
alludes, see Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI, Act III, sc. iii. Beaufort became
cardinal in 1426.

102 17 Who is this that cometh from Domremy? This is an evident
imitation of the famous passage from Isaiah lxiii. 1 : " Who is this
that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah ?" " Bloody
coronation robes" is rather obscure, but probably refers to the fact
that Joan had shed her own blood to bring about the coronation of

NOTES 121

her sovereign ; she is supposed to have appeared in armor at the actual
coronation ceremony, and this armor might with reason be imagined as
" bloody."

102 22 She . . . shall take my lord's brief : that is, she shall act
as the bishop's counsel. In the case of Beauvais, as in that of Win-
chester, it must be remembered that in all monarchical countries the
bishops are " lords spiritual," on an equality with the greater secular
nobles, the " lords temporal."

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