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shepherd boy from the hills and forests of Judea-rose suddenly out of the quiet, out of the safety, out of the religious inspiration, rooted in deep pastoral solitudes, to a station in the van of armies, and to the more perilous station at the right hand of kings? The Hebrew boy inaugurated his patriotic mission by an act, by a victorious act, such as no man could deny.1 But so did the girl of Lorraine, if we read her story as it was read by those who saw her nearest. Adverse armies bore witness to the boy as no pretender; but so they did to the gentle girl. Judged by the voices of all who saw them from a station of good will, both were found true and loyal to any promises involved in their first acts. Enemies it was that made the difference between their subsequent fortunes. The boy rose to a splendour and a noonday prosperity, both personal and public, that rang through the records of his people, and became a byword among his posterity for a thousand years, until the sceptre was departing from Judah.2 The poor forsaken girl, on the contrary, drank not herself from that cup of rest which she had secured for France. She never sang together with the songs that rose in her native Domrémy as echoes to the departing steps of invaders. She mingled not in the festal dances at Vaucouleurs3 which celebrated in rapture the redemption of France. No! for her voice was then silent; no! for her feet were dust. Pure, innocent, noble-hearted girl! whom, from earliest youth, ever I believed in as full of truth and self-sacrifice, this was among the strongest pledges for thy truth, that never once -no, not for a moment of weakness-didst thou revel in the vision of coronets and honour from man. Coronets for thee! Oh, no! Honours, if they come when all is over, are for those that share thy blood. Daughter of Domrémy, when the gratitude of thy king shall awaken, thou wilt be sleeping the sleep of the dead. Call her, king of France, but she will not hear thee. Cite her by the apparitors to come and receive a robe of honour, but she will be found en con tumace.5 When the thunders of universal France, as even yet may happen,† shall proclaim the grandeur of the poor shepherd girl that gave up all for her country, thy ear, young shepherd girl, will have been deaf for five centuries. To suffer and to do, that was thy portion in this life, that was thy destiny; and not for a moment was it hidden from thyself. Life, thou saidst, is short;

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and the sleep which is in the grave is long; let me use that life, so transitory, for the glory of those heavenly dreams destined to comfort the sleep which is so long! This pure creature— pure from every suspicion of even a visionary self-interest, even as she was pure in senses more obvious-never once did this holy child, as regarded herself, relax from her belief in the darkness that was travelling to meet her. She might not prefigure the very manner of her death; she saw not in vision, perhaps, the aërial altitude of the fiery scaffold, the spectators without end, on every road, pouring into Rouens as to a coronation, the surging smoke, the volleying flames, the hostile faces all around, the pitying eye that lurked but here and there, until nature and imperishable truth broke loose from artificial restraints-these might not be apparent through the mists of the hurrying future. But the voice that called her to death, that she heard forever.

Great was the throne of France, even in those days, and great was he that sat upon it; but well Joanna knew that not the throne, nor he that sat upon it, was for her; but, on the contrary, that she was for them; not she by them, but they by her, should rise from the dust. Gorgeous were the lilies of France, and for centuries had the privilege to spread their beauty over land and sea, until, in another century, the wrath of God and man combined to wither them; but well Joanna knew, early at Domrémy she had read that bitter truth, that the lilies of France would decorate no garland for her. Flower nor bud, bell nor blossom, would ever bloom for her!

Bishop of Beauvais !s thy victim died in fire upon a scaffold-thou upon a down bed. But, for the departing minutes of life, both are oftentimes alike. At the farewell crisis, when the gates of death are opening, and flesh is resting from its struggles, oftentimes the tortured and the torturer have the same truce from carnal torment; both sink together into sleep; together both sometimes kindle into dreams. When the mortal mists were gathering fast upon you two, bishop and shepherd girl-when the pavilions of life were closing up their shadowy curtains about you-let us try, through the gigantic glooms, to decipher the flying features of your separate visions.

The shepherd girl that had delivered France -she, from her dungeon, she, from her baiting 6 The place of Joan's martyrdom.

7 The royal device of the fleur-de-lis.

8 The presiding judge at Joan's trial. He had played traitor to the French and abetted the English in this execution.

at the stake, she, from her duel with fire, as she | Oh, mercy! what a groan was that which the entered her last dream-saw Domrémy, saw the servants, waiting outside the bishop's dream at fountain of Domrémy, saw the pomp of forests his bedside, heard from his labouring heart, as in which her childhood had wandered. That at this moment he turned away from the founEaster festival which man had denied to her tain and the woman, seeking rest in the forests languishing heart-that resurrection of spring- afar off. Yet not so to escape the woman, time, which the darkness of dungeons had inter- whom once again he must behold before he dies. cepted from her, hungering after the glorious In the forests to which he prays for pity, will liberty of forests-were by God given back into he find a respite? What a tumult, what a her hands as jewels that had been stolen from gathering of feet is there! In glades where her by robbers. With those, perhaps (for the only wild deer should run, armies and nations minutes of dreams can stretch into ages), was are assembling; towering in the fluctuating given back to her by God the bliss of childhood. crowd are phantoms that belong to departed By special privilege for her might be created, hours. There is the great English Prince, in this farewell dream, a second childhood, inno- Regent of France. There is my Lord of Wincent as the first; but not, like that, sad with the chester, the princely cardinal, that died and gloom of a fearful mission in the rear. This made no sign. There is the Bishop of Beauvais, mission had now been fulfilled. The storm was clinging to the shelter of thickets. What buildweathered; the skirts even of that mighty ing is that which hands so rapidly are raising? storm were drawing off. The blood that she Is it a martyr's scaffold? Will they burn the was to reckon for had been exacted; the tears child of Domrémy a second time? No; it is a that she was to shed in secret had been paid to tribunal that rises to the clouds; and two nathe last. The hatred to herself in all eyes had tions stand around it, waiting for a trial. Shall heen faced steadily, had been suffered, had been my Lord of Beauvais sit again upon the survived. And in her last fight upon the scaf-judgment-seat, and again number the hours for fold she had triumphed gloriously; victoriously the innocent? Ah, no! he is the prisoner at she had tasted the stings of death. For all, the bar. Already all is waiting: the mighty except this comfort from her farewell dream, audience is gathered, the Court is hurrying to she had died-died amid the tears of ten thou- their seats, the witnesses are arrayed, the trumsand enemies-died amid the drums and trumpets are sounding, the judge is taking his place. pets of armies died amid peals redoubling upon Oh, but this is sudden! My Lord, have you no peals, volleys upon volleys, from the saluting counsel? "Counsel I have none; in heaven clarions of martyrs. above, or on earth beneath, counsellor there is Bishop of Beauvais! because the guilt-bur-none now that would take a brief from me: dened man is in dreams haunted and waylaid by all are silent." Is it, indeed, come to this? the most frightful of his crimes, and because Alas! the time is short, the tumult is wondrous, upon that fluctuating mirror-rising (like the the crowd stretches away into infinity; but yet mocking mirrors of mirage in Arabian deserts) I will search in it for somebody to take your from the fens of death-most of all are re-brief; I know of somebody that will be your flected the sweet countenances which the man counsel. Who is this that cometh from Domhas laid in ruins; therefore I know, bishop. 1émy? Who is she in bloody coronation robes that you also, entering your final dream, saw from Rheims ?10 Who is she that cometh with Domrémy. That fountain, of which the wit-blackened flesh from walking the furnaces of nesses spoke so much, showed itself to your eyes Rouen? This is she, the shepherd girl, counsellor in pure morning dews; but neither dews, nor that had none for herself, whom I choose, bishop, the holy dawn, could cleanse away the bright for yours. She it is, I engage, that shall take spots of innocent blood upon its surface. By my lord's brief. She it is, bishop, that would the fountain, bishop, you saw a woman seated, plead for you; yes, bishop, she-when heaven that hid her face. But, as you draw near, the and earth are silent. woman raises her wasted features. Would Domrémy know them again for the features of her child? Ah, but you know them, bishop, well!

9 See Shakespeare's II Henry VI. III, iii.
10 Joan was present at the coronation of Charles
VII. at Rheims-a coronation made possible
by her own martial exploits.

THE VICTORIAN AGE

THOMAS CARLYLE (1795-1881)

FROM SARTOR RESARTUS

should be carried of the spirit into grim Solitudes, and there fronting the Tempter do grimmest battle with him; defiantly setting him at naught, till he yield and fly. Name it as we

THE EVERLASTING YEA. FROM BOOK II, choose: with or without visible Devil, whether

CHAPTER IX*

"Temptations in the Wilderness! ''1 exclaims Teufelsdröckh: Have we not all to be tried with such? Not so easily can the old Adam, lodged in us by birth, be dispossessed. Our Life is compassed round with Necessity; yet is the meaning of Life itself no other than Freedom, than Voluntary Force; thus have we a warfare; in the beginning, especially, a hard-fought battle. For the God-given mandate, Work thou in Welldoing, lies mysteriously written, in Promethean Prophetic Characters, in our hearts; and leaves us no rest, night or day, till it be deciphered and obeyed; till it burn forth, in our conduct, a visible, acted Gospel of Freedom. And as the clay-given mandate, Eat thou and be filled, at the same time persuasively proclaims itself through every nerve, must there not be a confusion, a contest, before the better influence can become the upper?

"To me nothing seems more natural than that the Son of Man, when such God-given mandate first prophetically stirs within him, and the Clay must now be vanquished or vanquish,

1 See Luke, iv, 1, 2.

2 The name of Prometheus, the fabled defender of man against Jupiter's tyranny, means "fore- |

thought."

* Sartor Resartus, or “The Tailor Re-Tailored," is nominally a work on clothes: in reality, it is a philosophy, or rather gospel, of life. Carlyle poses as the editor merely, professing to have received the work in manuscript from a certain German Professor Teufelsdröckh" of

The

in the natural Desert of rocks and sands, or in the populous moral Desert of selfishness and baseness,―to such Temptation are we all called. Unhappy if we are not! Unhappy if we are but Half-men, in whom that divine handwriting has never blazed forth, all-subduing, in true sun-splendour; but quivers dubiously amid meaner lights: or smoulders, in dull pain, in darkness, under earthly vapours!--Our Wilder

ness is the wide World in an Atheistic Cen tury; our Forty Days are long years of suffering and fasting: nevertheless, to these also comes an end. Yes, to me also was given, if not Victory, yet the consciousness of Battle, and the resolve to persevere therein while life or faculty is left. To me also, entangled in the enchanted forests, demon-peopled, doleful of sight and of sound, it was given, after weariest wanderings, to work out my way into the higher sunlit slopes-of that Mountain which has no summit, or whose summit is in Heaven only!"

He says elsewhere, under a less ambitious figure; as figures are, once for all, natural to him: "Has not thy Life been that of most sufficient men (tüchtigen Männer) thou hast known in this generation? An outflush of foolish young Enthusiasm, like the first fallow-crop, wherein are as many weeds as valuable herbs: this all parched away, under the Droughts of practical and spiritual Unbelief, as Disappointment, in thought and act, often-repeated gave rise to Doubt, and Doubt gradually settled into Denial! If I have had a second-crop, and now see the perennial greensward, and sit under umbrageous cedars, which defy all Drought (and Doubt); herein too, be the Heavens praised, I am not without examples, and even

the University of "Weissnichtwo" (see Eng.
Lit., pp. 345-346). In the Second Book he
assumes to give the physical and spiritual
biography of the author as culled from imag
inary Paper-bags"-bundles of loose docu- exemplars."
ments-derived from the same.. source.
Professor, afflicted with personal sorrows, and
beset by religious and speculative doubts, has
set forth on a world-pilgrimage. In his men-
tal struggle he passes from the "Everlasting ow-hunting and shadow-hunted Pilgrimings of
No," a period of doubt and denial, through his were but some purifying "Temptation in
the "Centre of Indifference" to the "Everlast the Wilderness," before his apostolic work

ing Yea."

So that, for Teufelsdröckh also, there has been a "glorious revolution:" these mad shad

(such as it was) could begin; which Tempta- ing passage refers to his Locality, during this tion is now happily over, and the Devil once same "healing sleep; " that his Pilgrim-staff more worsted! Was that high moment in lies cast aside here on "the high table-land;" the Rue de l'Enfer,''s then, properly, the turn- and indeed that the repose is already taking ing point of the battle; when the Fiend said, wholesome effect on him? If it were not that Worship me, or be torn in shreds, and was the tone, in some parts, has more of riancy, answered valiantly with an Apage Satana?— even of levity, than we could have expected! Singular Teufelsdröckh, would thou hadst told However, in Teufelsdröckh, there is always the thy singular story in plain words! But it is strangest Dualism: light dancing, with guitarfruitless to look there, in those Paper-bags, for music, will be going on in the fore-court, while such. Nothing but innuendoes, figurative by fits from within comes the faint whimpering crotchets: a typical Shadow, fit fully wavering, of woe and wail. We transcribe the piece prophetico-satiric; no clear logical Picture. entire: "How paint to the sensual eye," asks he once, "what passes in the Holy-of-Holies of Man's Soul; in what words, known to these profane times, speak even afar off of the unspeakable?" We ask in turn: Why perplex these times, profane as they are, with needless obscurity, by omission and by commission? Not mystical only is our Professor, but whimsical; and involves himself, now more than ever, in eyebewildering chiaroscuro. Successive glimpses, here faithfully imparted, our more gifted readers must endeavour to combine for their own behoof.

"Beautiful it was to sit there, as in my skyey Tent, musing and meditating; on the high table-land, in front of the Mountains; over me, as roof, the azure Dome, and around me, for walls, four azure flowing curtains,— namely, of the Four azure Winds, on whose bottom-fringes also I have seen gilding. And then to fancy the fair Castles, that stood sheltered in these Mountain hollows; with their green flower lawns, and white dames and damosels, lovely enough: or better still, the strawroofed Cottages, wherein stood many a Mother baking bread, with her children round her:He says: "The hot Harmattan-winde had all hidden and protectingly folded-up in the raged itself out: its howl went silent within valley-folds; yet there and alive, as sure as if me; and the long-deafened soul could now hear. I beheld them. Or to see, as well as fancy, the I paused in my wild wanderings; and sat me nine Towns and Villages, that lay round my down to wait, and consider; for it was as if mountain-seat, which, in still weather, were the hour of change drew nigh. I seemed to wont to speak to me (by their steeple-bells) surrender, to renounce utterly, and say: Fly, with metal tongue; and, in almost all weather, then, false shadows of Hope; I will chase you proclaimed their vitality by repeated Smokeno more, I will believe you no more. And ye clouds; whereon, as on a culinary horologe, I too, haggard spectres of Fear, I care not for might read the hour of the day. For it was you; ye too are all shadows and a lie. Let me rest the smoke of cookery, as kind housewives at here: for I am way-weary and life-weary; I morning, midday, eventide, were boiling their will rest here, were it but to die: to die or to husbands' kettles; and ever a blue pillar rose live is alike to me; alike insignificant."—And up into the air, successively or simultaneously, again: "Here, then, as I lay in that CENTRE from each of the nine, saying, as plainly as of INDIFFERENCE; cast, doubtless by benignant smoke could say: Such and such a meal is upper Influence, into a healing sleep, the heavy getting ready here. Not uninteresting! For dreams rolled gradually away, and I awoke to you have the whole Borough, with all its lovea new Heaven and a new Earth. The first pre-makings and scandal-mongeries, contentions and liminary moral Act, Annihilation of Self contentments, as in miniature, and could cover (Selbst-tödtung), had been happily accom- it all with your hat.-If, in my wide Wayfarplished; and my mind's eyes were now un-ings, I had learned to look into the business sealed, and its hands ungyved." of the World in its details, here perhaps was

Might we not also conjecture that the follow- the place for combining it into general propositions, and deducing inferences therefrom. 3 Described in a previous chapter as a "dirty little" street in the French Capital where "Often also could I see the black Tempest fresh courage had suddenly come to him. This marching in passage Carlyle admitted to be autobiograph-round some Schreckhorn, as yet grim-blue, anger through the Distance: ical, and the street was Leith Walk, Edinburgh.

4 Get thee hence, Satan." Matthew, iv, 10.

5 light and shade

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would the eddying vapour gather, and there

laughing gayety

8 "Peak of Terror."

tumultuously eddy, and flow down like a mad witch's hair; till, after a space, it vanished, and, in the clear sunbeam, your Schreckhorn stood smiling grim-white, for the vapour had held snow. How thou fermentest and elaboratest in thy great fermenting-vat and laboratory of an Atmosphere, of a World, O Nature! Or what is Nature? Ha! why do I not name thee GOD? Art thou not the "Living Garment of God?" O Heavens, is it, in very deed, HE then that ever speaks through thee; that lives and loves in thee, that lives and loves in me? "Fore-shadows, call them rather fore-splendours, of that Truth, and Beginning of Truths, fell mysteriously over my soul. Sweeter than Dayspring to the Shipwrecked in Nova Zembla; ah, like the mother's voice to her little child that strays bewildered, weeping, in unknown tumults; like soft streamings of celestial music to my too-exasperated heart, came that Evangel. The Universe is not dead and demoniacal, a charnel-house with spectres: but godlike, and my Father's!

"With other eyes, too, could I now look upon my fellow man; with an infinite Love, an infinite Pity. Poor, wandering, wayward man! Art thou not tried, and beaten with stripes, even as I am? Ever, whether thou bear the royal mantle or the beggar's gabardine, art thou not so weary, so heavy-laden; and thy Bed of Rest is but a Grave. O my Brother, my Brother, why cannot I shelter thee in my bosom, and wipe away all tears from thy eyes! -Truly, the din of many-voiced Life, which in this solitude, with the mind's organ, I could hear, was no longer a maddening discord, but a melting one: like inarticulate cries, and sobbings of a dumb creature, which in the ear of Heaven are prayers. The poor Earth, with her poor joys, was now my needy Mother, not my cruel Stepdame; Man, with his so mad Wants and so mean Endeavours, had become the dearer to me; and even for his sufferings and his sins, I now first named him brother. Thus was I standing in the porch of that Sanctuary of Sorrow; by strange, steep ways, had I too been guided thither; and ere long its sacred gates would open, and the Divine Depth of Sorrow' lie disclosed to me."

The Professor says, he here first got eye on the Knot that had been strangling him, and straightway could unfasten it, and was free.

Carlyle got the suggestion for his comparison from the journal of William Barentz, a Dutch navigator who was shipwrecked in the winter

of 1596 on these Arctic islands, where the sun returns only after weeks of darkness. Compare the third note on Addison's paper on "Frozen Words," p. 298.

‘A vain interminable controversy,'' writes he. touching what is at present called Origin of Evil, or some such thing, arises in every soul, since the beginning of the world; and in every soul, that would pass from idle Suffering into actual Endeavouring, must first be put an end to. The most, in our time, have to go content with a simple, incomplete enough Suppression of this controversy; to a few, some Solution of it is indispensable. In every new era, too, such Solution comes out in different terms; and ever the Solution of the last era has become obsolete, and is found unserviceable. For it is man's nature to change his Dialect from century to century; he cannot help it though he would. The authentic Church-Catechism of our present century has not yet fallen into my hands: meanwhile, for my own private behoof, I attempt to elucidate the matter so. Man's Unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his Greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite. Will the whole Finance Ministers and Upholsterers and Confectioners of modern Europe undertake, in joint-stock company, to make one Shoeblack HAPPY? They cannot accomplish it, above an hour or two; for the Shoeblack also has a Soul quite other than his Stomach: and would require, if you consider it, for his permanent satisfaction and saturation, simply this allotment, no more, and no less: God's infinite Universe altog ther to himself, therein to enjoy infinitely, and fill every wish as fast as it rose. Oceans of Hochheimer,1 a Throat like that of Ophiuchus:2 speak not of them; to the infinite Shoeblack they are as nothing. No sooner is your ocean filled, than he grumbles that it might have been of better vintage. Try him with half of a Universe, of an Omnipotence, he sets to quarrelling with the proprietor of the other half, and declares himself the most maltreated of men.-Always there is a black spot in our sunshine: it is even, as I said, the Shadow of Ourselves.

"But the whim we have of Happiness is somewhat thus. By certain valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we come upon some sort of average terrestrial lot; this we fancy belongs to us by nature, and of indefeasible right. It is simple payment of our wages, of our deserts; requires neither thanks nor complaint: only such overplus as there may be do we account Happiness; any deficit again is Misery. Now consider that we have the valuation of our own deserts ourselves, and 1 Hock.

2 See Par. Lost, II, 708.

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