This point of view is not only historically true, but replete, we think, with poetic interest. The maiden is not, indeed, invested with any supernatural attributes; we see her here neither more nor less than the pious and day-dreaming enthusiast; but an enthusiast for her country--an enthusiast for a young prince whom she has been taught to honour, and whose reverse of fortune has deeply affected her. We see this young enthusiast--her imagination swarming with visions, her heart beating with generous aspirations--thrown out from her village retirement upon the tumult of war; we see her snatched up, as by a whirlwind, by the fanaticism of the multitude, who bear her, as she bears her banner, onwards in their career, and conquer under this new standard they have reared. We see her arriving at a success which, notwithstanding her own prophecies, must have astonished herself. When the king has been crowned at Rheims, something whispers to her that she ought now to retreat into her native village, or, what was the only fitting termination for her course, into some religious house, and find there a harbour from the tempest on which she is tossing. But the selfish men around her will not let her go. She may guide them a little yet. They bear the torch while there is an ember left. Then comes the changeful fortune of war, defeat and imprisonment; and now we see the same poor human heart, its visions soiled and clouded, its courage beaten down, surrounded only by enemies and scoffers, beginning even to suspect itself of imposture and impiety. She who had felt as a saint, hears herself exorcised as a sorcerer; and, by and by, a crowd of men, churchmen and civilians, stand round in triumph to see her burnt and consumed as a thing unholy and impure, whose life had been, not, as she had deemed, a perpetual devotion, but a perpetual blasphemy.