These are questions which I often ask, and yet I love not in old and musty records to meet with names which long ere this should have perished with the hearts upon which love had written them; for happier, surely, is woman, when in _one_ manly heart she has been "shrined a queen," than when upon some powerful throne she sits with an untrembling form, and an unquailing eye, to receive the homage, and command the services of loyal thousands. I love not to read of women transformed in all, save outward form, into one of the sterner sex; and when I see, in the memorials of the past, that this has apparently been done, I would fain overleap the barriers of bygone time, and know how it has been effected. Imagination goes back to the scenes which must have been witnessed then, and perhaps unaided portrays the minute features of the sketch, of which history has preserved merely the outlines. But I sometimes read of woman, when I would not know more of the places where she has rendered herself conspicuous; when there is something so noble and so bright in the character I have given her, that I fear a better knowledge of trivial incidents might break the spell which leads me to love and admire her; where, perhaps, the picture which my fancy has painted, glows in colors so brilliant, that a sketch by Truth would seem beside it but a sombre shadow. Joan of Arc is one of those heroines of history, who cannot fail to excite an interest in all who love to contemplate the female character. From the gloom of that dark age, when woman was but a plaything and a slave, she stands in bold relief, its most conspicuous personage. Not, indeed, as a queen, but as more than a queen, even the preserver of her nation's king; not as a conqueror, but as the savior of her country; not as a man, urged in his proud career by mad ambition's stirring energies, but as a woman, guided in her brilliant course by woman's noblest impulses--so does she appear in that lofty station which for herself she won. Though high and dazzling was the eminence to which she rose, yet "'twas not thus, oh 'twas not thus, her dwelling-place was found." Low in the vale of humble life was the maiden born and bred; and thick as is the veil which time and distance have thrown over every passage of her life yet that which rests upon her early days is most impenetrable. And much room is there here for the interested inquirer, and Imagination may rest almost unchecked amid the slight revelations of History.