Joan is a heroine--a woman of mighty power--wearing herself the habiliments of man, and guiding armies to battle and to victory; yet never to my eye is "the warrior-maid" aught but _woman_. The ruling passion, the spirit which nerved her arm, illumed her eye, and buoyed her heart, was woman's faith. Ay, it was _power_--and call it what ye may--say it was enthusiasm, fanaticism, madness--or call it, if ye will, what those _did_ name it who burned Joan at the stake,--still it was power, the power of woman's firm, undoubting faith. I should love to go back into Joan's humble home--that home which the historian has thought so little worthy of his notice; and in imagination I _must_ go there, even to the very cradle of her infancy, and know of all those influences which wrought the mind of Joan to that fearful pitch of wild enthusiasm, when she declared herself the inspired agent of the Almighty. Slowly and gradually was the spirit trained to an act like this; for though, like the volcano's fire, its instantaneous bursting forth was preceded by no prophet-herald of its coming--yet Joan of Arc was the same Joan ere she was maid of Orleans; the same high-souled, pure and imaginative being, the creature of holy impulses, and conscious of superior energies. It must have been so; _a superior mind may burst upon the world, but never upon itself_: there must be a feeling of sympathy with the noble and the gifted, a knowledge of innate though slumbering powers. The neglected eaglet may lie in its mountain nest, long after the pinion is fledged; but it will fix its unquailing eye upon the dazzling sun, and feel a consciousness of strength in the untried wing; but let the mother-bird once call it forth, and far away it will soar into the deep blue heavens, or bathe and revel amidst the tempest-clouds--and henceforth the eyrie is but a resting place. As the diamond is formed, brilliant and priceless, in the dark bowels of the earth, even so, in the gloom of poverty, obscurity, and toil, was formed the mind of Joan of Arc.--Circumstances were but the jeweller's cutting, which placed it where it might more readily receive the rays of light, and flash them forth with greater brilliancy. I have said, that I must in imagination go back to the infancy of Joan, and note the incidents which shed their silent, hallowed influence upon her soul, until she stands forth an inspired being, albeit inspired by naught but her own imagination. The basis of Joan's character is religious enthusiasm: this is the substratum, the foundation of all that wild and mighty power which made _her_, the peasant girl, the savior of her country. But the flame must have been early fed; it was not merely an elementary portion of her nature, but it was one which was cherished in infancy, in childhood and in youth, until it became the master-passion of her being.