Joan, the child of the humble and the lowly, was also the daughter of the fervently religious. The light of faith and hope illumes their little cot; and reverence for all that is good and true, and a trust which admits no shade of fear or doubt, is early taught the gentle child. Though "faith in God's own promises" was mingled with superstitious awe of those to whom all were then indebted for a knowledge of the truth; though priestly craft had united the wild and false with the pure light of the gospel: and though Joan's religion was mingled with delusion and error,--still it comprised all that is fervent, and pure, and truthful, in the female heart. The first words her infant lips are taught to utter, are those of prayer--prayer, mayhap, to saints or virgin; but still to her _then_ and in all after-time, the aspirations of a spirit which delights in communion with the Invisible. She grows older, and still, amid ignorance, and poverty, and toil, the spirit gains new light and fervor. With a mind alive to everything that is high and holy, she goes forth into a dark and sinful world, dependent upon her daily toil for daily bread; she lives among the thoughtless and the vile; but like that plant which opens to nought but light and air, and shrinks from all other contact--so her mind, amid the corruptions of the world, is shut to all that is base and sinful, though open and sensitive to that which is pure and noble. "Joan," says the historian, "was a tender of stables in a village inn." Such was her outward life; but there was for her _another_ life, a life within that life. While the hands perform low, menial service, the soul untrammelled is away, and revelling amidst its own creations of beauty and of bliss. She is silent and abstracted; always alone among her fellows--for among them all she sees no kindred spirit; she finds none who can touch the chords within her heart, or respond to their melody, when she would herself sweep its harp-strings. Joan has no friends; far less does she ever think of earthly lovers; and who would love _her_, the wild and strange Joan! though perhaps, the gloomy, dull, and silent one; but that soul, whose very essence is fervent zeal and glowing passion, sends forth in secrecy and silence its burning love upon the unconscious things of earth. She talks to the flowers, and the stars, and the changing clouds; and their voiceless answers come back to her soul at morn, and noon, and stilly night. Yes, Joan loves to go forth in the darkness of eve, and sit, "Beneath the radiant stars, still burning as they roll, And sending down their prophecies into her fervent soul;"