The momentary gratitude was such as we have above described it; but what was the conduct of the king she had saved, when she became a captive? After she had fulfilled her mission, and effected the consecration of the king at Reims, she wished to retire, “to be taken back,” as she said, “to her father and mother, and keep their sheep and tend to their cattle.” But Charles’s captains had found the value of the enthusiasm she created, and refused to let her go. She, however, never was again as she had been; if she had had any faith in the divinity of her mission, with its completion it was gone. She was wounded at the siege of Paris, and was afterwards taken prisoner. As no Englishman can speak of her death without a blush, we will pass over that in humbled silence; but what shall we say for her king, who owed her so much, who heard of her imprisonment and death with the utmost indifference, and did not make the least effort to save her, or mitigate the horrors of her punishment? It was twenty-five years before he bethought himself of doing her memory justice: but Charles VII. was then a very different man from what he had been when he was so deeply indebted to Joan of Arc. Joan of Arc is one of those remarkable characters who have achieved miracles by working upon the current superstitions of the times they lived in. To what a degree they were superstitious, we may judge by the one instance of the duchess of Gloucester, the wife of the king’s uncle, being tried and punished to the full extent the court durst venture, for dabbling in witchcraft. Acknowledging the immense benefit Joan’s efforts produced, and at the same time admitting the spirit and intelligence with which she carried out her plans, when we look at the pretence under which she operated, we are made sceptical, as we are in all such cases, of the first moving cause. In fact, we think it much more probable that the keen-witted Dunois should have trained a bold, shrewd girl to impose upon a weak young king and a superstitious people, than for an instant to imagine there was anything supernatural in her mission, or even that she devised a scheme entirely herself. Shakespeare generally follows the chronicles pretty faithfully; and the manner in which Dunois introduces her to the notice of the king is very suspicious. We do not take Shakespeare’s view of her character, but we are quite as much at variance with those poets who throw a veil of perfection and sickly sentimentality over it. In our opinion, Joan is a person who almost unwittingly effected wonders; neither she nor Dunois contemplated the extent of the good she did for France. Had she appeared under any banner but that of superstition, we should not have said a word against the faith that is placed in her; but no student of history should allow that pretence to pass without the closest investigation. As a high-spirited, intelligent, persevering, patriotic woman, she has much of our admiration, but as the inspired Maid of