This peasant girl was self-educated through her own natural
meditativeness. If the reader turns to that divine passage in "Paradise
Regained" which Milton has put into the mouth of our Saviour when first
entering the wilderness, and musing upon the tendency of those great
impulses growing within himself-----
"Oh, what a multitude of thoughts at once
Awakened in me swarm, while I consider
What from within I feel myself, and hear
What from without comes often to my ears,
Ill sorting with my present state compared!
When I was yet a child, no childish play
To me was pleasing; all my mind was set
Serious to learn and know, and thence to do,
What might be public good; myself I thought
Born to that end----"
he will have some notion of the vast reveries which brooded over the
heart of Joanna in early girlhood, when the wings were budding that
should carry her from Orleans to Rheims; when the golden chariot was
dimly revealing itself that should carry her from the kingdom of
_France Delivered_ to the Eternal Kingdom.
It is not requisite for the honour of Joanna, nor is there in this
place room, to pursue her brief career of _action._ That, though
wonderful, forms the earthly part of her story; the spiritual part is
the saintly passion of her imprisonment, trial, and execution. It is
unfortunate, therefore, for Southey's "Joan of Arc" (which, however,
should always be regarded as a _juvenile_ effort), that precisely
when her real glory begins the poem ends.
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