These were the loftiest peaks of the cloudland in the skies, that to the scientific gazer first caught the colors of the new morning in advance.  But the whole vast range alike of sweeping glooms overhead, dwelt upon all meditative minds, even those that could not distinguish the altitudes nor decipher the forms.  It was, therefore, not her own age alone, as affected by its immediate calamities, that lay with such weight upon Joanna’s mind; but her own age, as one section in a vast mysterious drama, unweaving through a century back, and drawing nearer continually to crisis after crisis.  Cataracts and rapids were heard roaring ahead; and signs were seen far back, by help of old men’s memories, which answered secretly to signs now coming forward on the eye, even as locks answer to keys.  It was not wonderful that in such a haunted solitude, with such a haunted heart, Joanna should see angelic visions, and hear angelic voices.  These voices whispered to her the duty imposed upon herself, of delivering France.  Five years she listened to these monitory voices with internal struggles.  At length she could resist no longer.  Doubt gave way; and she left her home in order to present herself at the Dauphin’s court.

The education of this poor girl was mean according to the present standard:  was ineffably grand, according to a purer philosophic standard; and only not good for our age, because for us it would be unattainable.  She read nothing, for she could not read; but she had heard others read parts of the Roman martyrology.  She wept in sympathy with the sad Misereres of the Romish chaunting; she rose to heaven with the glad triumphant Gloria in Excelcis:  she drew her comfort and her vital strength from the rites of her church.  But, next after these spiritual advantages, she owed most to the advantages of her situation.  The fountain of Domremy was on the brink of a boundless forest; and it was haunted to that degree by fairies that the parish priest (cure) was obliged to read mass there once a year, in order to keep them in any decent bounds.  Fairies are important, even in a statistical view; certain weeds mark poverty in the soil, fairies mark its solitude.  As surely as the wolf retires before cities, does the fairy sequester herself from the haunts of licensed victuallers.  A village is too much for her nervous delicacy:  at most, she can tolerate a distant view of a hamlet.  We may judge, therefore, by the uneasiness and extra trouble which they gave to the parson, in what strength the fairies mustered at Domremy, and, by a satisfactory consequence, how thinly sown with men and women must have been that region even in its inhabited spots.  But the forests of Domremy—­those were the glories of the land:  for, in them abode mysterious powers and ancient secrets that towered into tragic strength.  “Abbeys there were, and abbey windows, dim and dimly seen—­as Moorish temples of the Hindoos,” that exercised even princely power both in Lorraine