Telescopes look up in the market on that morning, and bear a monstrous premium; for they cheat, probably, in those scientific worlds as well as we do.  How, then, if it be announced in some such telescopic world by those who make a livelihood of catching glimpses at our newspapers, whose language they have long since deciphered, that the poor victim in the morning’s sacrifice is a woman?  How, if it be published on that distant world that the sufferer wears upon her head, in the eyes of many, the garlands of martyrdom?  How, if it should be some Marie Antoinette, the widowed queen, coming forward on the scaffold, and presenting to the morning air her head, turned gray prematurely by sorrow, daughter of Caesars kneeling down humbly to kiss the guillotine, as one that worships death?  How, if it were the “martyred wife of Roland,” uttering impassioned truth—­truth odious to the rulers of her country—­with her expiring breath?  How, if it were the noble Charlotte Corday, that in the bloom of youth, that with the loveliest of persons, that with homage waiting upon her smiles wherever she turned her face to scatter them—­homage that followed those smiles as surely as the carols of birds, after showers in spring, follow the re-appearing sun and the racing of sunbeams over the hills—­yet thought all these things cheaper than the dust upon her sandals in comparison of deliverance from hell for her dear suffering France?  Ah! these were spectacles indeed for those sympathizing people in distant worlds; and some, perhaps, would suffer a sort of martyrdom themselves, because they could not testify their wrath, could not bear witness to the strength of love, and to the fury of hatred, that burned within them at such scenes; could not gather into golden urns some of that glorious dust which rested in the catacombs of earth.

On the Wednesday after Trinity Sunday in 1431, being then about nineteen years of age, the Maid of Arc underwent her martyrdom.  She was conducted before mid-day, guarded by eight hundred spearmen, to a platform of prodigious height, constructed of wooden billets supported by occasional walls of lath and plaster, and traversed by hollow spaces in every direction for the creation of air-currents.  The pile “struck terror,” says M. Michelet, “by its height;” and, as usual, the English purpose in this is viewed as one of pure malignity.  But there are two ways of explaining all that.  It is probable that the purpose was merciful.  On the circumstances of the execution I shall not linger.  Yet, to mark the almost fatal felicity of M. Michelet in finding out whatever may injure the English name, at a moment when every reader will be interested in Joanna’s personal appearance, it is really edifying to notice the ingenuity by which he draws into light from a dark corner a very unjust account of it, and neglects, though lying upon the high road, a very pleasing one.  Both are from English pens.  Grafton, a chronicler but little read, being a stiff-necked John Bull, thought