inning even to suspect itself of imposture and impiety.
She who had felt as a saint, hears herself exorcised as a sorcerer; and,
by and by, a crowd of men, churchmen and civilians, stand round in
triumph to see her burnt and consumed as a thing unholy and impure,
whose life had been, not, as she had deemed, a perpetual devotion, but a
perpetual blasphemy.

But although it appears to us that this, which is the true historical
point of view, is also the most replete with poetic interest, it may not
be an interest so well adapted to the drama as to other species of
poetry. The heroine is here made the prey of the two rival factions, who
appear to contend, not only for the possession of her person, but for
the domination over her mind; not enough is attributed to her individual
will and character; the action of the piece does not immediately flow
from her; and the people, with its strange faiths and monstrous
caprices, becomes the veritable hero. It was for this reason, we
presume, that Schiller rejected what, in our days, is the simple and
natural manner of considering his subject, and adopted a different point
of view. Designating his play as a _romantic_ tragedy, he resolved to
represent the maid as really inspired by Heaven--as veritably
commissioned by the Virgin--as endowed, _bona fide_, with miraculous
powers. She is thus the living centre of the action. Whatever is
effected by the appearance of the Maid of Orleans, is effected by her
individual prowess, or the aid of heaven administered through her.

This was a bold attempt, and very boldly has Schiller executed it. He
has stopped at no middle point. He has not scrupled to represent the
fabulous miracles of a superstitious age as actually taking place before
us. Johanna gives proofs of her faculty of second-sight; she sees, while
at the camp of the Dauphin, the death of Salisbury before Orleans; she
performs in our presence those miracles by which she is said to have
first established her reputation at the court--recognising the Dauphin
at once, although he had purposely resigned his post of dignity to
another, and reciting to him the secret prayer which he had, the night
before, offered up to God in the solitude of his own chamber. And not
only are the fables, which the chronicles of the times have handed down
to us, enacted as veritable facts, but the poet has added miracles and
prodigies of his own invention; and in particular, a certain spectre of
a black knigh