remity. Somewhere, but I knew not
where--somehow, but I knew not how--by some beings, but I knew not by
whom--a battle, a strife, an agony, was traveling through all its
stages--was evolving itself, like the catastrophe of some mighty
drama, with which my sympathy was the more insupportable, from
deepening confusion as to its local scene, its cause, its nature, and
its undecipherable issue. I (as is usual in dreams, where of
necessity, we make ourselves central to every movement) had the power,
and yet had not the power, to decide it. I had the power, if I could
raise myself to will it; and yet again had not the power, for the
weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me, or the oppression of
inexpiable guilt. "Deeper than ever plummet sounded," I lay inactive.
Then, like a chorus, the passion deepened. Some greater interest was
at stake, some mightier cause, than ever yet the sword had pleaded, or
trumpet had proclaimed. Then came sudden alarms; hurryings to and fro,
trepidations of innumerable fugitives; I knew not whether from the
good cause or the bad; darkness and lights; tempest and human faces;
and at last, with the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the
features that were worth all the world to me: and but a moment
allowed--and clasped hands, with heartbreaking partings, and
then--everlasting farewells! and, with a sigh such as the caves of
hell sighed when the incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of
Death, the sound was reverberated--everlasting farewells! And again,
and yet again reverberated--everlasting farewells!

And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud, "I will sleep no more!"

II

JOAN OF ARC[27]

What is to be thought of _her_? What is to be thought of the poor
shepherd-girl from the hills and forests of Lorraine, that--like the
Hebrew shepherd-boy from the hills and forests of Judea--rose suddenly
out of the quiet, out of the safety, out of the religious inspiration,
rooted in deep pastoral solitudes, to a station in the van of armies,
and to the more perilous station at the right hand of kings? The
Hebrew boy inaugurated his patriotic mission by an _act_, by a
victorious _act_, such as no man could deny. But so did the girl of
Lorraine, if we read her story as it was read by those who saw her
nearest. Adverse armies bore witness to the boy as no pretender: but
so did they to the gentle girl. Judged by the voices of all who saw
them _from a station of good will_, both were found