ne is Joanna, the Pucelle d'Orleans for
herself.

I am not going to write the History of _La Pucelle_: to do this, or even
circumstantially to report the history of her persecution and bitter death,
of her struggle with false witnesses and with ensnaring judges, it would
be necessary to have before us _all_ the documents, and, therefore, the
collection only now forthcoming in Paris. But _my_ purpose is narrower.
There have been great thinkers, disdaining the careless judgments of
contemporaries, who have thrown themselves boldly on the judgment of a far
posterity, that should have had time to review, to ponder, to compare.
There have been great actors on the stage of tragic humanity that might,
with the same depth of confidence, have appealed from the levity of
compatriot friends--too heartless for the sublime interest of their story,
and too impatient for the labor of sifting its perplexities--to the
magnanimity and justice of enemies. To this class belongs the Maid of Arc.
The Romans were too faithful to the ideal of grandeur in themselves not
to relent, after a generation or two, before the grandeur of Hannibal.
Mithridates--a more doubtful person--yet, merely for the magic perseverance
of his indomitable malice, won from the same Romans the only real honor
that ever he received on earth. And we English have ever shown the same
homage to stubborn enmity. To work unflinchingly for the ruin of England;
to say through life, by word and by deed--_Delenda est Anglia Victrix_!
that one purpose of malice, faithfully pursued, has quartered some people
upon our national funds of homage as by a perpetual annuity. Better than an
inheritance of service rendered to England herself, has sometimes proved
the most insane hatred to England. Hyder Ali, even his far inferior son
Tippoo, and Napoleon, have all benefited by this disposition amongst
ourselves to exaggerate the merit of diabolic enmity. Not one of these men
was ever capable, in a solitary instance, of praising an enemy--[what
do you say to _that_, reader?] and yet in _their_ behalf, we consent to
forget, not their crimes only, but (which is worse) their hideous bigotry
and anti-magnanimous egotism; for nationality it was not. Suffrein, and
some half dozen of other French nautical heroes, because rightly they did
us all the mischief they could, [which was really great] are names justly
reverenced in England. On the same principle, La Pucelle d'Orleans, the
victorious enemy o