y in their turn.
This was, from the first, what she had said she was appointed to do,
and not one of her promises had been broken. Her career had been a short
one, begun in April, ending in July, one brief continuous course of
glory. But this triumphant career had come to its conclusion. The
messenger of God had done her work; the servant must not desire to be
greater than his Lord. There have been heroes in this world whose career
has continued a glorious and a happy one to the end. Our hearts follow
them in their noble career, but when the strain and pain are over they
come into their kingdom and reap their reward the interest fails. We
are glad, very glad, that they should live happy ever after, but their
happiness does not attract us like their struggle.

It is different with those whose work and whose motives are not those of
this world. When they step out of the brilliant lights of triumph into
sorrow and suffering, all that is most human in us rises to follow the
bleeding feet, our hearts swell with indignation, with sorrow and love,
and that instinctive admiration for the noble and pure, which proves
that our birthright too is of Heaven, however we may tarnish or even
deny that highest pedigree. The chivalrous romance of that age would
have made of Jeanne d'Arc the heroine of human story. She would have had
a noble lover, say our young Guy de Laval, or some other generous and
brilliant Seigneur of France, and after her achievements she would have
laid by her sword, and clothed herself with the beautiful garments of
the age, and would have grown to be a noble lady in some half regal
chateau, to which her name would have given new lustre. The young reader
will probably long that it should be so; he will feel it an injustice, a
wrong to humanity that so generous a soul should have no reward; it will
seem to him almost a personal injury that there should not be a noble
chevalier at hand to snatch that devoted Maid out of the danger that
threatened her, out of the horrible fate that befell her; and we can
imagine a generous boy, and enthusiastic girl, ready to gnash their
teeth at the terrible and dishonouring thought that it was by English
hands that this noble creature was tied to the stake and perished in
the flames. For the last it becomes us(1) to repent, for it was to our
everlasting shame; but not more to us than to France who condemned her,
who lifted no finger to help her, who raised not even a cry, a protest