o its honour be it said, both the spirit of
humanity displayed by the poet-philosopher and the spirit of
patriotism that possessed the virgin heroine and martyr.

In 1795 appeared Southey's heroic play on Joan of Arc. That drama is
more a glorification of the principles of the French Revolution than
of Joan of Arc. There is no attempt made to follow out her history.
The play contains a love episode due entirely to the youthful poet's
imagination, but it contains fine passages as well, and seems to us to
have merited more praise from posterity than it has received.

Schiller's play, like Southey's, sins grievously as far as historical
truth is concerned. The German poet wishes, it seems, to remove the
bad impression made by Voltaire's poem. The play was first performed
on the stage at Weimar in 1801; and the _Jungfrau von Orleans_ met
with considerable success. It contains noble lines, but is
historically a mere travesty of the life and death of the heroine.

In 1815 Casimir Delavigne wrote, as a counterblast to the double
invasion that France had just undergone, his well known _Messeniennes_
to the honour of the French heroine. These poems had a great success,
the second being the most admired; but they are now forgotten. Two
other dramatic poets followed in Delavigne's steps: these were
d'Avrigni and Soumet. By the former appeared, in 1819, a tragedy in
five acts and in verse; it was performed at the Theatre Francais.
Soumet's play was also acted; it almost equals d'Avrigni's in length
and tediousness.

Besides the above tragedies which had, as the French term it, the
honour of seeing the light of the footlights, Desnoyers wrote a play
on Joan of Arc in 1841, and was followed by a series of other writers
in verse and in prose--Caze, Dumolard, Maurin, Cramar, Hedouville,
Millot, Lequesme, Crepot, Puymaigre, Porchat, Haldy, Renard, Jouve,
Cozic, Daniel Stern, Bousson de Maviet, Constant Materne. All the
above wrote plays and tragedies on the subject of Joan of Arc between
the years 1805 and 1862. Daniel Stern was the only authoress who
composed a drama in honour of the heroine.

While all this _galimatias_ of dramas has sunk into the limbo which
waits for all such work, Villon's two lines remain as bright as the
day on which, four centuries ago, he wrote them:--

'Jeanne la bonne Lorraine,
Qu' Anglais brulerent a Rouen.'

Some plays on the subject of the Maid of Orleans also appeared in
Italy and in