. For the latter
purpose, it appears that more than one plan had occurred to him. His
first idea was, to represent Joanna, and the times she lived in, as
they actually were: to exhibit the superstition, ferocity, and
wretchedness of the period, in all their aggravation; and to show us
this patriotic and religious enthusiast beautifying the tempestuous
scene by her presence; swaying the fierce passions of her countrymen;
directing their fury against the invaders of France; till at length,
forsaken and condemned to die, she perished at the stake, retaining
the same steadfast and lofty faith, which had ennobled and redeemed
the errors of her life, and was now to glorify the ignominy of her
death. This project, after much deliberation, he relinquished, as too
difficult. By a new mode of management, much of the homeliness and
rude horror, that defaced and encumbered the reality, is thrown away.
The Dauphin is not here a voluptuous weakling, nor is his court the
centre of vice and cruelty and imbecility: the misery of the time is
touched but lightly, and the Maid of Arc herself is invested with a
certain faint degree of mysterious dignity, ultimately represented as
being in truth a preternatural gift; though whether preternatural, and
if so, whether sent from above or from below, neither we nor she,
except by faith, are absolutely sure, till the conclusion.

The propriety of this arrangement is liable to question; indeed, it
has been more than questioned. But external blemishes are lost in the
intrinsic grandeur of the piece: the spirit of Joanna is presented to
us with an exalting and pathetic force sufficient to make us blind to
far greater improprieties. Joanna is a pure creation, of
half-celestial origin, combining the mild charms of female loveliness
with the awful majesty of a prophetess, and a sacrifice doomed to
perish for her country. She resembled, in Schiller's view, the
Iphigenia of the Greeks; and as such, in some respects, he has treated
her.

The woes and desolation of the land have kindled in Joanna's keen and
fervent heart a fire, which the loneliness of her life, and her deep
feelings of religion, have nourished and fanned into a holy flame. She
sits in solitude with her flocks, beside the mountain chapel of the
Virgin, under the ancient Druid oak, a wizard spot, the haunt of evil
spirits as well as of good; and visions are revealed to her such as
human eyes behold not. It seems the force of her own spirit