d demons or
earthly dreams to deceive her. The agony of her spirit, involved in
endless and horrid labyrinths of doubt, is powerfully portrayed. She
has crowned the king at Rheims; and all is joy, and pomp, and jubilee,
and almost adoration of Joanna: but Joanna's thoughts are not of joy.
The sight of her poor but kind and true-hearted sisters in the crowd,
moves her to the soul. Amid the tumult and magnificence of this royal
pageant, she sinks into a reverie; her small native dale of Arc,
between its quiet hills, rises on her mind's eye, with its
straw-roofed huts, and its clear greensward; where the sun is even
then shining so brightly, and the sky is so blue, and all is so calm
and motherly and safe. She sighs for the peace of that sequestered
home; then shudders to think that she shall never see it more. Accused
of witchcraft, by her own ascetic melancholic father, she utters no
word of denial to the charge; for her heart is dark, it is tarnished
by earthly love, she dare not raise her thoughts to Heaven. Parted
from her sisters; cast out with horror by the people she had lately
saved from despair, she wanders forth, desolate, forlorn, not knowing
whither. Yet she does not sink under this sore trial: as she suffers
from without, and is forsaken of men, her mind grows clear and strong,
her confidence returns. She is now more firmly fixed in our admiration
than before; tenderness is united to our other feelings; and her
faith has been proved by sharp vicissitudes. Her countrymen recognise
their error; Joanna closes her career by a glorious death; we take
farewell of her in a solemn mood of heroic pity.

Joanna is the animating principle of this tragedy; the scenes employed
in developing her character and feelings constitute its great charm.
Yet there are other personages in it, that leave a distinct and
pleasing impression of themselves in our memory. Agnes Sorel, the
soft, languishing, generous mistress of the Dauphin, relieves and
heightens by comparison the sterner beauty of the Maid. Dunois, the
Bastard of Orleans, the lover of Joanna, is a blunt, frank, sagacious
soldier, and well described. And Talbot, the gray veteran, delineates
his dark, unbelieving, indomitable soul, by a few slight but
expressive touches: he sternly passes down to the land, as he thinks,
of utter nothingness, contemptuous even of the fate that destroys him,
and

'On the soil of France he sleeps, as does
A hero on the shield he w