 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Robin Cotter, July 2007. Miscellaneous Essays by Thomas DeQuincy. Joan of Arc, Part 4 On the Wednesday after Trinity Sunday in 1431, being then about nineteen years of age, the maid of Arc underwent her martyrdom. She was conducted before midday, guarded by eight hundred spearmen, to a platform of prodigious height constructed of wooden billets, supported by occasional walls of lathe and plaster, and traversed by hollow spaces in every direction for the creation of air currents. The pile, quote, struck terror, says Monsieur Michelet by its height, unquote, and, as usual, the English purpose in this is viewed as one of pure malignity. But there are two ways of explaining all that. It is probable that the purpose was merciful. On the circumstances of the execution, I shall not linger. Yet to mark the almost fatal felicity of Monsieur Michelet in finding out whatever may injure the English name, at a moment when every reader will be interested in Joanna's personal appearance, it is really edifying to notice the ingenuity by which he draws into light from a dark corner a very unjust account of it, and neglects, though lying upon the high road, a very pleasing one. Both are from English pens. Grafton, a chronicler, but little red, being a stiff-necked John Bull, thought fit to say that no wonder Joanna should be a virgin, since her, quote, foul face, unquote, was a satisfactory solution of that particular merit. Holland's head, on the other hand, a chronicler somewhat later, every way more important, and universally read, has given a very pleasing testimony to the interesting character of Joanna's person, and engaging manners. Neither of these men lived till the following century, so that personally this evidence is none at all. Grafton sullenly and carelessly believed, as he wished, to believe. Holland's head took pains to inquire, and reports undoubtedly the general impression of France, but I cite the case as illustrating Monsieur Michelet's candor. Footnote. Amongst the many obelitions of Monsieur Michelet's fury against us poor English are four which will be likely to amuse the reader, and they are the more conspicuous in collision with the justice which he sometimes does us, and the very indignant admiration which, under some aspects, he grants to us. One. Our English literature he admires with some gnashing of teeth, he pronounces it, quote, fine and somber, unquote, but I lament to add, quote, skeptical, Judaic, satanic, in a word, anti-Christian, unquote. The Lord Byron should figure as a member of this diabolical corporation will not surprise men. It will surprise them to hear that Milton is one of its satanic leaders. Many are the generous and eloquent Frenchmen, beside Chateaubriand, who have, in the course of the last thirty years, nobly suspended their own burning nationality in order to render a more rapturous homage at the feet of Milton, and some of them have raised Milton almost to a level with the angelic natures. Not one of them has thought of looking for him below the earth. As to Shakespeare, Monsieur Michelet detects in him a most extraordinary mare's nest. It is this. He does, quote, not recollect to have seen the name of God, unquote, in any part of his works. On reading such words it is natural to rub one's eyes, and suspect that all one has ever seen in this world may have been a pure ocular delusion. In particular I begin myself to suspect that the word la gloire never occurs in any Parisian journal. Quote, the great English nation, says Monsieur Michelet, has one immense profound vice. To wit, pride, unquote. Why, really, that may be true, but we have a neighbor not absolutely clear of an, quote, immense profound vice, unquote, as like ours in color and shape as cherry to cherry. In short, Monsieur Michelet thinks us by fits and starts, admirable, only that we are detestable, and he would adore some of our authors were it not that so intensely he could have wished to kick them. Two. Monsieur Michelet thinks to lodge an arrow in our sides by a very odd remark upon Thomas at Kempis, which is that a man of any conceivable European blood, a Finlander, suppose, or a zantiate, might have written Tom only not an Englishman. Whether an Englishman could have forged Tom must remain a matter of doubt unless the thing had been tried long ago. That problem was intercepted forever by Tom's perversiveness in choosing to manufacture himself, yet, since nobody is better aware than Monsieur Michelet, that this very point of Kempis, having manufactured Kempis, is furiously and hopelessly litigated, three or four nations claiming to have forged his work for him. The shocking old doubt will raise its snakey head once more, whether this forger, who rests in so much darkness, might not, after all, be of English blood. Tom, it may be feared, is known to modern English literature, chiefly by an irreverent mention of his name in a line of Peter Pinders, Dr. Wolcott, fifty years back, where he is described as, quote, Kempis Tom, who clearly shows the way to kingdom come, unquote. Few in these days can have read him unless in the Methodist version of John Wesley. Amongst those few, however, happens to be myself, which arose from the accident of having, when a boy of eleven received a copy of the De imitatione Christi as a bequest from a relation, who died very young, from which cause, and from the external prettiness of the book, being a Glasgow reprint, by the celebrated Folie and Gailey Bound, I was induced to look into it, and finally read it many times over, partly out of some sympathy which, even in those days, I had with its simplicity and devotional fervour. But much more from the savage delight I found in laughing at Tom's Latinity. That, I freely grant to Monsieur Michelet, is inimitable, else as regards substance, it strikes me that I could forge a better De imitatione myself. But there is no knowing till one tries. Yet, after all, it is not certain whether the original was Latin. But, however, that may have been, if it is possible that Monsieur Michelet can be accurate in saying that there are no less than sixty French versions, not additions observed, but separate versions, existing of the De imitatione, how prodigious must have been the adaptation of the book to the religious heart of the fifteenth century. Accepting the Bible, but accepting that only in Protestant lands, no book known to man has had the same distinction, it is the most marvellous bibliographical fact on record. Footnote A, quote, if Monsieur Michelet can be accurate, unquote. However, on consideration, this statement does not depend on Michelet. The bibliographer, Barbier, has absolutely specified sixty in a separate dissertation, soixante traductions, amongst those even that had not escaped the search. The Italian translations are said to be thirty, as to mere additions, not counting the early M.S.S., for half a century before printing was introduced, those in Latin amount to two thousand, and those in French to one thousand. Meantime, it is very clear to me that this astonishing popularity, so entirely unparalleled in literature, could not have existed except in Roman Catholic times, nor subsequently have lingered in any Protestant land. It was the denial of Scripture fountains to thirsty lands which made this slender real of Scripture truth so passionately welcome. End. Footnote A. Three. Our English girls, it seems, are as faulty in one way as we English males in another. None of us lads could have written the opera omnia of Mr. A. Kempis. Neither could any of our lasses have assumed male attire like La Pusselle. But why, because, says Michelet, English girls and German think so much of an indecorum. Well, that is a good fault, generally speaking, but when M. Michelet ought to have remembered a fact in the martyrologies which justifies both parties, the French heroine for doing, and the general choir of English girls for not doing, a female saint, especially renowned in France, had, for a reason as weighty as Joanna's, vis expressly to shield her modesty amongst men, wore a male military harness. That reason and that example authorized La Pusselle. But our English girls, as a body, have seldom any such reason, and certainly know such saintly example to plead. This excuses them, yet still, if it is indispensable to the national character that our young women should now and then trespass over the frontier of decorum, it then becomes a patriotic duty in me to assure M. Michelet that we have such ardent females amongst us, and in a long series, some detected in naval hospitals when too sick to remember their disguise, some on fields of battle, multitudes never detected at all, some only suspected, and others discharged without noise by war offices and other absurd people. In our navy, both royal and commercial, and generally from deep remembrances of slighted love, women have sometimes served in disguise for many years, taking contentedly their daily allowance of burgu, biscuit, or cannonballs, anything in short digestible or indigestible that it might please Providence to send. One thing at least is to their credit. Never any of these poor masks, with their deep silent remembrances, have been detected through murmuring, or what is nautically understood by skulking. So, for once, M. Michelet has an irratum to enter upon the fly-leaf if his book in presentation copies. But the last of these eubolitions is the most lively. We English at Orléans, and after Orléans, which is not quite so extraordinary, if all were told, fled before the maid of Arc. Yes, says M. Michelet, you did. Deny it, if you can. Deny it, my dear? I don't mean to deny it. Running away in many cases is a thing so excellent that no philosopher would, at times, condescend to adopt any other step. All of us nations in Europe, without one exception, have shown our philosophy in that way at times. Even people, quote, qui ne se rendent pas, unquote, have deigned both to run and to shout, quote, so of qui peint, unquote, at odd times of sunset. Though, for my part, I have no pleasure in recalling unpleasant remembrances to brave men, and yet, really being so philosophic, they ought not to be unpleasant. But the amusing feature in M. Michelet's reproach is the way in which he improves, and varies against us the charge of running, as if he were singing a catch. Listen to him. They, quote, showed their backs, unquote, did these English, hip hip hurrah, three times three, quote, behind good walls they let themselves be taken, unquote, hip hip nine times nine, they, quote, ran as fast as their legs could carry them, unquote, hurrah, twenty-seven times twenty-seven, they, quote, ran before a girl, unquote, they did, hurrah, eighty-one times eighty-one. This reminds one of criminal indictments on the old model in English courts, where, for fear the prisoner should escape, the crown lawyer varied the charge, perhaps, through forty counts. The law laid its guns so as to rake the accused at every possible angle. Whilst the indictment was reading, he seemed a monster of crime in his own eyes, and yet, after all, the poor fellow had but committed one offence, and not always that. Note to Bene. Not having the French original at hand, I make my quotations from a friend's copy of M. Walter Kelly's translation, which seems to me faithful, spirited, and idiomatically English, liable, in fact, only to the single reproach of occasional provincialisms. End. Footnote. The circumstantial incidents of the execution, unless with more space than I can now command, I should be unwilling to relate. I should fear to injure by imperfect report a martyrdom which to myself appears so unspeakably grand. Yet, for a purpose pointing, not at Joanna, but at M. Michelet, vis to convince him that an Englishman is capable of thinking more highly of La Pucelle than even her admiring countrymen, I shall, in parting, allude to one or two traits in Joanna's demeanor on the scaffold, and to one or two in that of the bystanders, which authorize me in questioning an opinion of his upon the martyr's firmness. The reader ought to be reminded that Joanna de Ack was subjected to an unusually unfair trial of opinion, any of the elder Christian martyrs had not much to fear of personal ranker. The martyr was chiefly regarded as the enemy of Caesar, at times also where any knowledge of the Christian faith and morals existed, with the enmity that arises spontaneously in the worldly against the spiritual. But the martyr, though disloyal, was not supposed to be, therefore anti-national, and still less was individually hateful. Wood was hated, if anything, belonged to his class, not to himself separately. Now Joanna, if hated at all, was hated personally, and in ruine on national grounds, hence there would be a certainty of Calmy arising against her, such as would not affect martyrs in general. That being the case, it would follow a necessity that some people would impute to her a willingness to recant. No innocence could escape that. Now had she really testified this willingness on the scaffold, it would have argued nothing at all but the weakness of a genial nature, shrinking from the instant approach of torment, and those will often pity that weakness most, who in their own persons would yield to at least. Meantime, there never was a Calmy uttered that drew less support from the recorded circumstances. It rests upon no positive testimony, and it is a weight of contradicting testimony to stem. And yet, strange to say, Monsieur Michelet, who at times seems to admire the maid of Arc as much as I do, is the one sole writer amongst her friends who lends some countenance to this odious slander. His words are that if she did not utter this word recant with her lips, she uttered it in her heart. Quote, whether she said the word is uncertain, but I affirm that she thought it. Unquote. Now I affirm that she did not, not in any sense of the word, thought, applicable to the case. Here is France calumniating La Pusselle. Here is England defending her. Monsieur Michelet can only mean that on a priori principles every woman must be presumed liable to such a weakness. That Joanna was a woman, ergo that she was liable to such a weakness. He only supposes her to have uttered the word by an argument which presumes it impossible for anybody to have done otherwise. I, on the contrary, throw the onus of the argument, not on presumable tendencies of nature, but on the known facts of that morning's execution as recorded by multitudes. What else I demand than mere weight of metal, absolute nobility of deportment, broke the vast line of battle, then arrayed against her? What else but her meek, saintly demeanor won from the enemies, that till now had believed her a witch, tears of rapturous admiration? Quote, ten thousand men, says Monsieur Michelet himself, ten thousand men wept, unquote, and of these ten thousand, the majority were political enemies knitted together by cords of superstition. What else was it but her constancy united with her angelic gentleness that drove the fanatic English soldier, who had sworn to throw a faggot on her scaffold, as his tribute of abhorrence, that did so, that fulfilled his vow? Suddenly to turn away a penitent for life, saying everywhere that he had seen a dove, rising upon wings to heaven from the ashes where she had stood? What else drove the executioner to kneel at every shrine for pardon to his share in the tragedy? And, if all this were insufficient, then I cite the closing act of her life as valid on her behalf, were all other testimonies against her. The executioner had been directed to apply his torch from below, he did so. The fiery smoke rose upwards in billowing volumes. A Dominican monk was then standing almost at her side, wrapped up in his sublime office, he saw not the danger, but still persisted in his prayers. Even then when the last enemy was racing up the fiery stairs to seize her, at that moment did this noblest of girls think only for him, the one friend that would not forsake her and not for herself, bidding him with her last breath to care for his own preservation, but to leave her to God. That girl, whose latest breath ascended in this sublime expression of self-oblivion, did not utter the word recant, either with her lips or in her heart. No, she did not, though one should rise from the dead to swear it. Bishop of Beauvais, thy victim died in fire upon a scaffold, thou upon a downed bed, but for the departing minutes of life both are often times alike at the farewell crisis when the gates of death are opening and flesh is resting from its struggles, often times the tortured and the torturer have the same truce from carnal torment, both sink together into sleep, together both sometimes kindle into dreams. When the mortal mists were gathering fast upon you two, bishop and shepherd girl, when the pavilions of life were closing up their shadowy curtains about you, let us try, through the gigantic glooms, to decipher the flying features of your separate visions. The shepherd girl that had delivered France, she from her dungeon, she from her baiting at the stake, she from her duel with fire as she entered her last dream, saw the fountain of Dumrammi, saw the pomp of forests in which her childhood had wandered, that Easter festival which man had denied to her languishing heart, that resurrection of springtime which the darkness of dungeons had intercepted from her, hungering after the glorious liberty of forests, were by God given back into her hands as jewels that had been stolen from her by robbers. With those perhaps for the minutes of dreams stretched into ages, was given back to her by God the bliss of childhood. By special privilege for her might be created in this farewell dream a second childhood, innocent is the first, but not like that, sad with the gloom of a fearful mission in the rear. The storm was weathered, the skirts even of that mighty storm were drawing off, the blood that she was to reckon for had been exacted, the tears that she was to shed had been paid to the last. The hatred to herself in all eyes had been faced steadily, had been suffered, had been survived, and in her last fight upon the scaffold she had triumphed gloriously, victoriously she had tasted the stings of death. For all except this comfort from her farewell dream she had died, died amidst the tears of ten thousand enemies, died amidst the drums and trumpets of armies, died amidst peels redoubling upon peels, volleys upon volleys, from the saluting clarions of martyrs. Bishop of Beauvais, because the guilt-burdened man is in dreams haunted and way-laid by the most frightful of his crimes, and because upon that fluctuating mirror-rising, like the mocking mirrors of mirage in Arabian deserts, from the fends of death most of all are reflected the sweet countenances which the man has laid in ruins. Therefore I know, Bishop, that you also entered your final dream, saw Dom Remy. That fountain of which the witnesses spoke so much showed itself to your eyes in pure morning do's, but neither do's nor the holy dawn could cleanse away the bright spots of innocent blood upon its surface. By the fountain, Bishop, you saw a woman seated that hid her face, but as you draw near, the woman raises her wasted features. Would Dom Remy know them again for the features of her child? Ah, but you know them, Bishop, well. O mercy, what a groan was that, which the servants waiting outside the Bishop's dream at his bedside heard from his laboring heart, as at this moment he turned away from the fountain and the woman, seeking rest in the forests afar off. Yet not so to escape the woman, whom once again he must behold before he dies. In the forests to which you praise for pity, will he find a light? What a tumult, what a gathering of feet is there in glades where only wild deer should run, armies and nations are assembling, towering in the fluctuating crowd are phantoms that belong to departed hours. There is the great English prince, regent of France. There is my lord of Winchester, the princely cardinal that died and made no sign. There is the bishop of Beauvais, clinging to the shelter of thickets. What not, which hands so rapid are raising? Is it a martyr scaffold? Will they burn the child of Domremie a second time? No, it is a tribunal that rises to the clouds, and two nations stand around it, waiting for a trial. Shall my lord of Beauvais sit again upon the judgment seat, and again number the hours for the innocent? Ah, no, he is the prisoner at the bar. Already all is waiting, the mighty audience is gathered. The court is hurrying to their seats. The witnesses are arrayed. The trumpets are sounding. The judge is going to take his place. Oh, but this is sudden! My lord, have you no counsel? Quote, Counsel I have none in heaven above, or on earth beneath. Counselor there is none now that would take a brief from me. All are silent." Is it indeed come to this? Alas the time is short. The tumult is wondrous. The crowd stretches away into infinity, but yet I will search in it for somebody to take your brief. I know of somebody that will be your counsel. Who is this that cometh from Domremie? Who is she that cometh in bloody coronation robes from reams? Who is she that cometh with black and flesh from walking the furnaces of Rouen? This is she, the shepherd girl, counselor that had none for herself, whom I choose to be bishop for yours. She it is I engage that she'll take my lord's brief. She it is bishop that would plead for you. Yes, bishop, she, when heaven and earth are silent. End of Joan of Arc Part 4 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Miscellaneous Essays by Thomas DeQuincey The English Mail Coach or The Glory of Motion Part 1 Some twenty or more years before I matriculated at Oxford Mr Palmer, MP for Bath had accomplished two things very hard to do on our little planet, the earth, however cheap they may happen to be held by the eccentric people and comets. He had invented mail coaches and he had married the daughter of a Duke. Footnote regarding the daughter Lady Madeline Gordon End of footnote He was therefore just twice as great a man as Galileo who certainly invented or discovered the satellites of Jupiter, those very next things extant to mail coaches in the two capital points of speed and keeping time but who did not marry the daughter of a Duke. These mail coaches, as organised by Mr Palmer, are entitled to a circumstantial notice from myself, having had so large a share in developing the anarchies of my subsequent dreams an agency which they accomplished first through velocity, at that time unprecedented. They first revealed the glory of motion suggesting at the same time an undersense not unpleasurable of possible though indefinite danger. Secondly through grand effects for the eye between lamplight and the darkness upon solitary roads. Thirdly through animal beauty and power so often displayed in the class of horses selected for this mail service. Fourthly through the conscious presence of a central intellect that in the midst of vast distances of storms of darkness of night overruled all obstacles into one steady cooperation in a national result footnote regarding vast distances. One case was familiar to mail coach travellers where two males in opposite directions north and south starting at the same minute from 0.600 miles apart met almost constantly at a particular bridge which exactly bisected the total distance. End of footnote To my own feeling this post office service recalled some mighty orchestra where a thousand instruments all disregarding each other and so far in danger of discord yet all obedient as slaves to the supreme baton of some great leader terminate in a perfection of harmony like that of heart, veins and arteries in a healthy animal organisation. But finally that particular element in this whole combination which most impressed myself and through which it is that to this hour Mr Palmer's mail coach system tyrannises by terror and terrific beauty over my dreams lay in the awful political mission which at that time it fulfilled. The mail coaches it was that distributed over the face of the land like the opening of apocalyptic vials the heart-shaking news of Trafalgar, of Salamanca of Vitoria, of Waterloo. These were the harvests that in the grandeur of their reaping redeemed the tears and blood in which they had been sown. Neither was the meanest peasants so much below the grandeur and the sorrow of the times as to confound these battles which were gradually moulding the destinies of Christendom with the vulgar conflicts of ordinary warfare which are oftentimes but gladiatorial trials of national prowess. The victories of England in this stupendous contest rose of themselves as natural tad-derms to heaven and it was felt by the thoughtful that such victories as such a crisis of general prostration were not more beneficial to ourselves than finally to France and to the nations of western and central Europe through whose pusillanimity it was that the French domination had prospered. The mail coach as the national organ for publishing these mighty events became itself a spiritualised and glorified object to an impassioned heart and naturally in the Oxford of that day all hearts were awakened. There were perhaps of us gownsmen 2,000 resident in Oxford and dispersed through five and twenty colleges footnote regarding residents in Oxford. The number on the books was far greater, many of whom kept up an intermittent communication with Oxford, but I speak of those only who were steadily pursuing their academic studies and of those who resided constantly as fellows. End of footnote In some of these the custom permitted the student to keep what are called short terms. That is, the four terms of Michaelmas, Lent, Easter and Act were kept severally by a residence in the aggregate of ninety-one days or thirteen weeks. Under this interrupted residence accordingly it was possible that a student might have a reason for going down to his home four times in the year. This made eight journeys to and fro. And as these homes lay dispersed through all the shires of the island and most of us disdained all coaches except his Majesty's mail no city out of London could pretend to so extensive a connection with Mr Palmer's establishment as Oxford. Naturally, therefore, it became a point of some interest with us whose journeys revolved every six weeks on average to look a little into the executive details of the system. With some of these Mr Palmer had no concern. They rested upon bylaws not unreasonable, enacted by posting houses for their own benefit and upon others equally stern, enacted by the inside passengers for the illustration of their own exclusiveness. These last were of a nature to rouse our scorn from which the transition was not very long to mutiny. Up to this time it had been the fixed assumption of the four inside people as an old tradition of all public carriages from the reign of Charles II that they, the illustrious quaternion constituted a porcelain variety of the human race whose dignity would have been compromised by exchanging one word of civility with the three miserable delf wear outsides. Even to have kicked an outsider might have been held to attain the foot concerned in that operation so that perhaps it would have required an act of parliament to restore its purity of blood. What words then could express the horror and the sense of treason in that case which had happened where all three outsides the trinity of pariahs made an attempt to sit down at the same breakfast table or dinner table with the consecrated four. I myself witnessed such an attempt and on that occasion a benevolent old gentleman endeavored to soothe his three holy associates by suggesting that if the outsides were indicted for this criminal attempt at the next ascises the court would regard it as a case of lunacy or delirium cremens rather than of treason. England owes much of her grandeur to the depth of the aristocratic element in her social composition. I am not the man to laugh at it. But sometimes it expressed itself in extravagant shapes. The course taken with the infatuated outsiders in the particular attempt which I have noticed was that the waiter beckoning them away from the privileged salea manger saying out this way my good men and then enticed them away off to the kitchen. But that plan had not always answered. Sometimes though very rarely cases occurred where the intruders being stronger than usual or more vicious than usual resolutely refused to move and so far carried their point as to have a separate table arranged for themselves in a corner of the room. Yet if an Indian screen could be found ample enough to plant them out from the very eyes of the high table or dais it then became possible to assume as a fiction of law that the three Delph fellows after all were not present. They could be ignored by the porcelain men under the maxim that objects not appearing and not existing are governed by the same logical construction. Such now being at that time the usages of male coaches what was to be done by us of young Oxford. We the most aristocratic people who were addicted to the practice of looking down superciliously even upon the insides themselves as often very suspicious characters were we voluntarily to court indignities? If our dress and bearing sheltered us generally from the suspicion of being wrath the name at that period for snobs we really were such constructively by the place we assumed. If we did not submit to the deep shadow of eclipse we entered at least the skirts of its penumbra footnote regarding snobs and its antithesis snobs arose among the internal fractions of shoemakers perhaps 10 years later. Possibly enough the terms may have existed much earlier but they were then first made known picturesquely and effectively by a trial at summer sizes which happened to fix the public attention. End of footnote and the analogy of theatres was urged against us where no man can complain of the annoyances incident to the pit or gallery having his instant remedy in paying the higher price of the boxes but the soundness of this analogy we disputed in the case of the theatre it cannot be pretended that the inferior situations have any separate attractions unless the pit suits the purpose of the dramatic matter. But the reporter or critic is a rarity for most people the sole benefit is in the price whereas on the contrary the outside of the mail had its own communicable advantages these we could not forego the higher price we should willingly have paid but that was connected with the condition of riding inside which was insufferable the air the freedom of respect the proximity to the horses the elevation of seat these were what we desired but above all the certain anticipation of purchasing occasional opportunities of driving under coercion of this great practical difficulty we instituted a searching inquiry into the true quality and valuation of the different apartments about the mail we conducted this inquiry on metaphysical principles and it was ascertained satisfactorily that the roof of the coach which some had effected to call the attics and some the garrets was really the drawing room and the box was the chief ottoman or sofa in that drawing room whilst it appeared that the inside which had been traditionally regarded as the only room tenantable by gentlemen was in fact the coal seller in disguise great was this jump the very same idea had not long before struck the celestial intellect of china amongst the presents carried out by our first embassy to that country was a state coach it had been specially selected as a personal gift by george the third but the exact mode of using it was a mystery to peek in the ambassador indeed lord mccartney had made some dim and imperfect explanations upon the point but as his excellency communicated these in a diplomatic whisper at the very moment of his departure the celestial mind was very feebly illuminated and it became necessary to call the cabinet council on the grand state question where was the emperor to sit the hammer cloth happened to be unusually gorgeous and partly on that consideration but partly also because the box offered the most elevated seat and undeniably went foremost it was resolved by acclamation that the box was the imperial place and for the scoundrel who drove he might sit where he could find a perch the horses therefore being harnessed under a flourish of music and a salute of guns solemnly his imperial majesty ascended his new english throne having the first lord of the treasury on his right hand and the chief jester on his left pecan gloried in the spectacle and in the whole flowery people constructively present by representation there was but one discontented person which was the coachman this mutinous individual looking as black hearted as he really was audaciously shouted where am I to sit but the privy council incensed by his disloyalty unanimously opened the door and kicked him into the inside he had all the inside places to himself but such as the capacity of ambition that he was still dissatisfied I say he cried out in an extempore petition addressed to the emperor through the window how am I to catch hold of the reins anyhow was the answer don't trouble me man in my glory through the windows through the key holes how you please finally this contumacious coachman linked the check strings into a sort of jury reins communicating with the horses with these he drove as steadily as maybe supposed the emperor returned after the briefest of circuits he descended in great pomp from his throne with the severest resolution never to remount it a public thanksgiving was ordered for his majesty's prosperous escape from the disease of a broken neck and the state coach was dedicated forever as a vote of offering to the god foe foe whom the learned more accurately called fee fee a revolution of the same chinese character did young oxford of that era effect in the constitution of male coach society it was a perfect french revolution and we had good reason to say sigh in fact it soon became too popular the public a well known character particularly disagreeable though slightly respectable and notorious for affecting the chief seats and synagogues had first loudly opposed this revolution but when the opposition showed itself to be ineffectual our disagreeable friend went into it with headlong zeal at first it was a sort of race between us and as the public is usually above 30 say generally from 30 to 50 years old naturally we of young oxford that averaged about 20 had the advantage then the public took to bribing giving fees to horsekeepers etc who hired out their persons as warming pans on the box seat that you know was shocking to our moral sensibilities come to bribery we observed and there is an end to all morality Aristotle's Cicero's or anybody's and besides of what use was it for we bribed also and as our bribes to those of the public being demonstrated out of Euclid to be as five shillings to six pints here again young oxford had the advantage but the contest was ruinous to the principles of the stable establishment about the males the whole corporation was constantly bribed re-bribed and often sir re-bribed so that a horsekeeper, osla or helper was held by the philosophical time to be the most corrupt character in the nation there was an impression upon the public mind natural enough from the continually augmenting velocity of the male but quite erroneous that an outside seat on this class of carriages was a post of danger on the contrary I maintained that if a man had become nervous from some gypsy prediction in his childhood allocating to a particular moon now approaching some unknown danger he should inquire earnestly wither can I go for shelter is a prison the safest retreat or a lunatic hospital or the British museum I should have replied oh no I'll tell you what to do take lodgings for the next 40 days on the box of his majesty's male nobody can touch you there if it is by bills at 90 days after date that you were made unhappy if notas and protestors are the sort of riches whose astrological shadows darken the house of life then note you what I vehemently protest vis that no matter though the sheriff in every county should be running after you with his posse touch a hair of your head he cannot whilst you keep house and have your legal domicile on the box of the male it's felony to stop the male even the sheriff cannot do that and an extra no great matter if it raises the sheriff touch of the whip to lead us at any time guarantees your safety in fact a bedroom in a quiet house seems a safe enough for treat yet it is liable to its own notorious nuisances to robbers by night to rats to fire but the male laughs at these terrors to robbers the answer is packed up and ready for delivery in the barrel of the guards blunderbuss rats again there are none about male coaches any more than snakes in van troils iceland except indeed now and then a parliamentary rat who always hides his shame in the coal cellar and as to fire I never knew but one in a male coach which was in the exit a male and caused by an obstinate sailor bound to Davenport Jack making light of the law and the lawgiver that had set their faces against his offence insisted on taking up a forbidden seat in the rear of the from which he could exchange his own yarns with those of the guard no greater offence was then known to male coaches it was treason it was Lysa Majestas it was by tendency arson and the ashes of Jack's pipe falling amongst the straw of the hind boot containing the mail bags raised a flame which aided by the wind of our motion threatened a revolution in the Republic of Letters but even this left the sanctity of the box unviolated indignified repose the coachman and myself set on resting with benign composure upon our knowledge that the fire would have to burn its way through four inside passengers before it could reach ourselves with a quotation rather too trite I remarked to the coachman young proximas are dead to colleague on but recollecting that the part of his education might have been neglected I interpreted so far as to say that perhaps at that moment the flames were catching hold of our worthy brother and next door neighbor who collage on the coachman said nothing but by his faint skeptical smile he seemed to be thinking that he knew better for that in fact who collage on as it happened was not in the way bill no dignity is perfect which does not at some point deny itself with the indeterminate mysterious the connection of the mail with the state and the executive government a connection obvious but not yet strictly defined gave to the whole mail establishment a grandeur and an official authority which did us service on the roads and a vested us with seasonable terrors but perhaps these terrors were not the less impressive because their exact legal limits were imperfectly ascertained look at those turnpike gates with what differential hurry with what an obedient start they fly open at our approach look at that long line of carts and carters ahead audaciously usurping the very crest of the road are traitors they do not hear us as yet but as soon as the dreadful blast of our horn reaches them with the proclamation of our approach see with what frenzy of trepidation they fly to their horse's and deprecate our wrath by the precipitation of their crane neck quarterings treason they feel to be their crime each individual carter feels himself under the ban of confiscation and attainder his blood is attainted through six generations and nothing is wanting but the headsman and his axe the block and the sawdust to close up the vista of his horrors what shall it be within benefit of clergy to delay the king's message on the high road to interrupt the great respirations ebb or flood of the national intercourse to endanger the safety of tidings running day and night between all nations and languages or can it be fancied amongst the weakest of men that the bodies of the criminals will be given up to their widows for Christian burial now the doubts which were raised as to our powers did more to wrap them in terror by wrapping them in uncertainty than could have been affected by the sharpest definitions of the law from the quarter sessions we on our parts we the collective male I mean did our utmost to exalt the idea of our privileges by the insolence with which we wielded them whether this insolence rested upon law that gave it a sanction or upon conscious power quarterly dispensing with that sanction equally it spoke from a potential station and the agent in each particular insolence of the moment was viewed reverentially as one having authority sometimes after breakfast his majesty's mail would become frisky and in its difficult wheelings amongst the intricacies of early markets it would upset an apple cart a cart loaded with eggs etc huge was the affliction and dismay, awful was the smash though after all I believe the damage might be levied upon the hundred I as far as possible endeavoured in such a case to represent the conscience and moral sensibilities of the male and when wildernesses of eggs were lying poached under our horses hooves then would I stretch forth my hands in sorrow saying in words too celebrated in those days from the false echoes of Marengo ah wherefore have we not time to weep over you which was quite impossible in fact we had not even time to laugh over them footnote regarding false echoes yes false for the words ascribed to Napoleon as breathed to the memory of Dessai were never uttered at all they stand in the same category of theatrical inventions as the cry of the foundering veneur as the vaunt of general Cambron at Waterloo la carte meur menaceron pas as the repartees of Teleronde end of footnote tied to post office time with an allowance in some cases of 50 minutes for 11 miles could the royal male pretend to undertake the offices of sympathy and condolence could it be expected to provide tears for the accidents of the road if even it seemed to trample on humanity it did so I contended in discharge of its own more peremptory duties upholding the morality of the male our fortiori I upheld its rights I stretched to the uttermost its privilege of imperial precedency and astonished weak minds by the feudal powers which I hinted to be lurking constructively in the charters of this proud establishment once I remember being on the box of the holly-head male between Shrewsbury and Oswestry when a tawdry thing from Birmingham some tally-hoe or high-flyer all flaunting with green and gold came up alongside of us what a contrast to our royal simplicity of form and colour is this plebeian rich the single ornament on our dark ground of chocolate colour was the mighty shield of the imperial arms but emblazoned in proportions as modest as a signet ring bears to a seal of office even this was displayed only on a single panel whispering rather than burming our relations to the state whilst the beast from Birmingham had as much writing and painting on its sprawling flanks as would have puzzled a decipherer from the tombs of Luxor for some time this Birmingham machine ran along by our side a piece of familiarity that seemed to us sufficiently Jacobinical but all at once a movement of the horses announced a desperate intention of leaving us behind do you see that the coachman I see was his short answer he was awake yet he waited longer than seemed prudent for the horses of our audacious opponent had a disagreeable air of freshness and power but his motive was loyal his wish was that the Birmingham conceit should be full blown before he froze it when that seemed ripe he unloosed or to speak by a stronger image he sprang his known resources he slipped into the royal horses like cheetahs or hunting leopards after the affrighted game how they could retain such a reserve of fiery power after the work they had accomplished seemed hard to explain but on our side besides the physical superiority was a tower of strength namely the king's name which they upon the adverse faction wanted passing them without an effort as it seemed we threw them into no lengthening an interval between us as proved in itself the bitterest mockery of their presumption whilst our guard blew back a shattering blast of triumph that was really too painfully full of derision I mentioned this little incident for its connection with what followed a Welshman sitting behind me asked if I had not felt my heart burn within me during the continuance of the race I said no because we were not racing with a male so that no glory would be gained in fact it was sufficiently mortifying that such a Birmingham thing should dare to challenge us the Welshman replied that he didn't see that for the decat might look at a king and a Brumgham coach might lawfully race the Hollywood male race us perhaps I replied though even that has an error of sedition but not beat us this would have been treason and for its own sake I am glad that the teleho was completed so dissatisfied did the Welshman seem with this opinion that at last I was obliged to tell him a very fine story from one of our elder dramatists vis that once in some oriental region when the prince of all the land with his splendid court were flying their falcons a hawk suddenly flew at a majestic eagle and in defiance of the eagle's prodigious advantages in sight also of all the astonished field sportsmen spectators and followers killed him on the spot the prince was struck with amazement at the unequal contest and with burning admiration for its unparalleled result he commanded that the hawk should be brought before him caressed the bird with enthusiasm and ordered that for the commemoration of his matchless courage a crown of gold should be solemnly placed on the hawk's head but then that immediately after this coronation the bird should be brought before him as the most valiant indeed of traitors but not the less a traitor that are dead to rise in rebellion against his liege lord the eagle now said I to the Welshman how painful it would have been to you and me as men of refined feelings that this poor brute the tally-ho in the impossible case of a victory over us should have been crowned with jewellery gold with Birmingham ware or paced diamonds and then the Walshman doubted if that could be warranted by law and when I hinted at the tenth of Edward III chapter 15 for regulating the presidency of coaches as being probably the statute relied on for the capital punishment of such offenses he replied dryly that if the attempt to pass a mail was really treasonable it was a pity that the tally-ho appeared to have so imperfect an acquaintance with law these were among the gayities of my earliest and boyish acquaintance with males but alike the gayest and most terrific of my experiences rose again after years of slumber armed with preternatural power to shake my dreaming sensibilities sometimes as in the slight case of Miss Fanny on the Bath Road which I will immediately mention through some casual capricious association with images originally gay yet opening at some stage of evolution into sudden capacities of horror sometimes through the more natural and fixed alliances with the sense of power so various lodged in the mail system the modern modes of traveling cannot compare with the mail coach system in grandeur and power they boast of more velocity but not however is a consciousness but as a fact of our lifeless knowledge resting upon alien evidence as for instance because somebody says that we have gone 50 miles in the hour or upon the evidence of a result as that we actually find ourselves in York four hours after leaving London apart from such an assertion or such a result I am little aware of the pace but seated on the old mail coach we needed no evidence out of ourselves to indicate the velocity on this system the word was non magna loquimur as upon railways but magna vivimos the vital experience of the glad animal sensibilities made doubts impossible on the question of our speed we heard our speed we saw it we felt it as a thrilling and this speed was not the product of blind insensate agencies that had no sympathy to give but was incarnated in the fiery eyeballs of an animal in his dilated nostrils spasmodic muscles and echoing hoos this speed was incarnated in the visible contagion amongst the brutes of some impulse that radiating into their natures had yet its centre and beginning in man the sensibility of the horse uttering itself in the maniac light of his eye might be the last vibration of such a movement the glory of Salamanca might be the first but the intervening link that connected them that spread of the earthquake of the battle into the eyeball of the horse was the heart of man kindling in the rapture of the fiery strife propagating its own tumults by motions and gestures to the sympathies more or less dim in his servant the horse but now on the new system of travelling iron tubes and boilers have disconnected man's heart from the ministers of his locomotion Nile nor Trafalgar has power anymore to raise an extra bubble in a steam kettle the galvanic cycle is broken up forever man's imperial nature no longer sends itself forward through the electric sensibility of the horse the interagency's are gone in the mode of communication between the horse and his master out of which grew so many aspects of sublimity under accidents of mists that hid or sudden blazes that revealed of mobs that agitated or midnight solitudes that awed tidings fitted to convulse all nations must hence forwards travel by culinary process a trumpet that once announced from afar the laurel male heart-shaking when heard screaming on the wind and advancing through the darkness to every village or solitary house on its root has now given way forever to the pot-wallopings of the boiler thus have perished multi-form openings for sublime effects for interesting personal communications for revelations of impressive faces that could not have offered themselves amongst the hurried migrating groups of a railway station the gatherings of gazes about a male coach had one centre and acknowledged only one interest but the crowds attending at a railway station have as little unity as running water and own as many centres as there are separate carriages in the train how else for example than as a constant watcher for the dawn and for the London male that in summer months entered about dawn into the lawny circuits of Marlborough forest couldst thou sweet fanny of the Bath Road have become known to myself yet fanny as the loveliest young woman for face and person that perhaps in my whole life I have beheld merited the station which even her I could not willingly have spared yet 35 years later she holds in my dreams and though by an accident of fencerful caprice she brought along with her into those dreams a troop of dreadful creatures fabulous and not fabulous that were more abominable to a human heart than fanny and the dawn were delightful Ms fanny of the Bath Road strictly speaking lived at a miles distance from that road but came so continually to meet the male that I on my frequent transits rarely missed her and naturally connected her name with the great thoroughfare where I saw her I do not exactly know but I believe with some burden of commissions to be executed in Bath her own residence being probably the centre to which these commissions gathered the male coachman who wore the royal livery being one amongst the privileged few who happened to be fanny's grandfather footnote regarding the privileged few the general impression was that this splendid costume belonged of right to the male coachman as their professional dress but that was an error that would belong as a matter of course and was essential as an official warrant and a means of instant identification for his person in the discharge of his important public duties but the coachman and especially if his place in the series did not connect him immediately with London and the general post office obtained the scarlet coat only as an honorary distinction after long or special service end of footnote a good man he was that loved his beautiful granddaughter and loving her wisely was vigilant over her deportment in any case where young Oxford might happen to be concerned was I then vain enough to imagine that I myself individually could fall within the line of his terrors certainly not as regarded any physical pretensions that I could plead for fanny as a chance passenger from her own neighbourhood once told me counted in her train I would have to confess to admirers if not open aspirants to her favour and probably not one of the whole brigade but excel myself in personal advantages Ulysses even with the unfair advantage of his accursed bow could hardly have undertaken that amount of suitors so the danger might have seemed slight only that woman is universally aristocratic it is amongst her nobilities of heart that she is so now the aristocratic distinctions in my favour might easily with Miss Fanny have compensated my physical deficiencies did I then make love to Fanny why yes may we don't as much love as one can whilst the male is changing horses a process which ten years later did not occupy above eighty seconds but then this about Waterloo it occupied five times eighty now four hundred seconds offer a field quite ample enough to bring into a young woman's ear a great deal of truth and, by way of parenthesis some trifle of falsehood grand papa did right therefore to watch me and yet as happens too often to the grand papa's of earth in a contest with the admirers of granddaughters how vainly would he have watched me had I meditated any evil whispers to Fanny she, it is my belief would have protected herself against any man's evil suggestions but he, as the result showed could not have intercepted the opportunities for such suggestions yet he was still active he was still blooming blooming he was as Fanny herself say all our praises why should lords no, that's not the line say all our roses why should girls engross the coachman showed rosy blossoms on his face deeper even than his granddaughters his being drawn from the ale cask Fanny's from youth and innocence and from the fountains of the dawn but in spite of his blooming face some infirmities he had and one particularly I am very sure no more than one in which he too much resembled the crocodile this lay in a monstrous inaptitude for turning round the crocodile I presume owes that inaptitude to the absurd length of his back but in our grand papa it arose rather from the absurd breadth of his back combined probably with some growing stiffness in his legs now upon this crocodile infirmity of his I planted an easy opportunity for tendering my homage to Miss Fanny in defiance of all his honourable vigilance no sooner had he presented to us his mighty jovian back what a field for displaying to mankind his royal scarlet whilst inspecting professionally the buckles the straps and the silver turrets of his harness then I raised Miss Fanny's hand to my lips and by the mixed tenderness and respectfulness of my manner caused her easily to understand how happy it would have made me to rank upon her list as number ten or number twelve in which case a few casualties amongst her lovers and observed they hanged liberally in those days might have promoted me speedily to the top of the tree as on the other hand with how much loyalty of submission I would have guessed in her allotment supposing that she had seen reason to plant me in the very rearward of her favour as number one hundred and ninety nine plus one it must not be supposed that I allowed any trace of jest or even of playfulness to mingle with these expressions of my admiration that would have been insulting to her and would have been false as regard at my own feelings in fact the utter shadowyness of our relations to each other through things through seven or eight years had been very numerous but of necessity had been very brief being entirely on male coach allowance timid in reality by the general post office and watched by a crocodile belonging to the antipenultimate generation left it easy for me to do a thing which few people ever can have done viz to make love for seven years at the same time to be as sincere as ever creature was and yet never to compromise myself for the cause that might have been foolish as regarded my own interests or misleading as regarded hers most truly I love this beautiful and ingenuous girl and had it not been for the bath and Bristol male heaven only knows what might have come of it people talk of being overhead and ears in love now the male was the cause that I sank only over years in love which you know still left a trifle of brain to overlook the whole conduct of the affair I have mentioned the case at all for the sake of a dreadful result from it in after years of dreaming but it seems exabundantani to yield this moral viz that as in England the idiot and the half were to hell to be under the guardianship of charcery so the man making love who was often but a variety of the same Embersill class ought to be made a ward of the general post office whose severe course of timing and periodical interruption might intercept many a foolish declaration such as laser solid foundation for 50 years repentance our reader when I look back upon those days it seems to me that all things change or perish even thunder and lightning it pains me to say and not the thunder and lightning which I seem to remember about the time of Waterloo roses I fear are degenerating and without a red revolution must come to the dust the fannies of our island though this I say with reluctance are not improving and the bath road is notoriously superannuated Mr. Waterton tells me that the crocodile does not change that a caiman in fact or an alligator is just as good for riding upon as he was in the time of the pharaohs that may be but the reason is that the crocodile does not live fast he is a slow coach I believe it is generally understood amongst naturalists that the crocodile is a blockhead it is my own impression that the pharaohs were also blockheads now as the pharaohs and the crocodile dominated over Egyptian society this accounts for a singular mistake that prevailed on the Nile the crocodile made the ridiculous blunder of supposing man to be meant chiefly for his own eating man taking a different view of the subject naturally met that mistake by another he viewed the crocodile as a thing sometimes to worship but always to run away from and this continued until Mr. Waterton changed the relations between the animals the mode of escaping from the reptile he showed to be not by running away but by leaping on its back booted and spurred the two animals had misunderstood each other the use of the crocodile has now been cleared up it is to be ridden and the use of man is that he may improve the health of the crocodile by riding him a fox hunting before breakfast and it is pretty certain that any crocodile who has been regularly hunted through the season and his master of the weight he carries will take a six barred gate now as well as ever he would have done in the infancy of the pyramids perhaps therefore the crocodile does not change but all things else do even the shadow of the pyramids grows less and often the restoration in vision of Fanny and the Bath Road makes me too pathetically sensible of that truth out of the darkness if I happen to call up the image of Fanny from 35 years back arises suddenly a rose in June or if I think for an instant of the rose in June up rises the heavenly face of Fanny one after the other like the antiphanies in the Coral Service rises Fanny and the rose in June then back again the rose in June and Fanny then come both together as in a chorus roses and fannies, fannies and roses without end thick as blossoms in paradise then comes a venerable crocodile in a royal livery of scarlet and gold or in a coat with 16 capes and the crocodile is driving foreign hand from the box of the bath mail and suddenly we upon the mail are pulled up by a mighty dial sculptured with the hours and with the dreadful legend of too late then all at once we are arrived at Marlborough Forest amongst the lovely households of the roadier these retire into the dewy thickets the thickets are rich with roses the roses call up as ever the sweet countenance of Fanny who, being the granddaughter of a crocodile awakens a dreadful host of wild semi-legendary animals griffons, dragons basilisks, sphinxes till at length the whole vision of fighting images crowds into one towering armorial shield a vast emblazony of human charities and human loveliness that have perished but courted heraldically with unutterable horrors of monstrous and demonic natures whilst over all rises as a surmounting crest, one fair female hand with the forefinger pointing in sweet sorrowful admonition upwards to heaven and having power, which without experience I never could have believed to awaken the pathos that kills in the very bosom of the horrors that madden the grief that gnaws at the heart together with the monstrous creations of darkness that shock the belief and make dizzy the reason of man footnote regarding households of Rodea Rodea do not congregate in herds like the fellow or the red deer but by separate families, parents and children, which feature of approximation to the sanctity of human hearths added to their comparatively miniature and graceful proportions conciliate to them an interest of a peculiarly tender character if less dignified by the granges of savage and forest life end of footnote this is the peculiarity that I wish the reader to notice as having first been made known to me for a possibility by this early vision of fanny on the bath road the peculiarity consisted in the confluence of two different keys, though apparently repelling each other into the music and governing principles of the same dream horror, such as possesses the maniac and yet momentary transitions, grief such as may be supposed to possess the dying mother when leaving her infant children to the mercies of the cruel usually, and perhaps always in an unshaken nervous system these two modes of misery exclude each other, here first they met in horrid reconciliation there was also a separate peculiarity in the quality of the horror this was afterwards developed into far more revolting complexities of misery and incomprehensible darkness and perhaps I am wrong in ascribing any value as a causative agency to this particular case on the bath road possibly it furnished merely an occasion that accidentally introduced a mode of horrors certain to any rate to have grown up with or without the bath road from more advanced stages of the nervous derangement yet as the cubs of tigers or leopards when domesticated have been observed to suffer a sudden development of their latent ferocity under too eager an appeal to their playfulness the gayities of sport in them being too closely connected with the fiery brightness of their murderous instincts so I have remarked that the caprices the gay arabesques and the lovely floral luxuriations of dreams betray a shocking tendency to pass into finer maniacal splendours that gaiety for instance which as at first was in the dreaming faculty by which one principal point of resemblance to a crocodile than the male coachman was soon made to clothe him with the form of a crocodile and yet was blended with accessory circumstances derived from his human functions passed rapidly into a further development no longer gay or playful but terrific the most terrific that besieges dreams vis the horrid inoculation upon each other of incompatible natures this horror has always been secretly felt by man it was felt even under pagan forms of religion which offered a very feeble and also very limited gamut for giving expression to the human capacities of sublimity or of horror we read it in the fearful composition of the sphinx the dragon again is the snake inoculated upon the scorpion the basilisk unites the mysterious malice of the evil eye unintentional on the part of the happy agent with the intentional venom of some other malignant natures but these horrid complexities of evil agency are but objectively horrid they inflict the horror suitable to their compound nature but there is no insinuation that they feel that horror heraldry is so full of these fantastic creatures that in some zoologies we find a separate chapter or a supplement related to what is denominated heraldic zoology and why not for these hideous creatures however visionary have a real traditionary ground in medieval belief sincere and partly reasonable though adulterating with mendacity blundering credulity and intense superstition footnote regarding hideous creatures however visionary but are they always visionary the unicorn the kraken the sea the serpent are all perhaps zoological fact the unicorn for instance so far from being a lie is rather too true for simply as a monochorus he is found in the Himalayas in Africa and elsewhere rather too often for the piece of what in Scotland would be called the intending traveller that which really is a lie in the account of the unicorn vis his legendary rival ship with the lion which lie may God preserve in preserving the mighty imperial shield that embalms it cannot be more destructive to the zoological pretensions of the unicorn than out of the same pretensions in the lion are many popular crazes about his goodness and magnanimity or the old fancy adopted by Spencer and noticed by so many among our elder poets of his graciousness to maiden innocence the rich is the basest and most cowardly among the forest tribes Norse is the sublime carriage of the English bulldog ever been so memorably exhibited as in his hopeless fight at warwick with the cowardly and cruel lion called Wallace another of the traditional creatures still doubtful is the mermaid upon which something once remarked to me that if it had been differently named as suppose a murrape nobody would have questioned its existence any more than that of sea cows sea lions etc the mermaid has been discredited by her human name and her legendary human habits if she would not cook it so much with melancholy sailors and brush her hairs so assiduously upon solitary rocks she would be carried on our books for as honest a reality as decent a female as many that are assessed to the poor rates end of footnote but the dream horror which I speak of is far more frightful the dreamer finds housed within himself occupying as it were some separate chamber in his brain holding perhaps from that station a secret and detestable commerce with his own heart some horrid alien nature what if it were his own nature repeated still if the duality were distinctly perceptible even that even this mere numerical double of his own consciousness might be accursed too mighty to be sustained but how if the alien nature contradicts his own fights with it perplexes confounds it how again if not one alien nature but two but three but four but five are introduced within what once he thought the inviolable sanctuary of himself these however are horrors from the kingdoms of Anakin darkness which by their very intensity challenge the sanctity of concealment and gloomily retire from exposition yet it was necessary to mention them because the first introduction to such appearances where the causal or merely casual lay in the heraldic monsters which monsters were themselves introduced though playfully by the transfigured coachman of the bath male end of the English male coach or the glory of motion part one recording by Tim McKenzie this is a LibriVox recording LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org miscellaneous essays by Thomas DeQuincy the English male coach or the glory of motion part two going down with victory but the grandest chapter of our experience within the whole male coach service was on those occasions when we went down from London with the news of victory a period of about ten years stretched from Trafalgar to Waterloo the second and third years of which period 1806 and 1807 were comparatively sterile but the rest from 1805 to 1815 inclusively furnished a long succession of victories the least of which in a contest of that portentous nature had an inappreciable value of position partly for its absolute interference with the plans of our enemy but still more from its keeping alive in central Europe the sense of a deep-seated vulnerability in France even to tease the coasts of our enemy to mortify them by continual blockades to insult them by capturing if it were but a baubling schooner under the eyes of their arrogant armies repeated from time to time the sullen proclamation of power lodged in a quarter to which the hopes of Christendom turned in secret how much more loudly must this proclamation have spoken in the audacity of having bearded the elite of their troops and having beaten them in pitched battles footnote regarding audacity such the French accounted it and it has struck me that salt would not have been so popular in London in the period of her present Majesty's coronation or in Manchester on occasion of his visit to that town if they had been aware of the insolence with which he spoke of us in notes written at intervals from the field of Waterloo as though it had been mere felony in our army to look a French one in the face he said more than once here in the English we have them they are caught en floc en délit yet no man should have known us better no man had drunk deeper from the cup of humiliation than salt had in the north of Portugal during the flight from an English army and subsequently at Albuera in the bloodiest of recorded battles end of footnote five years of life it was worth paying down for the privilege of an outside place on a male coach when carrying down the first tidings of any such event and it is to be noted that from our insular situation and the multitude of our frigates disposable for the rapid transmission of intelligence really did any unauthorized rumour steal away a pre-libation from the aroma of regular dispatches the government official news was generally the first news from 8pm to 15 or 20 minutes later imagine the males assembled on Parade in Lombard where at that time was seated the general post office in what exact strength we musted I do not remember but from the length of each separate atelage we filled the street though a long one and though we were drawn up in double file on any night the spectacle was beautiful the absolute perfection of all the appointments about the carriages in the harness and the magnificence of the horses were what might first have fixed the attention every carriage on every morning in the year was taken down to an inspector for examination wheels, axles, linchpins pole, glasses etc were all critically probed and tested every part of every carriage had been cleaned every horse had been groomed with as much rigour as if they belonged to a private gentleman and that part of the spectacle offered itself always but the night before us was a night of victory and behold to the ordinary display what a heart-shaking addition horses, men, carriages all addressed in laurels and flowers oak leaves and ribbons the guards who were His Majesty's servants and the coachmen who were within the privilege of the post office were the royal liveries of course and as it is summer for all the land victories were one in summer they were on this fine evening these liveries exposed to view without any covering of upper coats such a costume and the elaborate arrangement of the laurels in their hats dilated their hearts by giving to them openly an official connection with the great news in which already they have the general interest of patriotism that great national sentiments amounts and quells all sense of ordinary distinctions those passengers who happened to be gentlemen are now hardly to be distinguished as such except by dress the usual reserve of their manner and speaking to the attendants has on this night melted away one heart, one pride one glory connects every man by the transcendent bond of His English blood the spectators who in numerous beyond precedent express their sympathy with these fervent feelings by continual hurrahs every moment a shouter to loud by the post office servants the great ancestral names of cities known to history through a thousand years Lincoln Winchester Portsmouth Gloucester Oxford Bristol Manchester York Newcastle Edinburgh Perth Glasgow expressing the grandeur of the empire by the antiquity of its towns and the grandeur of the male establishment by the diffusive radiation of its separate missions every moment you hear the thunder of lids locked down upon the mail bags that sound to each individual mail is the signal for drawing off which processes the finest part of the entire spectacle then come the horses into play horses can these be horses that unless powerfully reigned in would bound off with the action and gestures of leopards what stir, what sea like ferment what a thundering of wheels what a trampling of horses what farewell cheers what redoubling peels of brotherly congratulation connecting the name of the particular male Liverpool forever with the name of the particular victory Bedachos forever or Salamanca forever the half slumbering consciousness that all night long and all the next day perhaps for even a longer period many of these males like fire racing along a train of gunpowder will be kindling at every instant new successions of burning joy has an obscure effect of multiplying the victory itself by multiplying to the imagination into infinity the stages of its progressive diffusion a fiery arrow seems to be let loose which from that moment is destined to travel almost without intermission westwards for 300 miles northwards for 600 and the sympathy of our Lombard street friends at parting has exalted a hundredfold by a sort of visionary sympathy with the approaching sympathies yet unborn which we are going to evoke footnote regarding 300 miles of necessity this scale of measurement to an American if he happens to be a thoughtless man must sound ludicrous accordingly I remember a case in which an American writer indulges himself in the luxury of a little lying by ascribing to an Englishman a pompous account of the Thames constructed entirely upon American ideas of grandeur and concluding in something like these terms and sir arriving at London this mighty father of rivers attains a breadth of at least two furlongs having in its winding course traversed the astonishing distance of 170 miles and this the candid American thinks it is fair to contrast with the scale of the Mississippi now it is hardly worthwhile to answer a pure falsehood gravely else one might say that no Englishman out of bedlam ever thought of looking in an island for the rivers of a continent nor consequently could have thought of looking for the peculiar grandeur of the Thames in the length of its course or in the extent of soil which it drains yet if he had been so absurd the American might have recollected that a river not to be compared with the Thames even as to volume of water vis the Tiber has contrived to make itself heard of in this world for 25 centuries to an extent not reached nor likely to be reached very soon by any river however corpulent of his own land the glory of the Thames is measured by the density of the population to which it ministers by the commerce which it supports by the grandeur of the empire in which though far from the largest it is the most influential stream upon some such scale and not by a transfer of Colombian standards is the course of our English males to be valued the American may fancy the effect of his own valuations to our English years by supposing the case of a Siberian glorifying his country in these terms these rascals sir in France and England cannot much half a mile in any direction without finding a house where food can be had and lodging whereas such is the noble desolation of our magnificent country that in many a direction for a thousand miles I will engage a dog shall not find shelter from a snowstorm nor a ren find an apology for breakfast end of footnote liberated from the embarrassments of the city and issuing into the broad uncrowded avenues of the northern suburbs we begin to enter upon our natural pace of ten miles an hour in the broad light of the summer evening the sun perhaps only just at the point of setting we are seen from every story of every house heads of every age crowd to the windows young and old understand the language of our victorious symbols and rolling volleys of sympathizing cheers run along behind and before our course the beggar rearing himself against the wall forgets his lameness real or assumed thinks not of his whining trade but stands erect with bold exulting smiles as we pass him the victory has healed him and says be thou whole women and children from garrets alike and sellers look down or look up with loving eyes upon our gay ribbons and our marshal laurels sometimes kiss their hands, sometimes hang out as signals of affection pocket handkerchiefs, aprons, dusters anything that lies ready to their hands on the London side of Barnett to which we draw near within a few minutes after nine observe that private carriage which is approaching us the weather being so warm the glasses are all down and one may read, as on the stage of a theatre everything that goes on within the carriage it contains three ladies one likely to be a mama and two of seventeen or eighteen who are probably her daughters what lovely animation what beautiful unpremeditated pantomime explaining to us every syllable that passes in these ingenuous girls by the sudden start and raising of the hands on first discovering our laurel de quipege by the sudden movement and appeal to the older lady from both of them and by the heightened colour on their animated countenances we can almost hear them saying CC look at their laurels, oh mama there has been a great battle in Spain there has been a great victory in a moment we are on the point of passing them we passengers, I on the box and the two on the roof behind me raise our hats the coachman makes his professional salute with the whip the guard even though punctilious on the matter of his dignity as an officer under the crown touches his hat the ladies move to us in return with the winning graciousness of gesture all smile on each side made in a way that nobody could misunderstand and that nothing short of a grand national sympathy could so instantaneously prompt will these ladies say that we are nothing to them? oh no, they will not say that they cannot deny, they do not deny that for this night they are our sisters gentle or simple, scholar or illiterate servant for twelve hours to come we on the outside have the honour to be their brothers those poor women again who stopped to gaze upon us with delight at the entrance of Barnet and seen by their air of weariness to be returning from labour do you mean to say that they are washer women and char women? oh my poor friend, you are quite mistaken they are nothing of the kind I assure you they stand in a higher rank for this one night they feel themselves by birthright to be daughters of England and answer to no humbler title every joy however even rapturous joy such as the sad law of earth may carry with it grief or fear of grief to some three miles beyond Barnet we see approaching us another private carriage nearly repeating the circumstances of the former case here also the glasses are all down here also is an elderly lady seated but the two amiable daughters are missing for this single young person sitting by the lady's side seems to be an attendant so I judge from her dress and her air of respectful reserve the lady is in mourning and her countenance expresses sorrow at first she does not look up so that I believe she is not aware of our approach until she hears the measured beating of our horse's hooves then she raises her eyes to settle them painfully on our triumphal equipage our decorations explain the case to her at once but she beholds them with apparent anxiety or even with terror sometime before this I finding it difficult to hit a flying mark when embarrassed by the coachman's person and reigns intervening had given to the guard a courier evening paper containing the gazette for the next carriage that might pass accordingly he tossed it in so folded that the huge capitals expressing some legend as glorious victory might catch the eye at once to see the paper however at all interpreted as it was by her insides of triumph explained everything and if the guard were right in thinking the lady to have received it with a gesture of horror it could not be doubtful that she had suffered some deep personal affliction in connection with this Spanish war here now was the case of one who having formally suffered might erroneously perhaps be distressing herself with anticipations of another similar suffering that same night and hardly three hours later occurred the reverse case a poor woman who too probably would find herself in a day or two to have suffered the heaviest of afflictions by the battle blindly allowed herself to express an exaltation so unmeasured in the news and its details as to give her the appearance which amongst Celtic Highlanders is called Fae this was at some little town I forget what where we happened to change horses near midnight some fare or wake had kept the people out of their beds we saw many lights moving about as we drew near and perhaps the most impressive scene on our route was our reception at this place the flashing of torches and the beautiful radiance of blue lights technically Bengal lights upon the heads of our horses the fine effect of such a showery and ghostly illumination falling upon flowers and glittering laurels whilst all around the messy darkness seemed to invest us with walls of impenetrable blackness together with the prodigious enthusiasm of the people composed a picture at once cynical and affecting as we stayed for three or four minutes I alighted and immediately from a dismantled store on the street where perhaps she had been presiding at some part of the evening advanced eagerly a middle aged woman the sight of my newspaper it was that had drawn her attention upon myself the victory which we were carrying down to the provinces on this occasion was the imperfect one of Talavera I told her the main outline of the battle but her agitation though not the agitation of fear but of exaltation rather and enthusiasm had been so conspicuous when listening and when first applying for information that I could not but ask her if she had not some relation in the peninsular army oh yes her only son was there in what regiment he was a trooper in the 23rd Dragoons my heart sank within me as she made that answer this sublime regiment which an Englishman should never mention without raising his hat to their memory had made the most memorable and effective charge recorded in military annals they let their horses over a trench where they could into it and with the result of death or mutilation when they could not what proportion clear the trench is nowhere stated those who did closed up and went down upon the enemy with such divinity of fervour I used the word divinity by design the inspiration of God must have prompted this movement to those whom even then he was calling that two results followed as regarded the enemy this 23rd Dragoons not I believe originally 350 strong paralysed a French column 6000 strong then ascending the hill and fixed the gaze of the whole French army as regarded themselves the 23rd was supposed at first to have been all but annihilated but eventually I believe not so many as one and four survived and this then was the regiment a regiment already for some hours known to myself and all London is stretched by a large majority upon one bloodier seldom in which the young trooper served whose mother was now talking with myself in a spirit of such hopeful enthusiasm did I tell you the truth had I the heart to break up her dreams no I said to myself tomorrow or the next day she will hear the worst for this night wherefore should she not sleep in peace after tomorrow the chances are too many that peace will forsake her pillow this brief respite let her owe this to my gift and my forbearance but if I told her not of the bloody price that had been paid there was no reason for suppressing the contributions from her son's regiment to the service and glory of the day for the very few words that I had time for speaking I governed myself accordingly I showed her not the funeral banners under which the noble regiment was sleeping I lifted not the overshadowing laurels from the bloody trench in which horse and rider lay mangled together but I told her how these dear children of England privates and officers had let their horses over all obstacles as gayly as hunters to the morning's chase I told her how they rode their horses into the mists of death saying to myself but not saying to her and laid down their young lives for thee O mother England as willingly poured out their noble blood as chairfully as ever after a long day's sport when infants they had rested their wearied heads upon their mother's knees or had sunk to sleep in her arms it is singular that she seemed to have no fears even after this knowledge that the 23rd nations had been conspicuously engaged for her son's safety but so much was she enraptured by the knowledge that his regiment and therefore he had rendered imminent service in the trying conflict a service which had actually made them the foremost topic of conversation in London that in the mere simplicity of her fervent nature she threw her arms around my neck and poor woman kissed me end of the English male coach or the glory of motion part 2 Recording by Tim McKenzie