I
The
Period
It
was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was
the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of
incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was
the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us,
we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going
direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period,
that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good
or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
There
were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and
a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was
clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes,
that things in general were settled for ever.
It
was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Spiritual
revelations were conceded to England
at that favoured period, as at this. Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her
five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life
Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were
made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the
Cock-lane ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping out
its messages, as the spirits of this very year last past (supernaturally
deficient in originality) rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the earthly order
of events had lately come to the English Crown and People, from a congress of
British subjects in America:
which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any
communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood.
France,
less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the
shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper
money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she
entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a
youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body
burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a
dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some
fifty or sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees,
when that sufferer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to
come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a
sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the
rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were
sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic
mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer,
Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution. But that
Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no
one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as
to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical and
traitorous.
In
England,
there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to justify much national
boasting. Daring burglaries by armed men, and highway robberies, took place in
the capital itself every night; families were publicly cautioned not to go out
of town without removing their furniture to upholsterers' warehouses for
security; the highwayman in the dark was a City tradesman in the light, and,
being recognised and challenged by his fellow- tradesman whom he stopped in his
character of "the Captain," gallantly shot him through the head and
rode away; the mall was waylaid by seven robbers, and the guard shot three
dead, and then got shot dead himself by the other four, "in consequence of
the failure of his ammunition:" after which the mall was robbed in peace;
that magnificent potentate, the Lord Mayor of London, was made to stand and
deliver on Turnham Green, by one highwayman, who despoiled the illustrious
creature in sight of all his retinue; prisoners in London gaols fought battles
with their turnkeys, and the majesty of the law fired blunderbusses in among
them, loaded with rounds of shot and ball; thieves snipped off diamond crosses
from the necks of noble lords at Court drawing-rooms; musketeers went into St.
Giles's, to search for contraband goods, and the mob fired on the musketeers,
and the musketeers fired on the mob, and nobody thought any of these occurrences
much out of the common way. In the midst of them, the hangman, ever busy and
ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition; now, stringing up long
rows of miscellaneous criminals; now, hanging a housebreaker on Saturday who
had been taken on Tuesday; now, burning people in the hand at Newgate by the
dozen, and now burning pamphlets at the door of Westminster Hall; to-day,
taking the life of an atrocious murderer, and to-morrow of a wretched pilferer
who had robbed a farmer's boy of sixpence.
All
these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass in and close upon the dear
old year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Environed by them, while
the Woodman and the Farmer worked unheeded, those two of the large jaws, and those
other two of the plain and the fair faces, trod with stir enough, and carried
their divine rights with a high hand. Thus did the year one thousand seven
hundred and seventy-five conduct their Greatnesses, and myriads of small
creatures--the creatures of this chronicle among the rest--along the roads that
lay before them.