BOOK THE FIRST RECALLED TO LIFE
CHAPTER IThe Period
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it wasthe age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was theepoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was theseason of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was thespring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we hadeverything before us, we had nothing before us, we were allgoing direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the otherway--in short, the period was so. far like the present period,that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its beingreceived, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree ofcomparison only.
There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plainface, on the throne of England; there were a king with a largejaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. Inboth countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of theState preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in generalwere settled for ever.
It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred andseventy-five. Spiritual revelations were conceded to Englandat that favoured period, a sat this. Mrs. Southcott hadrecently attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, ofwhom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded thesublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were madefor the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even theCock-lane ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years,after rapping out its messages, as the spirits of this veryyear last past (supernaturally deficient in originality)rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the earthly order ofevents had lately come to the English Crown and People, from acongress of British subjects in America: which, strange torelate, have proved more important to the human race than anycommunications yet received through any of the chickens of theCock-lane brood.
France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritualthan her sister of the shield and trident, rolled withexceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money andspending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, sheentertained herself besides, with such humane achievements assentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue tornout with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he hadnot kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirtyprocession of monks which passed within his view, at adistance of some fifty or sixty yards. It is likely enoughthat, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there weregrowing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, alreadymarked by the Woodman, Fate, to comedown and be sawn intoboards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and aknife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that inthe rough outhouses old some tillers of the heavy landsadjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather thatvery day, rude carts, be spattered with rustic mire, snuffedabout by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer,Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of theRevolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they workunceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they wentabout with muffled tread: the rather, for as much as toentertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to beatheistical and traitorous.
In England, there was scarcely an amount of order andprotection to justify much national boasting. Daringburglaries by armed men, and highway robberies, took place inthe capital itself every night; families were publiclycautioned not to go out of town without removing theirfurniture to upholsterers' warehouses for security; thehighwayman in the dark was a City tradesman in the light, and,being recognised and challenged by his fellow-tradesman whomhe stopped in his character of `the Captain, ' gallantly shothim through the head and rode away; the mail was waylaid byseven robbers, and the guard shot three dead, and then gotshot dead himself by the other four, `in consequence of thefailure of his ammunition:' after which the mail was robbed inPeace; that magnificent potentate, the Lord Mayor of London,was made to stand and deliver on Turnham Green, by onehighwayman, who despoiled the illustrious creature insight ofall his retinue; prisoners in London gaols fought battles withtheir turnkeys, and the majesty of the law fired blunderbussesin among them, loaded with rounds of shot and ball; thievessnipped off diamond crosses from the necks of noble lords atCourt drawing-rooms; musketeers went into St. Giles's, tosearch for contraband goods, and the mob fired on themusketeers, and the musketeers fired on the mob, and nobodythought any of these occurrences much out of the common way.
In the midst of them, the hangman, ever busy and ever worsethan useless, was in constant requisition; now, stringing uplong rows of miscellaneous criminals; now, hanging a house-breaker on Saturday who had been taken on Tuesday; now,burning people in the hand at Newgate by the dozen, and nowburning pamphlets at the door of Westminster Hall; to-day,taking the life of an atrocious murderer, and to-morrow of awretched pilferer who had robbed a farmer's boy of sixpence.
All these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass inand close upon the dear old year one thousand seven hundredand seventy-five. Environed by them, while the Woodman and theFarmer worked unheeded, those two of the large jaws, and thoseother two of the plain and the fair laces, trod with stirenough, and carried their divine rights with a high hand. Thusdid the year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-fiveconduct their Greatnesses, and myriads of small creatures--thecreatures of this chronicle among the rest--along the roadsthat lay before them. |