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Book the First -- Recalled to Life | |
Chapter 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.-P-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.-P-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.-P-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.-P-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.-P-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.-P- |
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