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.

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

mail 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 mail 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.