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: