HPAVC/HPAVC CD-ROM.iso/PCASM1.ZIP/TWOTALE.DOC

Text File | 1989-11-11 | 6KB | 96 lines

    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 Turnnam Green, by one
highwayman, who despoiled the illustrious creature in sight of
all his retinue; prisoner 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; today, 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.