JOAN OF ARC.*
Miss JAMES in her study, Joan of Arc, does not solve, does not profess to solve, the problem of that marvellous personality. Still, she helps us to see light. For one thing, she shows us the human in the Maid. One of the judges at her trial said that Joan had much "feminine subtlety," and Miss James agrees. She was not without other feminine qualities, a taste for the ornamental among them. And she was not logical: her claims and her narratives are not always consistent. When we examine her account of her visions and voices we are often brought up by the statement that she was bound to secrecy. No one can deny that there might be such a binding, but an outside judgment is made more difficult. Then the fact that such claims or experiences—whatever we may prefer to call them—were characteristic of the age may do much to account for the phenomenon of Joan, but it hinders rather than helps when we would appreciate Joan herself. Some of these claimants of preternatural powers were cer- tainly impostors, or anyhow became such early in their career ; yet it is impossible to connect the idea of im- posture with Joan's life and work. Impostors, for one thing, are self-seeking, and this fault was absolutely remote from her. Then there are minor difficulties, the recognition, for instance, by Joan's two brothers of the false maid at Grange-aux-Ormes as their veritable sister. (This happened five years after the scene of May 30th, 1431, when Joan was burnt in the old market-place of Rouen.) If the Maid re- mains more or less incomprehensible we are left in no doubt as to the other characters in the scene. Prominent among them is King Charles VII., about whom Miss James writes with a most praiseworthy patience, for, indeed, he was one of the meanest of men, just what he looks in Jean Fouquet's portrait. The best thing that can be said for him is that he bore the burden of an awful heredity. What could the son of a maniac and the wicked Isabel of Bavaria hope to be P Miss James has given us here a very interesting and useful volume.
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