P1412

1431

JEANNE DARC.

DURING the last few years a dozen volumes or more have been published in France containing documents and researches relating to the career of this illustrious heroine, the savior of her country. The reader will be interested, perhaps, in learning the substance of those volumes, and ascertaining what it is rational to believe respecting the subject of them.

In the first place, we all spell her name wrong. She was not an aristrocratic D'Arc, but a plebeian Darc; and her first name was Jeanne, not Joan, as we are accustomed to see it. The name of Dare is still common in the province of France from which she sprang; and we have the authority of a learned descendant of her family for the spelling which we have given. JEANNE DARC is, then, the name of our heroine.

She was born at Domremy, a village upon the banks of the Meuse, in 1412, and she was the daughter of Jaques and Isabel Darc, who were serfs. Her father was a laborer, who possessed a cabin, a little garden, and some cattle; but, having a family of five children to maintain at a time when France was desolated by civil war, Jeanne was reared in circumstances not far removed from want. By turns the child assisted her mother in the labors of the household, and her father in the care of his beasts. The village in which she lived was partly in Champagne and partly in Lorraine - the latter province not being at that time subjected to the King of France. Upon this border line, in that time of civil war, party spirit was intense as much so as it was in the border States during our late war. The young girl, at an early period of her life, imbibed an enthusiasm for the royal cause and a passionate attachment for the