Reading De Quincey

Finished the somewhat rambling but usually interesting (not unlike Borges, De Quincey is seemingly encyclopedic) essay on Joan of Arc (see below), started "The English Mail-Coach; Or The Glory of Motion" (I've read this before -- many moons have passed -- but I'm sure I'll find it exciting and new).

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From the end of De Quincey's essay on Joan of Arc:

Bishop of Beauvais! thy victim died in fire upon a scaffold -- thou upon a down bed. But for the departing minutes of life, both are oftentimes alike. At the farewell crisis, when the gates of death are opening, and flesh is resting from its struggles, oftentimes the tortured and the torturer have the same truce from carnal torment; both sink together into sleep; together both, sometimes, kindle into dreams. When the mortal mists were gathering fast upon you two, Bishop and Shepherd girl -- when the pavilions of life were closing up their shadowy curtains about you -- let us try, through the gigantic glooms, to decipher the flying features of your separate visions.

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