CHAPTER 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 (a turning point; a new age) of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity (refusal to believe), 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 (of the highest degree) 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 (state: ceremony; pomp — the old sense here) 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 (a woman who claimed to prophesy in Dickens's day) had recently attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic (foretelling what will come) 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 (a London street where a ghost was said to knock) 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 (beyond nature's course) 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 (pincers: a gripping tool), 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 (able to be moved) 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 (splashed with mud) with rustic mire (deep sinking bog), snuffed (powdered tobacco for the nose) about by pigs, and roosted (roosted: perched) in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils (an open cart that carried the condemned to the blade) of the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly (without stopping), work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled (wrapped so as to dull sound) tread: the rather, forasmuch (seeing that) as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical (holding that there is no god) and traitorous (false to one's country).

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 (a man who covers furniture with padding and cloth)’ warehouses for security; the highwayman (a mounted robber of the roads) in the dark was a City tradesman in the light, and, being recognised and challenged by his fellow-tradesman (another man of the same trade) whom he stopped in his character of “the Captain,” gallantly (bravely and handsomely) shot him through the head and rode away; the mail was waylaid (waylaid: lay in wait for) 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 (a ruler with great power), the Lord Mayor of London, was made to stand and deliver on Turnham (Turnham Green, a place west of London) Green, by one highwayman, who despoiled (to plunder; rob) the illustrious creature in sight of all his retinue (a great person's train of followers); prisoners in London gaols (prison) fought battles with their turnkeys, and the majesty of the law fired blunderbusses (a short gun with a wide mouth) in among them, loaded with rounds of shot and ball; thieves snipped (a small cut with scissors) off diamond crosses from the necks of noble lords at Court drawing-rooms (rooms for receiving company); musketeers (a foot soldier armed with a musket) went into St. Giles (an English man's name)’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 (a demand); now, stringing up long rows of miscellaneous criminals; now, hanging a housebreaker (one who breaks into houses) on Saturday who had been taken on Tuesday; now, burning people in the hand at Newgate (the chief prison of London) by the dozen, and now burning pamphlets at the door of Westminster Hall; to-day, taking the life of an atrocious (terrible) murderer, and to-morrow of a wretched pilferer (one who steals small things) 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 (the surrounding country) by them, while the Woodman and the Farmer worked unheeded (unnoticed), those two of the large jaws, and those other two of the plain and the fair faces, trod (worn down by treading) 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.