< A TALE OF TWO CITIES. >
< BY CHARLES DICKENS. >
< PUBLISHED BY THOMAS NELSON AND SONS >
< LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK , 1909 >
< IN THREE BOOKS. >
< BOOK THE FIRST. RECALLED TO LIFE. >
< CHAPTER I>
< THE PERIOD. >
<A Dickens>
<C I>
<T The Period>
<P 1><L 1>
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 superla-
tive 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
<P 2><L 1>
and seventy-five. Spiritual revelations were conceded to
England at that favoured period, as at this. Mrs. South
cott 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 (super-
naturally 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 communica-
tions 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 downhill, 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
<P 3><L 1>
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 bur-
glaries 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 recognized and challenged by his fellow-trades-
man 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 magnifi-
cent potentate, the Lord Mayor of London, was made to
stand and deliver on Turnham Green, by one highwayman,
who despoiled the illustrious creature in sight of all his
retinue; prisoners in London jails fought battles with
their turnkeys, and the majesty of the law fired blunder-
busses 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 mis-
cellaneous criminals; now hanging a housebreaker on Sat-
urday 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; to-day,
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
<P 4><L 1>
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 chron-
icle among the rest -- along the roads that lay before them.
