illness. She was paralyzed with horror at the idea of leaving her aged,
sightless father alone on the empty earth; but she had not courage to
disclose the truth, and the very excess of her desperation animated her
to surpassing exertions. At the accustomed vesper hour, she led him to
the chapel; and, though trembling and weeping on his account, she
played, without fault in time, or error in note, the hymn written to
celebrate the creation of the adorned earth, soon to be her tomb.

We came to her like visitors from heaven itself; her high-wrought
courage; her hardly sustained firmness, fled with the appearance of
relief. With a shriek she rushed towards us, embraced the knees of
Adrian, and uttering but the words, “O save my father!” with sobs and
hysterical cries, opened the long-shut floodgates of her woe.

Poor girl!—she and her father now lie side by side, beneath the high
walnut-tree where her lover reposes, and which in her dying moments she
had pointed out to us. Her father, at length aware of his daughter’s
danger, unable to see the changes of her dear countenance, obstinately
held her hand, till it was chilled and stiffened by death. Nor did he
then move or speak, till, twelve hours after, kindly death took him to
his breakless repose. They rest beneath the sod, the tree their
monument;—the hallowed spot is distinct in my memory, paled in by
craggy Jura, and the far, immeasurable Alps; the spire of the church
they frequented still points from out the embosoming trees; and though
her hand be cold, still methinks the sounds of divine music which they
loved wander about, solacing their gentle ghosts.

 [24] Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution.

CHAPTER VIII.

We had now reached Switzerland, so long the final mark and aim of our
exertions. We had looked, I know not wherefore, with hope and pleasing
expectation on her congregation of hills and snowy crags, and opened
our bosoms with renewed spirits to the icy Biz, which even at Midsummer
used to come from the northern glacier laden with cold. Yet how could
we nourish expectation of relief? Like our native England, and the vast
extent of fertile France, this mountain-embowered land was desolate of
its inhabitants. Nor bleak mountain-top, nor snow-nourished rivulet;
not the ice-laden Biz, nor thunder, the tamer of contagion, had
preserved them— why therefore should we claim exemption?

Who was there indeed to save? What troop had we brought fit to stand at
bay, and combat with the conqueror? We were a failing remnant, tamed to
mere submission to the coming blow. A train half dead, through fear of
death—a hopeless, unresisting, almost reckless crew, which, in the
tossed bark of life, had given up all pilotage, and resigned themselves
to the destructive force of ungoverned winds. Like a few furrows of
unreaped corn, which, left standing on a wide field after the rest is
gathered to the garner, are swiftly borne down by the winter storm.
Like a few straggling swallows, which, remaining after their fellows
had, on the first unkind breath of passing autumn, migrated to genial
climes, were struck to earth by the first frost of November. Like a
stray sheep that wanders over the sleet-beaten hill-side, while the
flock is in the pen, and dies before morning-dawn. Like a cloud, like
one of many that were spread in impenetrable woof over the sky, which,
when the shepherd north has driven its companions “to drink Antipodean
noon,” fades and dissolves in the clear ether—Such were we!

We left the fair margin of the beauteous lake of Geneva, and entered
the Alpine ravines; tracing to its source the brawling Arve, through
the rock-bound valley of Servox, beside the mighty waterfalls, and
under the shadow of the inaccessible mountains, we travelled on; while
the luxuriant walnut-tree gave place to the dark pine, whose musical
branches swung in the wind, and whose upright forms had braved a
thousand storms—till the verdant sod, the flowery dell, and shrubbery
hill were exchanged for the sky-piercing, untrodden, seedless rock,
“the bones of the world, waiting to be clothed with every thing
necessary to give life and beauty.”[25] Strange that we should seek
shelter here! Surely, if, in those countries where earth was wont, like
a tender mother, to nourish her children, we had found her a destroyer,
we need not seek it here, where stricken by keen penury she seems to
shudder through her stony veins. Nor were we mistaken in our
conjecture. We vainly sought the vast and ever moving glaciers of
Chamounix, rifts of pendant ice, seas of congelated waters, the
leafless groves of tempest-battered pines, dells, mere paths for the
loud avalanche, and hill-tops, the resort of thunder-storms. Pestilence
reigned paramount even here. By the time that day and night, like twin
sisters of equal growth, shared equally their dominion over the hours,
one by one, beneath the ice-caves, beside the waters springing from the
thawed snows of a thousand winters, another and yet another of the
remnant of the race of Man, closed their eyes for ever to the light.

Yet we were not quite wrong in seeking a scene like this, whereon to
close the drama. Nature, true to the last, consoled us in the very
heart of misery. Sublime grandeur of outward objects soothed our
hapless hearts, and were in harmony with our desolation. Many sorrows
have befallen man during his chequered course; and many a woe-stricken
mourner has found himself sole survivor among many. Our misery took its
majestic shape and colouring from the vast ruin, that accompanied and
made one with it. Thus on lovely earth, many a dark ravine contains a
brawling stream, shadowed by romantic rocks, threaded by mossy
paths—but all, except this, wanted the mighty back-ground, the towering
Alps, whose snowy capes, or bared ridges, lifted us from our dull
mortal abode, to the palaces of Nature’s own.

This solemn harmony of event and situation regulated our feelings, and
gave as it were fitting costume to our last act. Majestic gloom and
tragic pomp attended the decease of wretched humanity. The funeral
procession of monarchs of old, was transcended by our splendid shews.
Near the sources of the Arveiron we performed the rites for, four only
excepted, the last of the species. Adrian and I, leaving Clara and
Evelyn wrapt in peaceful unobserving slumber, carried the body to this
desolate spot, and placed it in those caves of ice beneath the glacier,
which rive and split with the slightest sound, and bring destruction on
those within the clefts—no bird or beast of prey could here profane the
frozen form. So, with hushed steps and in silence, we placed the dead
on a bier of ice, and then, departing, stood on the rocky platform
beside the river springs. All hushed as we had been, the very striking
of the air with our persons had sufficed to disturb the repose of this
thawless region; and we had hardly left the cavern, before vast blocks
of ice, detaching themselves from the roof, fell, and covered the human
image we had deposited within. We had chosen a fair moonlight night,
but our journey thither had been long, and the crescent sank behind the
western heights by the time we had accomplished our purpose. The snowy
mountains and blue glaciers shone in their own light. The rugged and
abrupt ravine, which formed one side of Mont Anvert, was opposite to
us, the glacier at our side; at our feet Arveiron, white and foaming,
dashed over the pointed rocks that jutted into it, and, with whirring
spray and ceaseless roar, disturbed the stilly night. Yellow lightnings
played around the vast dome of Mont Blanc, silent as the snow-clad rock
they illuminated; all was bare, wild, and sublime, while the singing of
the pines in melodious murmurings added a gentle interest to the rough
magnificence. Now the riving and fall of icy rocks clave the air; now
the thunder of the avalanche burst on our ears. In countries whose
features are of less magnitude, nature betrays her living powers in the
foliage of the trees, in the growth of herbage, in the soft purling of
meandering streams; here, endowed with giant attributes, the torrent,
the thunder-storm, and the flow of massive waters, display her
activity. Such the church-yard, such the requiem, such the eternal
congregation, that waited on our companion’s funeral!

Nor was it the human form alone which we had placed in this eternal
sepulchre, whose obsequies we now celebrated. With this last victim
Plague vanished from the earth. Death had never wanted weapons
wherewith to destroy life, and we, few and weak as we had become, were
still exposed to every other shaft with which his full quiver teemed.
But pestilence was absent from among them. For seven years it had had
full sway upon earth; she had trod every nook of our spacious globe;
she had mingled with the atmosphere, which as a cloak enwraps all our
fellow-creatures—the inhabitants of native Europe—the luxurious
Asiatic—the swarthy African and free American had been vanquished and
destroyed by her. Her barbarous tyranny came to its close here in the
rocky vale of Chamounix.

Still recurring scenes of misery and pain, the fruits of this
distemper, made no more a part of our lives—the word plague no longer
rung in our ears—the aspect of plague incarnate in the human
countenance no longer appeared before our eyes. From this moment I saw
plague no more. She abdicated her throne, and despoiled herself of her
imperial sceptre among the ice rocks that surrounded us. She left
solitude and silence co-heirs of her kingdom.

My present feelings are so mingled with the past, that I cannot say
whether the knowledge of this change visited us, as we stood on this
sterile spot. It seems to me that it did; that a cloud seemed to pass
from over us, that a weight was taken from the air; that henceforth we
breathed more freely, and raised our heads with some portion of former
liberty. Yet we did not hope. We were impressed by the sentiment, that
our race was run, but that plague would not be our destroyer. The
coming time was as a mighty river, down which a charmed boat is driven,
whose mortal steersman knows, that the obvious peril is not the one he
needs fear, yet that danger is nigh; and who floats awe-struck under
beetling precipices, through the dark and turbid waters—seeing in the
distance yet stranger and ruder shapes, towards which he is
irresistibly impelled. What would become of us? O for some Delphic
oracle, or Pythian maid, to utter the secrets of futurity! O for some
Œdipus to solve the riddle of the cruel Sphynx! Such Œdipus was I to
be—not divining a word’s juggle, but whose agonizing pangs, and
sorrow-tainted life were to be the engines, wherewith to lay bare the
secrets of destiny, and reveal the meaning of the enigma, whose
explanation closed the history of the human race.

Dim fancies, akin to these, haunted our minds, and instilled feelings
not unallied to pleasure, as we stood beside this silent tomb of
nature, reared by these lifeless mountains, above her living veins,
choking her vital principle. “Thus are we left,” said Adrian, “two
melancholy blasted trees, where once a forest waved. We are left to
mourn, and pine, and die. Yet even now we have our duties, which we
must string ourselves to fulfil: the duty of bestowing pleasure where
we can, and by force of love, irradiating with rainbow hues the tempest
of grief. Nor will I repine if in this extremity we preserve what we
now possess. Something tells me, Verney, that we need no longer dread
our cruel enemy, and I cling with delight to the oracular voice. Though
strange, it will be sweet to mark the growth of your little boy, and
the development of Clara’s young heart. In the midst of a desert world,
we are everything to them; and, if we live, it must be our task to make
this new mode of life happy to them. At present this is easy, for their
childish ideas do not wander into futurity, and the stinging craving
for sympathy, and all of love of which our nature is susceptible, is
not yet awake within them: we cannot guess what will happen then, when
nature asserts her indefeasible and sacred powers; but, long before
that time, we may all be cold, as he who lies in yonder tomb of ice. We
need only provide for the present, and endeavour to fill with pleasant
images the inexperienced fancy of your lovely niece. The scenes which
now surround us, vast and sublime as they are, are not such as can best
contribute to this work. Nature is here like our fortunes, grand, but
too destructive, bare, and rude, to be able to afford delight to her
young imagination. Let us descend to the sunny plains of Italy. Winter
will soon be here, to clothe this wilderness in double desolation; but
we will cross the bleak hill-tops, and lead her to scenes of fertility
and beauty, where her path will be adorned with flowers, and the cheery
atmosphere inspire pleasure and hope.”

In pursuance of this plan we quitted Chamounix on the following day. We
had no cause to hasten our steps; no event was transacted beyond our
actual sphere to enchain our resolves, so we yielded to every idle
whim, and deemed our time well spent, when we could behold the passage
of the hours without dismay. We loitered along the lovely Vale of
Servox; passed long hours on the bridge, which, crossing the ravine of
Arve, commands a prospect of its pine-clothed depths, and the snowy
mountains that wall it in. We rambled through romantic Switzerland;
till, fear of coming winter leading us forward, the first days of
October found us in the valley of La Maurienne, which leads to Cenis. I
cannot explain the reluctance we felt at leaving this land of
mountains; perhaps it was, that we regarded the Alps as boundaries
between our former and our future state of existence, and so clung
fondly to what of old we had loved. Perhaps, because we had now so few
impulses urging to a choice between two modes of action, we were
pleased to preserve the existence of one, and preferred the prospect of
what we were to do, to the recollection of what had been done. We felt
that for this year danger was past; and we believed that, for some
months, we were secured to each other. There was a thrilling, agonizing
delight in the thought—it filled the eyes with misty tears, it tore the
heart with tumultuous heavings; frailer than the “snow fall in the
river,” were we each and all—but we strove to give life and
individuality to the meteoric course of our several existences, and to
feel that no moment escaped us unenjoyed. Thus tottering on the dizzy
brink, we were happy. Yes! as we sat beneath the toppling rocks, beside
the waterfalls, near

—Forests, ancient as the hills,
And folding sunny spots of greenery,

where the chamois grazed, and the timid squirrel laid up its
hoard—descanting on the charms of nature, drinking in the while her
unalienable beauties—we were, in an empty world, happy.

Yet, O days of joy—days, when eye spoke to eye, and voices, sweeter
than the music of the swinging branches of the pines, or rivulet’s
gentle murmur, answered mine—yet, O days replete with beatitude, days
of loved society—days unutterably dear to me forlorn—pass, O pass
before me, making me in your memory forget what I am. Behold, how my
streaming eyes blot this senseless paper—behold, how my features are
convulsed by agonizing throes, at your mere recollection, now that,
alone, my tears flow, my lips quiver, my cries fill the air, unseen,
unmarked, unheard! Yet, O yet, days of delight! let me dwell on your
long-drawn hours!

As the cold increased upon us, we passed the Alps, and descended into
Italy. At the uprising of morn, we sat at our repast, and cheated our
regrets by gay sallies or learned disquisitions. The live-long day we
sauntered on, still keeping in view the end of our journey, but
careless of the hour of its completion. As the evening star shone out,
and the orange sunset, far in the west, marked the position of the dear
land we had for ever left, talk, thought enchaining, made the hours
fly—O that we had lived thus for ever and for ever! Of what consequence
was it to our four hearts, that they alone were the fountains of life
in the wide world? As far as mere individual sentiment was concerned,
we had rather be left thus united together, than if, each alone in a
populous desert of unknown men, we had wandered truly companionless
till life’s last term. In this manner, we endeavoured to console each
other; in this manner, true philosophy taught us to reason.

It was the delight of Adrian and myself to wait on Clara, naming her
the little queen of the world, ourselves her humblest servitors. When
we arrived at a town, our first care was to select for her its most
choice abode; to make sure that no harrowing relic remained of its
former inhabitants; to seek food for her, and minister to her wants
with assiduous tenderness. Clara entered into our scheme with childish
gaiety. Her chief business was to attend on Evelyn; but it was her
sport to array herself in splendid robes, adorn herself with sunny
gems, and ape a princely state. Her religion, deep and pure, did not
teach her to refuse to blunt thus the keen sting of regret; her
youthful vivacity made her enter, heart and soul, into these strange
masquerades.

We had resolved to pass the ensuing winter at Milan, which, as being a
large and luxurious city, would afford us choice of homes. We had
descended the Alps, and left far behind their vast forests and mighty
crags. We entered smiling Italy. Mingled grass and corn grew in her
plains, the unpruned vines threw their luxuriant branches around the
elms. The grapes, overripe, had fallen on the ground, or hung purple,
or burnished green, among the red and yellow leaves. The ears of
standing corn winnowed to emptiness by the spendthrift winds; the
fallen foliage of the trees, the weed-grown brooks, the dusky olive,
now spotted with its blackened fruit; the chestnuts, to which the
squirrel only was harvest-man; all plenty, and yet, alas! all poverty,
painted in wondrous hues and fantastic groupings this land of beauty.
In the towns, in the voiceless towns, we visited the churches, adorned
by pictures, master-pieces of art, or galleries of statues—while in
this genial clime the animals, in new found liberty, rambled through
the gorgeous palaces, and hardly feared our forgotten aspect. The
dove-coloured oxen turned their full eyes on us, and paced slowly by; a
startling throng of silly sheep, with pattering feet, would start up in
some chamber, formerly dedicated to the repose of beauty, and rush,
huddling past us, down the marble staircase into the street, and again
in at the first open door, taking unrebuked possession of hallowed
sanctuary, or kingly council-chamber. We no longer started at these
occurrences, nor at worse exhibition of change—when the palace had
become a mere tomb, pregnant with fetid stench, strewn with the dead;
and we could perceive how pestilence and fear had played strange
antics, chasing the luxurious dame to the dank fields and bare cottage;
gathering, among carpets of Indian woof, and beds of silk, the rough
peasant, or the deformed half-human shape of the wretched beggar.

We arrived at Milan, and stationed ourselves in the Vice-Roy’s palace.
Here we made laws for ourselves, dividing our day, and fixing distinct
occupations for each hour. In the morning we rode in the adjoining
country, or wandered through the palaces, in search of pictures or
antiquities. In the evening we assembled to read or to converse. There
were few books that we dared read; few, that did not cruelly deface the
painting we bestowed on our solitude, by recalling combinations and
emotions never more to be experienced by us. Metaphysical disquisition;
fiction, which wandering from all reality, lost itself in self-created
errors; poets of times so far gone by, that to read of them was as to
read of Atlantis and Utopia; or such as referred to nature only, and
the workings of one particular mind; but most of all, talk, varied and
ever new, beguiled our hours.

While we paused thus in our onward career towards death, time held on
its accustomed course. Still and for ever did the earth roll on,
enthroned in her atmospheric car, speeded by the force of the invisible
coursers of never-erring necessity. And now, this dew-drop in the sky,
this ball, ponderous with mountains, lucent with waves, passing from
the short tyranny of watery Pisces and the frigid Ram, entered the
radiant demesne of Taurus and the Twins. There, fanned by vernal airs,
the Spirit of Beauty sprung from her cold repose; and, with winnowing
wings and soft pacing feet, set a girdle of verdure around the earth,
sporting among the violets, hiding within the springing foliage of the
trees, tripping lightly down the radiant streams into the sunny deep.
“For lo! winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear
on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice
of the turtle is heard in our land; the fig tree putteth forth her
green figs, and the vines, with the tender grape, give a good
smell.”[26] Thus was it in the time of the ancient regal poet; thus was
it now.

Yet how could we miserable hail the approach of this delightful season?
We hoped indeed that death did not now as heretofore walk in its
shadow; yet, left as we were alone to each other, we looked in each
other’s faces with enquiring eyes, not daring altogether to trust to
our presentiments, and endeavouring to divine which would be the
hapless survivor to the other three. We were to pass the summer at the
lake of Como, and thither we removed as soon as spring grew to her
maturity, and the snow disappeared from the hill tops. Ten miles from
Como, under the steep heights of the eastern mountains, by the margin
of the lake, was a villa called the Pliniana, from its being built on
the site of a fountain, whose periodical ebb and flow is described by
the younger Pliny in his letters. The house had nearly fallen into
ruin, till in the year 2090, an English nobleman had bought it, and
fitted it up with every luxury. Two large halls, hung with splendid
tapestry, and paved with marble, opened on each side of a court, of
whose two other sides one overlooked the deep dark lake, and the other
was bounded by a mountain, from whose stony side gushed, with roar and
splash, the celebrated fountain. Above, underwood of myrtle and tufts
of odorous plants crowned the rock, while the star-pointing giant
cypresses reared themselves in the blue air, and the recesses of the
hills were adorned with the luxuriant growth of chestnut-trees. Here we
fixed our summer residence. We had a lovely skiff, in which we sailed,
now stemming the midmost waves, now coasting the over-hanging and
craggy banks, thick sown with evergreens, which dipped their shining
leaves in the waters, and were mirrored in many a little bay and creek
of waters of translucent darkness. Here orange plants bloomed, here
birds poured forth melodious hymns; and here, during spring, the cold
snake emerged from the clefts, and basked on the sunny terraces of
rock.

Were we not happy in this paradisiacal retreat? If some kind spirit had
whispered forgetfulness to us, methinks we should have been happy here,
where the precipitous mountains, nearly pathless, shut from our view
the far fields of desolate earth, and with small exertion of the
imagination, we might fancy that the cities were still resonant with
popular hum, and the peasant still guided his plough through the
furrow, and that we, the world’s free denizens, enjoyed a voluntary
exile, and not a remediless cutting off from our extinct species.

Not one among us enjoyed the beauty of this scenery so much as Clara.
Before we quitted Milan, a change had taken place in her habits and
manners. She lost her gaiety, she laid aside her sports, and assumed an
almost vestal plainness of attire. She shunned us, retiring with Evelyn
to some distant chamber or silent nook; nor did she enter into his
pastimes with the same zest as she was wont, but would sit and watch
him with sadly tender smiles, and eyes bright with tears, yet without a
word of complaint. She approached us timidly, avoided our caresses, nor
shook off her embarrassment till some serious discussion or lofty theme
called her for awhile out of herself. Her beauty grew as a rose, which,
opening to the summer wind, discloses leaf after leaf till the sense
aches with its excess of loveliness. A slight and variable colour
tinged her cheeks, and her motions seemed attuned by some hidden
harmony of surpassing sweetness. We redoubled our tenderness and
earnest attentions. She received them with grateful smiles, that fled
swift as sunny beam from a glittering wave on an April day.

Our only acknowledged point of sympathy with her, appeared to be
Evelyn. This dear little fellow was a comforter and delight to us
beyond all words. His buoyant spirit, and his innocent ignorance of our
vast calamity, were balm to us, whose thoughts and feelings were
over-wrought and spun out in the immensity of speculative sorrow. To
cherish, to caress, to amuse him was the common task of all. Clara, who
felt towards him in some degree like a young mother, gratefully
acknowledged our kindness towards him. To me, O! to me, who saw the
clear brows and soft eyes of the beloved of my heart, my lost and ever
dear Idris, re-born in his gentle face, to me he was dear even to pain;
if I pressed him to my heart, methought I clasped a real and living
part of her, who had lain there through long years of youthful
happiness.

It was the custom of Adrian and myself to go out each day in our skiff
to forage in the adjacent country. In these expeditions we were seldom
accompanied by Clara or her little charge, but our return was an hour
of hilarity. Evelyn ransacked our stores with childish eagerness, and
we always brought some new found gift for our fair companion. Then too
we made discoveries of lovely scenes or gay palaces, whither in the
evening we all proceeded. Our sailing expeditions were most divine, and
with a fair wind or transverse course we cut the liquid waves; and, if
talk failed under the pressure of thought, I had my clarionet with me,
which awoke the echoes, and gave the change to our careful minds. Clara
at such times often returned to her former habits of free converse and
gay sally; and though our four hearts alone beat in the world, those
four hearts were happy.

One day, on our return from the town of Como, with a laden boat, we
expected as usual to be met at the port by Clara and Evelyn, and we
were somewhat surprised to see the beach vacant. I, as my nature
prompted, would not prognosticate evil, but explained it away as a mere
casual incident. Not so Adrian. He was seized with sudden trembling and
apprehension, and he called to me with vehemence to steer quickly for
land, and, when near, leapt from the boat, half falling into the water;
and, scrambling up the steep bank, hastened along the narrow strip of
garden, the only level space between the lake and the mountain. I
followed without delay; the garden and inner court were empty, so was
the house, whose every room we visited. Adrian called loudly upon
Clara’s name, and was about to rush up the near mountain-path, when the
door of a summer-house at the end of the garden slowly opened, and
Clara appeared, not advancing towards us, but leaning against a column
of the building with blanched cheeks, in a posture of utter
despondency. Adrian sprang towards her with a cry of joy, and folded
her delightedly in his arms. She withdrew from his embrace, and,
without a word, again entered the summer-house. Her quivering lips, her
despairing heart refused to afford her voice to express our misfortune.
Poor little Evelyn had, while playing with her, been seized with sudden
fever, and now lay torpid and speechless on a little couch in the
summer-house.

For a whole fortnight we unceasingly watched beside the poor child, as
his life declined under the ravages of a virulent typhus. His little
form and tiny lineaments encaged the embryo of the world-spanning mind
of man. Man’s nature, brimful of passions and affections, would have
had an home in that little heart, whose swift pulsations hurried
towards their close. His small hand’s fine mechanism, now flaccid and
unbent, would in the growth of sinew and muscle, have achieved works of
beauty or of strength. His tender rosy feet would have trod in firm
manhood the bowers and glades of earth— these reflections were now of
little use: he lay, thought and strength suspended, waiting unresisting
the final blow.

We watched at his bedside, and when the access of fever was on him, we
neither spoke nor looked at each other, marking only his obstructed
breath and the mortal glow that tinged his sunken cheek, the heavy
death that weighed on his eyelids. It is a trite evasion to say, that
words could not express our long drawn agony; yet how can words image
sensations, whose tormenting keenness throw us back, as it were, on the
deep roots and hidden foundations of our nature, which shake our being
with earth-quake-throe, so that we leave to confide in accustomed
feelings which like mother-earth support us, and cling to some vain
imagination or deceitful hope, which will soon be buried in the ruins
occasioned by the final shock. I have called that period a fortnight,
which we passed watching the changes of the sweet child’s malady—and
such it might have been—at night, we wondered to find another day gone,
while each particular hour seemed endless. Day and night were exchanged
for one another uncounted; we slept hardly at all, nor did we even quit
his room, except when a pang of grief seized us, and we retired from
each other for a short period to conceal our sobs and tears. We
endeavoured in vain to abstract Clara from this deplorable scene. She
sat, hour after hour, looking at him, now softly arranging his pillow,
and, while he had power to swallow, administered his drink. At length
the moment of his death came: the blood paused in its flow —his eyes
opened, and then closed again: without convulsion or sigh, the frail
tenement was left vacant of its spiritual inhabitant.

I have heard that the sight of the dead has confirmed materialists in
their belief. I ever felt otherwise. Was that my child—that moveless
decaying inanimation? My child was enraptured by my caresses; his dear
voice cloathed with meaning articulations his thoughts, otherwise
inaccessible; his smile was a ray of the soul, and the same soul sat
upon its throne in his eyes. I turn from this mockery of what he was.
Take, O earth, thy debt! freely and for ever I consign to thee the garb
thou didst afford. But thou, sweet child, amiable and beloved boy,
either thy spirit has sought a fitter dwelling, or, shrined in my
heart, thou livest while it lives.

We placed his remains under a cypress, the upright mountain being
scooped out to receive them. And then Clara said, “If you wish me to
live, take me from hence. There is something in this scene of
transcendent beauty, in these trees, and hills and waves, that for ever
whisper to me, leave thy cumbrous flesh, and make a part of us. I
earnestly entreat you to take me away.”

So on the fifteenth of August we bade adieu to our villa, and the
embowering shades of this abode of beauty; to calm bay and noisy
waterfall; to Evelyn’s little grave we bade farewell! and then, with
heavy hearts, we departed on our pilgrimage towards Rome.

 [25] Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters from Norway.

 [26] Solomon’s Song.

CHAPTER IX.

Now—soft awhile—have I arrived so near the end? Yes! it is all over
now—a step or two over those new made graves, and the wearisome way is
done. Can I accomplish my task? Can I streak my paper with words
capacious of the grand conclusion? Arise, black Melancholy! quit thy
Cimmerian solitude! Bring with thee murky fogs from hell, which may
drink up the day; bring blight and pestiferous exhalations, which,
entering the hollow caverns and breathing places of earth, may fill her
stony veins with corruption, so that not only herbage may no longer
flourish, the trees may rot, and the rivers run with gall—but the
everlasting mountains be decomposed, and the mighty deep putrify, and
the genial atmosphere which clips the globe, lose all powers of
generation and sustenance. Do this, sad visaged power, while I write,
while eyes read these pages.

And who will read them? Beware, tender offspring of the re-born world—
beware, fair being, with human heart, yet untamed by care, and human
brow, yet unploughed by time—beware, lest the cheerful current of thy
blood be checked, thy golden locks turn grey, thy sweet dimpling smiles
be changed to fixed, harsh wrinkles! Let not day look on these lines,
lest garish day waste, turn pale, and die. Seek a cypress grove, whose
moaning boughs will be harmony befitting; seek some cave, deep
embowered in earth’s dark entrails, where no light will penetrate, save
that which struggles, red and flickering, through a single fissure,
staining thy page with grimmest livery of death.

There is a painful confusion in my brain, which refuses to delineate
distinctly succeeding events. Sometimes the irradiation of my friend’s
gentle smile comes before me; and methinks its light spans and fills
eternity—then, again, I feel the gasping throes—

We quitted Como, and in compliance with Adrian’s earnest desire, we
took Venice in our way to Rome. There was something to the English
peculiarly attractive in the idea of this wave-encircled,
island-enthroned city. Adrian had never seen it. We went down the Po
and the Brenta in a boat; and, the days proving intolerably hot, we
rested in the bordering palaces during the day, travelling through the
night, when darkness made the bordering banks indistinct, and our
solitude less remarkable; when the wandering moon lit the waves that
divided before our prow, and the night-wind filled our sails, and the
murmuring stream, waving trees, and swelling canvass, accorded in
harmonious strain. Clara, long overcome by excessive grief, had to a
great degree cast aside her timid, cold reserve, and received our
attentions with grateful tenderness. While Adrian with poetic fervour
discoursed of the glorious nations of the dead, of the beauteous earth
and the fate of man, she crept near him, drinking in his speech with
silent pleasure. We banished from our talk, and as much as possible
from our thoughts, the knowledge of our desolation. And it would be
incredible to an inhabitant of cities, to one among a busy throng, to
what extent we succeeded. It was as a man confined in a dungeon, whose
small and grated rift at first renders the doubtful light more sensibly
obscure, till, the visual orb having drunk in the beam, and adapted
itself to its scantiness, he finds that clear noon inhabits his cell.
So we, a simple triad on empty earth, were multiplied to each other,
till we became all in all. We stood like trees, whose roots are
loosened by the wind, which support one another, leaning and clinging
with encreased fervour while the wintry storms howl. Thus we floated
down the widening stream of the Po, sleeping when the cicale sang,
awake with the stars. We entered the narrower banks of the Brenta, and
arrived at the shore of the Laguna at sunrise on the sixth of
September. The bright orb slowly rose from behind its cupolas and
towers, and shed its penetrating light upon the glassy waters. Wrecks
of gondolas, and some few uninjured ones, were strewed on the beach at
Fusina. We embarked in one of these for the widowed daughter of ocean,
who, abandoned and fallen, sat forlorn on her propping isles, looking
towards the far mountains of Greece. We rowed lightly over the Laguna,
and entered Canale Grande. The tide ebbed sullenly from out the broken
portals and violated halls of Venice: sea weed and sea monsters were
left on the blackened marble, while the salt ooze defaced the matchless
works of art that adorned their walls, and the sea gull flew out from
the shattered window. In the midst of this appalling ruin of the
monuments of man’s power, nature asserted her ascendancy, and shone
more beauteous from the contrast. The radiant waters hardly trembled,
while the rippling waves made many sided mirrors to the sun; the blue
immensity, seen beyond Lido, stretched far, unspecked by boat, so
tranquil, so lovely, that it seemed to invite us to quit the land
strewn with ruins, and to seek refuge from sorrow and fear on its
placid extent.

We saw the ruins of this hapless city from the height of the tower of
San Marco, immediately under us, and turned with sickening hearts to
the sea, which, though it be a grave, rears no monument, discloses no
ruin. Evening had come apace. The sun set in calm majesty behind the
misty summits of the Apennines, and its golden and roseate hues painted
the mountains of the opposite shore. “That land,” said Adrian, “tinged
with the last glories of the day, is Greece.” Greece! The sound had a
responsive chord in the bosom of Clara. She vehemently reminded us that
we had promised to take her once again to Greece, to the tomb of her
parents. Why go to Rome? what should we do at Rome? We might take one
of the many vessels to be found here, embark in it, and steer right for
Albania.

I objected the dangers of ocean, and the distance of the mountains we
saw, from Athens; a distance which, from the savage uncultivation of
the country, was almost impassable. Adrian, who was delighted with
Clara’s proposal, obviated these objections. The season was favourable;
the north-west that blew would take us transversely across the gulph;
and then we might find, in some abandoned port, a light Greek caique,
adapted for such navigation, and run down the coast of the Morea, and,
passing over the Isthmus of Corinth, without much land-travelling or
fatigue, find ourselves at Athens. This appeared to me wild talk; but
the sea, glowing with a thousand purple hues, looked so brilliant and
safe; my beloved companions were so earnest, so determined, that, when
Adrian said, “Well, though it is not exactly what you wish, yet
consent, to please me”—I could no longer refuse. That evening we
selected a vessel, whose size just seemed fitted for our enterprize; we
bent the sails and put the rigging in order, and reposing that night in
one of the city’s thousand palaces, agreed to embark at sunrise the
following morning.

When winds that move not its calm surface, sweep
The azure sea, I love the land no more;
The smiles of the serene and tranquil deep
Tempt my unquiet mind—

Thus said Adrian, quoting a translation of Moschus’s poem, as in the
clear morning light, we rowed over the Laguna, past Lido, into the open
sea—I would have added in continuation,

        But when the roar
Of ocean’s gray abyss resounds, and foam
Gathers upon the sea, and vast waves burst—

But my friends declared that such verses were evil augury; so in
cheerful mood we left the shallow waters, and, when out at sea,
unfurled our sails to catch the favourable breeze. The laughing morning
air filled them, while sun-light bathed earth, sky and ocean—the placid
waves divided to receive our keel, and playfully kissed the dark sides
of our little skiff, murmuring a welcome; as land receded, still the
blue expanse, most waveless, twin sister to the azure empyrean,
afforded smooth conduct to our bark. As the air and waters were
tranquil and balmy, so were our minds steeped in quiet. In comparison
with the unstained deep, funereal earth appeared a grave, its high
rocks and stately mountains were but monuments, its trees the plumes of
a herse, the brooks and rivers brackish with tears for departed man.
Farewell to desolate towns —to fields with their savage intermixture of
corn and weeds—to ever multiplying relics of our lost species. Ocean,
we commit ourselves to thee —even as the patriarch of old floated above
the drowned world, let us be saved, as thus we betake ourselves to thy
perennial flood.

Adrian sat at the helm; I attended to the rigging, the breeze right aft
filled our swelling canvas, and we ran before it over the untroubled
deep. The wind died away at noon; its idle breath just permitted us to
hold our course. As lazy, fair-weather sailors, careless of the coming
hour, we talked gaily of our coasting voyage, of our arrival at Athens.
We would make our home of one of the Cyclades, and there in
myrtle-groves, amidst perpetual spring, fanned by the wholesome
sea-breezes—we would live long years in beatific union—Was there such a
thing as death in the world?—

The sun passed its zenith, and lingered down the stainless floor of
heaven. Lying in the boat, my face turned up to the sky, I thought I
saw on its blue white, marbled streaks, so slight, so immaterial, that
now I said— They are there—and now, It is a mere imagination. A sudden
fear stung me while I gazed; and, starting up, and running to the
prow,—as I stood, my hair was gently lifted on my brow—a dark line of
ripples appeared to the east, gaining rapidly on us—my breathless
remark to Adrian, was followed by the flapping of the canvas, as the
adverse wind struck it, and our boat lurched—swift as speech, the web
of the storm thickened over head, the sun went down red, the dark sea
was strewed with foam, and our skiff rose and fell in its encreasing
furrows.

Behold us now in our frail tenement, hemmed in by hungry, roaring
waves, buffeted by winds. In the inky east two vast clouds, sailing
contrary ways, met; the lightning leapt forth, and the hoarse thunder
muttered. Again in the south, the clouds replied, and the forked stream
of fire running along the black sky, shewed us the appalling piles of
clouds, now met and obliterated by the heaving waves. Great God! And we
alone—we three— alone—alone—sole dwellers on the sea and on the earth,
we three must perish! The vast universe, its myriad worlds, and the
plains of boundless earth which we had left—the extent of shoreless sea
around—contracted to my view—they and all that they contained, shrunk
up to one point, even to our tossing bark, freighted with glorious
humanity.

A convulsion of despair crossed the love-beaming face of Adrian, while
with set teeth he murmured, “Yet they shall be saved!” Clara, visited
by an human pang, pale and trembling, crept near him—he looked on her
with an encouraging smile—“Do you fear, sweet girl? O, do not fear, we
shall soon be on shore!”

The darkness prevented me from seeing the changes of her countenance;
but her voice was clear and sweet, as she replied, “Why should I fear?
neither sea nor storm can harm us, if mighty destiny or the ruler of
destiny does not permit. And then the stinging fear of surviving either
of you, is not here—one death will clasp us undivided.”

Meanwhile we took in all our sails, save a gib; and, as soon as we
might without danger, changed our course, running with the wind for the
Italian shore. Dark night mixed everything; we hardly discerned the
white crests of the murderous surges, except when lightning made brief
noon, and drank the darkness, shewing us our danger, and restoring us
to double night. We were all silent, except when Adrian, as steersman,
made an encouraging observation. Our little shell obeyed the rudder
miraculously well, and ran along on the top of the waves, as if she had
been an offspring of the sea, and the angry mother sheltered her
endangered child.

I sat at the prow, watching our course; when suddenly I heard the
waters break with redoubled fury. We were certainly near the shore—at
the same time I cried, “About there!” and a broad lightning filling the
concave, shewed us for one moment the level beach a-head, disclosing
even the sands, and stunted, ooze-sprinkled beds of reeds, that grew at
high water mark. Again it was dark, and we drew in our breath with such
content as one may, who, while fragments of volcano-hurled rock darken
the air, sees a vast mass ploughing the ground immediately at his feet.
What to do we knew not —the breakers here, there, everywhere,
encompassed us—they roared, and dashed, and flung their hated spray in
our faces. With considerable difficulty and danger we succeeded at
length in altering our course, and stretched out from shore. I urged my
companions to prepare for the wreck of our little skiff, and to bind
themselves to some oar or spar which might suffice to float them. I was
myself an excellent swimmer—the very sight of the sea was wont to raise
in me such sensations, as a huntsman experiences, when he hears a pack
of hounds in full cry; I loved to feel the waves wrap me and strive to
overpower me; while I, lord of myself, moved this way or that, in spite
of their angry buffetings. Adrian also could swim—but the weakness of
his frame prevented him from feeling pleasure in the exercise, or
acquiring any great expertness. But what power could the strongest
swimmer oppose to the overpowering violence of ocean in its fury? My
efforts to prepare my companions were rendered nearly futile —for the
roaring breakers prevented our hearing one another speak, and the
waves, that broke continually over our boat, obliged me to exert all my
strength in lading the water out, as fast as it came in. The while
darkness, palpable and rayless, hemmed us round, dissipated only by the
lightning; sometimes we beheld thunderbolts, fiery red, fall into the
sea, and at intervals vast spouts stooped from the clouds, churning the
wild ocean, which rose to meet them; while the fierce gale bore the
rack onwards, and they were lost in the chaotic mingling of sky and
sea. Our gunwales had been torn away, our single sail had been rent to
ribbands, and borne down the stream of the wind. We had cut away our
mast, and lightened the boat of all she contained—Clara attempted to
assist me in heaving the water from the hold, and, as she turned her
eyes to look on the lightning, I could discern by that momentary gleam,
that resignation had conquered every fear. We have a power given us in
any worst extremity, which props the else feeble mind of man, and
enables us to endure the most savage tortures with a stillness of soul
which in hours of happiness we could not have imagined. A calm, more
dreadful in truth than the tempest, allayed the wild beatings of my
heart—a calm like that of the gamester, the suicide, and the murderer,
when the last die is on the point of being cast—while the poisoned cup
is at the lips,—as the death-blow is about to be given.

Hours passed thus—hours which might write old age on the face of
beardless youth, and grizzle the silky hair of infancy—-hours, while
the chaotic uproar continued, while each dread gust transcended in fury
the one before, and our skiff hung on the breaking wave, and then
rushed into the valley below, and trembled and spun between the watery
precipices that seemed most to meet above her. For a moment the gale
paused, and ocean sank to comparative silence—it was a breathless
interval; the wind which, as a practised leaper, had gathered itself up
before it sprung, now with terrific roar rushed over the sea, and the
waves struck our stern. Adrian exclaimed that the rudder was gone;—“We
are lost,” cried Clara, “Save yourselves—O save yourselves!” The
lightning shewed me the poor girl half buried in the water at the
bottom of the boat; as she was sinking in it Adrian caught her up, and
sustained her in his arms. We were without a rudder—we rushed prow
foremost into the vast billows piled up a-head— they broke over and
filled the tiny skiff; one scream I heard—one cry that we were gone, I
uttered; I found myself in the waters; darkness was around. When the
light of the tempest flashed, I saw the keel of our upset boat close to
me—I clung to this, grasping it with clenched hand and nails, while I
endeavoured during each flash to discover any appearance of my
companions. I thought I saw Adrian at no great distance from me,
clinging to an oar; I sprung from my hold, and with energy beyond my
human strength, I dashed aside the waters as I strove to lay hold of
him. As that hope failed, instinctive love of life animated me, and
feelings of contention, as if a hostile will combated with mine. I
breasted the surges, and flung them from me, as I would the opposing
front and sharpened claws of a lion about to enfang my bosom. When I
had been beaten down by one wave, I rose on another, while I felt
bitter pride curl my lip.

Ever since the storm had carried us near the shore, we had never
attained any great distance from it. With every flash I saw the
bordering coast; yet the progress I made was small, while each wave, as
it receded, carried me back into ocean’s far abysses. At one moment I
felt my foot touch the sand, and then again I was in deep water; my
arms began to lose their power of motion; my breath failed me under the
influence of the strangling waters— a thousand wild and delirious
thoughts crossed me: as well as I can now recall them, my chief feeling
was, how sweet it would be to lay my head on the quiet earth, where the
surges would no longer strike my weakened frame, nor the sound of
waters ring in my ears—to attain this repose, not to save my life, I
made a last effort—the shelving shore suddenly presented a footing for
me. I rose, and was again thrown down by the breakers—a point of rock
to which I was enabled to cling, gave me a moment’s respite; and then,
taking advantage of the ebbing of the waves, I ran forwards— gained the
dry sands, and fell senseless on the oozy reeds that sprinkled them.

I must have lain long deprived of life; for when first, with a
sickening feeling, I unclosed my eyes, the light of morning met them.
Great change had taken place meanwhile: grey dawn dappled the flying
clouds, which sped onwards, leaving visible at intervals vast lakes of
pure ether. A fountain of light arose in an encreasing stream from the
east, behind the waves of the Adriatic, changing the grey to a roseate
hue, and then flooding sky and sea with aerial gold.

A kind of stupor followed my fainting; my senses were alive, but memory
was extinct. The blessed respite was short—a snake lurked near me to
sting me into life—on the first retrospective emotion I would have
started up, but my limbs refused to obey me; my knees trembled, the
muscles had lost all power. I still believed that I might find one of
my beloved companions cast like me, half alive, on the beach; and I
strove in every way to restore my frame to the use of its animal
functions. I wrung the brine from my hair; and the rays of the risen
sun soon visited me with genial warmth. With the restoration of my
bodily powers, my mind became in some degree aware of the universe of
misery, henceforth to be its dwelling. I ran to the water’s edge,
calling on the beloved names. Ocean drank in, and absorbed my feeble
voice, replying with pitiless roar. I climbed a near tree: the level
sands bounded by a pine forest, and the sea clipped round by the
horizon, was all that I could discern. In vain I extended my researches
along the beach; the mast we had thrown overboard, with tangled
cordage, and remnants of a sail, was the sole relic land received of
our wreck. Sometimes I stood still, and wrung my hands. I accused earth
and sky —the universal machine and the Almighty power that misdirected
it. Again I threw myself on the sands, and then the sighing wind,
mimicking a human cry, roused me to bitter, fallacious hope. Assuredly
if any little bark or smallest canoe had been near, I should have
sought the savage plains of ocean, found the dear remains of my lost
ones, and clinging round them, have shared their grave.

The day passed thus; each moment contained eternity; although when hour
after hour had gone by, I wondered at the quick flight of time. Yet
even now I had not drunk the bitter potion to the dregs; I was not yet
persuaded of my loss; I did not yet feel in every pulsation, in every
nerve, in every thought, that I remained alone of my race,—that I was
the LAST MAN.

The day had clouded over, and a drizzling rain set in at sunset. Even
the eternal skies weep, I thought; is there any shame then, that mortal
man should spend himself in tears? I remembered the ancient fables, in
which human beings are described as dissolving away through weeping
into ever-gushing fountains. Ah! that so it were; and then my destiny
would be in some sort akin to the watery death of Adrian and Clara. Oh!
grief is fantastic; it weaves a web on which to trace the history of
its woe from every form and change around; it incorporates itself with
all living nature; it finds sustenance in every object; as light, it
fills all things, and, like light, it gives its own colours to all.

I had wandered in my search to some distance from the spot on which I
had been cast, and came to one of those watch-towers, which at stated
distances line the Italian shore. I was glad of shelter, glad to find a
work of human hands, after I had gazed so long on nature’s drear
barrenness; so I entered, and ascended the rough winding staircase into
the guard-room. So far was fate kind, that no harrowing vestige
remained of its former inhabitants; a few planks laid across two iron
tressels, and strewed with the dried leaves of Indian corn, was the bed
presented to me; and an open chest, containing some half mouldered
biscuit, awakened an appetite, which perhaps existed before, but of
which, until now, I was not aware. Thirst also, violent and parching,
the result of the sea-water I had drank, and of the exhaustion of my
frame, tormented me. Kind nature had gifted the supply of these wants
with pleasurable sensations, so that I—even I!—was refreshed and
calmed, as I ate of this sorry fare, and drank a little of the sour
wine which half filled a flask left in this abandoned dwelling. Then I
stretched myself on the bed, not to be disdained by the victim of
shipwreck. The earthy smell of the dried leaves was balm to my sense
after the hateful odour of sea-weed. I forgot my state of loneliness. I
neither looked backward nor forward; my senses were hushed to repose; I
fell asleep and dreamed of all dear inland scenes, of hay-makers, of
the shepherd’s whistle to his dog, when he demanded his help to drive
the flock to fold; of sights and sounds peculiar to my boyhood’s
mountain life, which I had long forgotten.

I awoke in a painful agony—for I fancied that ocean, breaking its
bounds, carried away the fixed continent and deep rooted mountains,
together with the streams I loved, the woods, and the flocks—it raged
around, with that continued and dreadful roar which had accompanied the
last wreck of surviving humanity. As my waking sense returned, the bare
walls of the guard room closed round me, and the rain pattered against
the single window. How dreadful it is, to emerge from the oblivion of
slumber, and to receive as a good morrow the mute wailing of one’s own
hapless heart —to return from the land of deceptive dreams, to the
heavy knowledge of unchanged disaster!—Thus was it with me, now, and
for ever! The sting of other griefs might be blunted by time; and even
mine yielded sometimes during the day, to the pleasure inspired by the
imagination or the senses; but I never look first upon the
morning-light but with my fingers pressed tight on my bursting heart,
and my soul deluged with the interminable flood of hopeless misery. Now
I awoke for the first time in the dead world—I awoke alone—and the dull
dirge of the sea, heard even amidst the rain, recalled me to the
reflection of the wretch I had become. The sound came like a reproach,
a scoff—like the sting of remorse in the soul—I gasped—the veins and
muscles of my throat swelled, suffocating me. I put my fingers to my
ears, I buried my head in the leaves of my couch, I would have dived to
the centre to lose hearing of that hideous moan.

But another task must be mine—again I visited the detested beach— again
I vainly looked far and wide—again I raised my unanswered cry, lifting
up the only voice that could ever again force the mute air to syllable
the human thought.

What a pitiable, forlorn, disconsolate being I was! My very aspect and
garb told the tale of my despair. My hair was matted and wild—my limbs
soiled with salt ooze; while at sea, I had thrown off those of my
garments that encumbered me, and the rain drenched the thin
summer-clothing I had retained—my feet were bare, and the stunted reeds
and broken shells made them bleed—the while, I hurried to and fro, now
looking earnestly on some distant rock which, islanded in the sands,
bore for a moment a deceptive appearance—now with flashing eyes
reproaching the murderous ocean for its unutterable cruelty.

For a moment I compared myself to that monarch of the waste—Robinson
Crusoe. We had been both thrown companionless—he on the shore of a
desolate island: I on that of a desolate world. I was rich in the so
called goods of life. If I turned my steps from the near barren scene,
and entered any of the earth’s million cities, I should find their
wealth stored up for my accommodation—clothes, food, books, and a
choice of dwelling beyond the command of the princes of former
times—every climate was subject to my selection, while he was obliged
to toil in the acquirement of every necessary, and was the inhabitant
of a tropical island, against whose heats and storms he could obtain
small shelter.—Viewing the question thus, who would not have preferred
the Sybarite enjoyments I could command, the philosophic leisure, and
ample intellectual resources, to his life of labour and peril? Yet he
was far happier than I: for he could hope, nor hope in vain—the
destined vessel at last arrived, to bear him to countrymen and kindred,
where the events of his solitude became a fire-side tale. To none could
I ever relate the story of my adversity; no hope had I. He knew that,
beyond the ocean which begirt his lonely island, thousands lived whom
the sun enlightened when it shone also on him: beneath the meridian sun
and visiting moon, I alone bore human features; I alone could give
articulation to thought; and, when I slept, both day and night were
unbeheld of any. He had fled from his fellows, and was transported with
terror at the print of a human foot. I would have knelt down and
worshipped the same. The wild and cruel Caribbee, the merciless
Cannibal—or worse than these, the uncouth, brute, and remorseless
veteran in the vices of civilization, would have been to me a beloved
companion, a treasure dearly prized—his nature would be kin to mine;
his form cast in the same mould; human blood would flow in his veins; a
human sympathy must link us for ever. It cannot be that I shall never
behold a fellow being more!—never! —never!—not in the course of
years!—Shall I wake, and speak to none, pass the interminable hours, my
soul, islanded in the world, a solitary point, surrounded by vacuum?
Will day follow day endlessly thus? —No! no! a God rules the
world—providence has not exchanged its golden sceptre for an aspic’s
sting. Away! let me fly from the ocean-grave, let me depart from this
barren nook, paled in, as it is, from access by its own desolateness;
let me tread once again the paved towns; step over the threshold of
man’s dwellings, and most certainly I shall find this thought a
horrible vision—a maddening, but evanescent dream.

I entered Ravenna, (the town nearest to the spot whereon I had been
cast), before the second sun had set on the empty world; I saw many
living creatures; oxen, and horses, and dogs, but there was no man
among them; I entered a cottage, it was vacant; I ascended the marble
stairs of a palace, the bats and the owls were nestled in the tapestry;
I stepped softly, not to awaken the sleeping town: I rebuked a dog,
that by yelping disturbed the sacred stillness; I would not believe
that all was as it seemed—The world was not dead, but I was mad; I was
deprived of sight, hearing, and sense of touch; I was labouring under
the force of a spell, which permitted me to behold all sights of earth,
except its human inhabitants; they were pursuing their ordinary
labours. Every house had its inmate; but I could not perceive them. If
I could have deluded myself into a belief of this kind, I should have
been far more satisfied. But my brain, tenacious of its reason, refused
to lend itself to such imaginations—and though I endeavoured to play
the antic to myself, I knew that I, the offspring of man, during long
years one among many—now remained sole survivor of my species.

The sun sank behind the western hills; I had fasted since the preceding
evening, but, though faint and weary, I loathed food, nor ceased, while
yet a ray of light remained, to pace the lonely streets. Night came on,
and sent every living creature but me to the bosom of its mate. It was
my solace, to blunt my mental agony by personal hardship—of the
thousand beds around, I would not seek the luxury of one; I lay down on
the pavement,—a cold marble step served me for a pillow—midnight came;
and then, though not before, did my wearied lids shut out the sight of
the twinkling stars, and their reflex on the pavement near. Thus I
passed the second night of my desolation.

CHAPTER X.

I awoke in the morning, just as the higher windows of the lofty houses
received the first beams of the rising sun. The birds were chirping,
perched on the windows sills and deserted thresholds of the doors. I
awoke, and my first thought was, Adrian and Clara are dead. I no longer
shall be hailed by their good-morrow—or pass the long day in their
society. I shall never see them more. The ocean has robbed me of
them—stolen their hearts of love from their breasts, and given over to
corruption what was dearer to me than light, or life, or hope.

I was an untaught shepherd-boy, when Adrian deigned to confer on me his
friendship. The best years of my life had been passed with him. All I
had possessed of this world’s goods, of happiness, knowledge, or
virtue—I owed to him. He had, in his person, his intellect, and rare
qualities, given a glory to my life, which without him it had never
known. Beyond all other beings he had taught me, that goodness, pure
and single, can be an attribute of man. It was a sight for angels to
congregate to behold, to view him lead, govern, and solace, the last
days of the human race.

My lovely Clara also was lost to me—she who last of the daughters of
man, exhibited all those feminine and maiden virtues, which poets,
painters, and sculptors, have in their various languages strove to
express. Yet, as far as she was concerned, could I lament that she was
removed in early youth from the certain advent of misery? Pure she was
of soul, and all her intents were holy. But her heart was the throne of
love, and the sensibility her lovely countenance expressed, was the
prophet of many woes, not the less deep and drear, because she would
have for ever concealed them.

These two wondrously endowed beings had been spared from the universal
wreck, to be my companions during the last year of solitude. I had
felt, while they were with me, all their worth. I was conscious that
every other sentiment, regret, or passion had by degrees merged into a
yearning, clinging affection for them. I had not forgotten the sweet
partner of my youth, mother of my children, my adored Idris; but I saw
at least a part of her spirit alive again in her brother; and after,
that by Evelyn’s death I had lost what most dearly recalled her to me;
I enshrined her memory in Adrian’s form, and endeavoured to confound
the two dear ideas. I sound the depths of my heart, and try in vain to
draw thence the expressions that can typify my love for these remnants
of my race. If regret and sorrow came athwart me, as well it might in
our solitary and uncertain state, the clear tones of Adrian’s voice,
and his fervent look, dissipated the gloom; or I was cheered unaware by
the mild content and sweet resignation Clara’s cloudless brow and deep
blue eyes expressed. They were all to me—the suns of my benighted
soul—repose in my weariness—slumber in my sleepless woe. Ill, most ill,
with disjointed words, bare and weak, have I expressed the feeling with
which I clung to them. I would have wound myself like ivy inextricably
round them, so that the same blow might destroy us. I would have
entered and been a part of them—so that

If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,

even now I had accompanied them to their new and incommunicable abode.

Never shall I see them more. I am bereft of their dear converse—bereft
of sight of them. I am a tree rent by lightning; never will the bark
close over the bared fibres—never will their quivering life, torn by
the winds, receive the opiate of a moment’s balm. I am alone in the
world— but that expression as yet was less pregnant with misery, than
that Adrian and Clara are dead.

The tide of thought and feeling rolls on for ever the same, though the
banks and shapes around, which govern its course, and the reflection in
the wave, vary. Thus the sentiment of immediate loss in some sort
decayed, while that of utter, irremediable loneliness grew on me with
time. Three days I wandered through Ravenna—now thinking only of the
beloved beings who slept in the oozy caves of ocean—now looking forward
on the dread blank before me; shuddering to make an onward
step—writhing at each change that marked the progress of the hours.

For three days I wandered to and fro in this melancholy town. I passed
whole hours in going from house to house, listening whether I could
detect some lurking sign of human existence. Sometimes I rang at a
bell; it tinkled through the vaulted rooms, and silence succeeded to
the sound. I called myself hopeless, yet still I hoped; and still
disappointment ushered in the hours, intruding the cold, sharp steel
which first pierced me, into the aching festering wound. I fed like a
wild beast, which seizes its food only when stung by intolerable
hunger. I did not change my garb, or seek the shelter of a roof, during
all those days. Burning heats, nervous irritation, a ceaseless, but
confused flow of thought, sleepless nights, and days instinct with a
frenzy of agitation, possessed me during that time.

As the fever of my blood encreased, a desire of wandering came upon me.
I remember, that the sun had set on the fifth day after my wreck, when,
without purpose or aim, I quitted the town of Ravenna. I must have been
very ill. Had I been possessed by more or less of delirium, that night
had surely been my last; for, as I continued to walk on the banks of
the Mantone, whose upward course I followed, I looked wistfully on the
stream, acknowledging to myself that its pellucid waves could medicine
my woes for ever, and was unable to account to myself for my tardiness
in seeking their shelter from the poisoned arrows of thought, that were
piercing me through and through. I walked a considerable part of the
night, and excessive weariness at length conquered my repugnance to the
availing myself of the deserted habitations of my species. The waning
moon, which had just risen, shewed me a cottage, whose neat entrance
and trim garden reminded me of my own England. I lifted up the latch of
the door and entered. A kitchen first presented itself, where, guided
by the moon beams, I found materials for striking a light. Within this
was a bed room; the couch was furnished with sheets of snowy whiteness;
the wood piled on the hearth, and an array as for a meal, might almost
have deceived me into the dear belief that I had here found what I had
so long sought—one survivor, a companion for my loneliness, a solace to
my despair. I steeled myself against the delusion; the room itself was
vacant: it was only prudent, I repeated to myself, to examine the rest
of the house. I fancied that I was proof against the expectation; yet
my heart beat audibly, as I laid my hand on the lock of each door, and
it sunk again, when I perceived in each the same vacancy. Dark and
silent they were as vaults; so I returned to the first chamber,
wondering what sightless host had spread the materials for my repast,
and my repose. I drew a chair to the table, and examined what the
viands were of which I was to partake. In truth it was a death feast!
The bread was blue and mouldy; the cheese lay a heap of dust. I did not
dare examine the other dishes; a troop of ants passed in a double line
across the table cloth; every utensil was covered with dust, with
cobwebs, and myriads of dead flies: these were objects each and all
betokening the fallaciousness of my expectations. Tears rushed into my
eyes; surely this was a wanton display of the power of the destroyer.
What had I done, that each sensitive nerve was thus to be anatomized?
Yet why complain more now than ever? This vacant cottage revealed no
new sorrow— the world was empty; mankind was dead—I knew it well—why
quarrel therefore with an acknowledged and stale truth? Yet, as I said,
I had hoped in the very heart of despair, so that every new impression
of the hard-cut reality on my soul brought with it a fresh pang,
telling me the yet unstudied lesson, that neither change of place nor
time could bring alleviation to my misery, but that, as I now was, I
must continue, day after day, month after month, year after year, while
I lived. I hardly dared conjecture what space of time that expression
implied. It is true, I was no longer in the first blush of manhood;
neither had I declined far in the vale of years—men have accounted mine
the prime of life: I had just entered my thirty-seventh year; every
limb was as well knit, every articulation as true, as when I had acted
the shepherd on the hills of Cumberland; and with these advantages I
was to commence the train of solitary life. Such were the reflections
that ushered in my slumber on that night.

The shelter, however, and less disturbed repose which I enjoyed,
restored me the following morning to a greater portion of health and
strength, than I had experienced since my fatal shipwreck. Among the
stores I had discovered on searching the cottage the preceding night,
was a quantity of dried grapes; these refreshed me in the morning, as I
left my lodging and proceeded towards a town which I discerned at no
great distance. As far as I could divine, it must have been Forli. I
entered with pleasure its wide and grassy streets. All, it is true,
pictured the excess of desolation; yet I loved to find myself in those
spots which had been the abode of my fellow creatures. I delighted to
traverse street after street, to look up at the tall houses, and repeat
to myself, once they contained beings similar to myself—I was not
always the wretch I am now. The wide square of Forli, the arcade around
it, its light and pleasant aspect cheered me. I was pleased with the
idea, that, if the earth should be again peopled, we, the lost race,
would, in the relics left behind, present no contemptible exhibition of
our powers to the new comers.

I entered one of the palaces, and opened the door of a magnificent
saloon. I started—I looked again with renewed wonder. What
wild-looking, unkempt, half-naked savage was that before me? The
surprise was momentary.

I perceived that it was I myself whom I beheld in a large mirror at the
end of the hall. No wonder that the lover of the princely Idris should
fail to recognize himself in the miserable object there pourtrayed. My
tattered dress was that in which I had crawled half alive from the
tempestuous sea. My long and tangled hair hung in elf locks on my
brow—my dark eyes, now hollow and wild, gleamed from under them—my
cheeks were discoloured by the jaundice, which (the effect of misery
and neglect) suffused my skin, and were half hid by a beard of many
days’ growth.

Yet why should I not remain thus, I thought; the world is dead, and
this squalid attire is a fitter mourning garb than the foppery of a
black suit. And thus, methinks, I should have remained, had not hope,
without which I do not believe man could exist, whispered to me, that,
in such a plight, I should be an object of fear and aversion to the
being, preserved I knew not where, but I fondly trusted, at length, to
be found by me. Will my readers scorn the vanity, that made me attire
myself with some care, for the sake of this visionary being? Or will
they forgive the freaks of a half crazed imagination? I can easily
forgive myself—for hope, however vague, was so dear to me, and a
sentiment of pleasure of so rare occurrence, that I yielded readily to
any idea, that cherished the one, or promised any recurrence of the
former to my sorrowing heart. After such occupation, I visited every
street, alley, and nook of Forli. These Italian towns presented an
appearance of still greater desolation, than those of England or
France. Plague had appeared here earlier—it had finished its course,
and achieved its work much sooner than with us. Probably the last
summer had found no human being alive, in all the track included
between the shores of Calabria and the northern Alps. My search was
utterly vain, yet I did not despond. Reason methought was on my side;
and the chances were by no means contemptible, that there should exist
in some part of Italy a survivor like myself—of a wasted, depopulate
land. As therefore I rambled through the empty town, I formed my plan
for future operations. I would continue to journey on towards Rome.
After I should have satisfied myself, by a narrow search, that I left
behind no human being in the towns through which I passed, I would
write up in a conspicuous part of each, with white paint, in three
languages, that “Verney, the last of the race of Englishmen, had taken
up his abode in Rome.”

In pursuance of this scheme, I entered a painter’s shop, and procured
myself the paint. It is strange that so trivial an occupation should
have consoled, and even enlivened me. But grief renders one childish,
despair fantastic. To this simple inscription, I merely added the
adjuration, “Friend, come! I wait for thee!—_Deh, vieni! ti aspetto!_”
On the following morning, with something like hope for my companion, I
quitted Forli on my way to Rome. Until now, agonizing retrospect, and
dreary prospects for the future, had stung me when awake, and cradled
me to my repose. Many times I had delivered myself up to the tyranny of
anguish— many times I resolved a speedy end to my woes; and death by my
own hands was a remedy, whose practicability was even cheering to me.
What could I fear in the other world? If there were an hell, and I were
doomed to it, I should come an adept to the sufferance of its
tortures—the act were easy, the speedy and certain end of my deplorable
tragedy. But now these thoughts faded before the new born expectation.
I went on my way, not as before, feeling each hour, each minute, to be
an age instinct with incalculable pain.

As I wandered along the plain, at the foot of the Appennines—through
their vallies, and over their bleak summits, my path led me through a
country which had been trodden by heroes, visited and admired by
thousands. They had, as a tide, receded, leaving me blank and bare in
the midst. But why complain? Did I not hope?—so I schooled myself, even
after the enlivening spirit had really deserted me, and thus I was
obliged to call up all the fortitude I could command, and that was not
much, to prevent a recurrence of that chaotic and intolerable despair,
that had succeeded to the miserable shipwreck, that had consummated
every fear, and dashed to annihilation every joy.

I rose each day with the morning sun, and left my desolate inn. As my
feet strayed through the unpeopled country, my thoughts rambled through
the universe, and I was least miserable when I could, absorbed in
reverie, forget the passage of the hours. Each evening, in spite of
weariness, I detested to enter any dwelling, there to take up my
nightly abode—I have sat, hour after hour, at the door of the cottage I
had selected, unable to lift the latch, and meet face to face blank
desertion within. Many nights, though autumnal mists were spread
around, I passed under an ilex—many times I have supped on arbutus
berries and chestnuts, making a fire, gypsy-like, on the ground—because
wild natural scenery reminded me less acutely of my hopeless state of
loneliness. I counted the days, and bore with me a peeled willow-wand,
on which, as well as I could remember, I had notched the days that had
elapsed since my wreck, and each night I added another unit to the
melancholy sum.

I had toiled up a hill which led to Spoleto. Around was spread a plain,
encircled by the chestnut-covered Appennines. A dark ravine was on one
side, spanned by an aqueduct, whose tall arches were rooted in the dell
below, and attested that man had once deigned to bestow labour and
thought here, to adorn and civilize nature. Savage, ungrateful nature,
which in wild sport defaced his remains, protruding her easily renewed,
and fragile growth of wild flowers and parasite plants around his
eternal edifices. I sat on a fragment of rock, and looked round. The
sun had bathed in gold the western atmosphere, and in the east the
clouds caught the radiance, and budded into transient loveliness. It
set on a world that contained me alone for its inhabitant. I took out
my wand—I counted the marks. Twenty-five were already
traced—twenty-five days had already elapsed, since human voice had
gladdened my ears, or human countenance met my gaze. Twenty-five long,
weary days, succeeded by dark and lonesome nights, had mingled with
foregone years, and had become a part of the past—the never to be
recalled—a real, undeniable portion of my life—twenty-five long, long
days.

Why this was not a month!—Why talk of days—or weeks—or months—I must
grasp years in my imagination, if I would truly picture the future to
myself—three, five, ten, twenty, fifty anniversaries of that fatal
epoch might elapse—every year containing twelve months, each of more
numerous calculation in a diary, than the twenty-five days gone by—Can
it be? Will it be?—We had been used to look forward to death
tremulously— wherefore, but because its place was obscure? But more
terrible, and far more obscure, was the unveiled course of my lone
futurity. I broke my wand; I threw it from me. I needed no recorder of
the inch and barley-corn growth of my life, while my unquiet thoughts
created other divisions, than those ruled over by the planets—and, in
looking back on the age that had elapsed since I had been alone, I
disdained to give the name of days and hours to the throes of agony
which had in truth portioned it out.

I hid my face in my hands. The twitter of the young birds going to
rest, and their rustling among the trees, disturbed the still
evening-air—the crickets chirped—the aziolo cooed at intervals. My
thoughts had been of death—these sounds spoke to me of life. I lifted
up my eyes—a bat wheeled round—the sun had sunk behind the jagged line
of mountains, and the paly, crescent moon was visible, silver white,
amidst the orange sunset, and accompanied by one bright star, prolonged
thus the twilight. A herd of cattle passed along in the dell below,
untended, towards their watering place—the grass was rustled by a
gentle breeze, and the olive-woods, mellowed into soft masses by the
moonlight, contrasted their sea-green with the dark chestnut foliage.
Yes, this is the earth; there is no change—no ruin—no rent made in her
verdurous expanse; she continues to wheel round and round, with
alternate night and day, through the sky, though man is not her adorner
or inhabitant. Why could I not forget myself like one of those animals,
and no longer suffer the wild tumult of misery that I endure? Yet, ah!
what a deadly breach yawns between their state and mine! Have not they
companions? Have not they each their mate—their cherished young, their
home, which, though unexpressed to us, is, I doubt not, endeared and
enriched, even in their eyes, by the society which kind nature has
created for them? It is I only that am alone—I, on this little hill
top, gazing on plain and mountain recess—on sky, and its starry
population, listening to every sound of earth, and air, and murmuring
wave,—I only cannot express to any companion my many thoughts, nor lay
my throbbing head on any loved bosom, nor drink from meeting eyes an
intoxicating dew, that transcends the fabulous nectar of the gods.
Shall I not then complain? Shall I not curse the murderous engine which
has mowed down the children of men, my brethren? Shall I not bestow a
malediction on every other of nature’s offspring, which dares live and
enjoy, while I live and suffer?

Ah, no! I will discipline my sorrowing heart to sympathy in your joys;
I will be happy, because ye are so. Live on, ye innocents, nature’s
selected darlings; I am not much unlike to you. Nerves, pulse, brain,
joint, and flesh, of such am I composed, and ye are organized by the
same laws. I have something beyond this, but I will call it a defect,
not an endowment, if it leads me to misery, while ye are happy. Just
then, there emerged from a near copse two goats and a little kid, by
the mother’s side; they began to browze the herbage of the hill. I
approached near to them, without their perceiving me; I gathered a
handful of fresh grass, and held it out; the little one nestled close
to its mother, while she timidly withdrew. The male stepped forward,
fixing his eyes on me: I drew near, still holding out my lure, while
he, depressing his head, rushed at me with his horns. I was a very
fool; I knew it, yet I yielded to my rage. I snatched up a huge
fragment of rock; it would have crushed my rash foe. I poized it—aimed
it—then my heart failed me. I hurled it wide of the mark; it rolled
clattering among the bushes into dell. My little visitants, all aghast,
galloped back into the covert of the wood; while I, my very heart
bleeding and torn, rushed down the hill, and by the violence of bodily
exertion, sought to escape from my miserable self.

No, no, I will not live among the wild scenes of nature, the enemy of
all that lives. I will seek the towns—Rome, the capital of the world,
the crown of man’s achievements. Among its storied streets, hallowed
ruins, and stupendous remains of human exertion, I shall not, as here,
find every thing forgetful of man; trampling on his memory, defacing
his works, proclaiming from hill to hill, and vale to vale,—by the
torrents freed from the boundaries which he imposed—by the vegetation
liberated from the laws which he enforced—by his habitation abandoned
to mildew and weeds, that his power is lost, his race annihilated for
ever.

I hailed the Tiber, for that was as it were an unalienable possession
of humanity. I hailed the wild Campagna, for every rood had been trod
by man; and its savage uncultivation, of no recent date, only
proclaimed more distinctly his power, since he had given an honourable
name and sacred title to what else would have been a worthless, barren
track. I entered Eternal Rome by the Porta del Popolo, and saluted with
awe its time-honoured space. The wide square, the churches near, the
long extent of the Corso, the near eminence of Trinita de’ Monti
appeared like fairy work, they were so silent, so peaceful, and so very
fair. It was evening; and the population of animals which still existed
in this mighty city, had gone to rest; there was no sound, save the
murmur of its many fountains, whose soft monotony was harmony to my
soul. The knowledge that I was in Rome, soothed me; that wondrous city,
hardly more illustrious for its heroes and sages, than for the power it
exercised over the imaginations of men. I went to rest that night; the
eternal burning of my heart quenched,—my senses tranquil.

The next morning I eagerly began my rambles in search of oblivion. I
ascended the many terraces of the garden of the Colonna Palace, under
whose roof I had been sleeping; and passing out from it at its summit,
I found myself on Monte Cavallo. The fountain sparkled in the sun; the
obelisk above pierced the clear dark-blue air. The statues on each
side, the works, as they are inscribed, of Phidias and Praxiteles,
stood in undiminished grandeur, representing Castor and Pollux, who
with majestic power tamed the rearing animal at their side. If those
illustrious artists had in truth chiselled these forms, how many
passing generations had their giant proportions outlived! and now they
were viewed by the last of the species they were sculptured to
represent and deify. I had shrunk into insignificance in my own eyes,
as I considered the multitudinous beings these stone demigods had
outlived, but this after-thought restored me to dignity in my own
conception. The sight of the poetry eternized in these statues, took
the sting from the thought, arraying it only in poetic ideality.

I repeated to myself,—I am in Rome! I behold, and as it were,
familiarly converse with the wonder of the world, sovereign mistress of
the imagination, majestic and eternal survivor of millions of
generations of extinct men. I endeavoured to quiet the sorrows of my
aching heart, by even now taking an interest in what in my youth I had
ardently longed to see. Every part of Rome is replete with relics of
ancient times. The meanest streets are strewed with truncated columns,
broken capitals—Corinthian and Ionic, and sparkling fragments of
granite or porphyry. The walls of the most penurious dwellings enclose
a fluted pillar or ponderous stone, which once made part of the palace
of the Cæsars; and the voice of dead time, in still vibrations, is
breathed from these dumb things, animated and glorified as they were by
man.

I embraced the vast columns of the temple of Jupiter Stator, which
survives in the open space that was the Forum, and leaning my burning
cheek against its cold durability, I tried to lose the sense of present
misery and present desertion, by recalling to the haunted cell of my
brain vivid memories of times gone by. I rejoiced at my success, as I
figured Camillus, the Gracchi, Cato, and last the heroes of Tacitus,
which shine meteors of surpassing brightness during the murky night of
the empire;—as the verses of Horace and Virgil, or the glowing periods
of Cicero thronged into the opened gates of my mind, I felt myself
exalted by long forgotten enthusiasm. I was delighted to know that I
beheld the scene which they beheld—the scene which their wives and
mothers, and crowds of the unnamed witnessed, while at the same time
they honoured, applauded, or wept for these matchless specimens of
humanity. At length, then, I had found a consolation. I had not vainly
sought the storied precincts of Rome—I had discovered a medicine for my
many and vital wounds.

I sat at the foot of these vast columns. The Coliseum, whose naked ruin
is robed by nature in a verdurous and glowing veil, lay in the sunlight
on my right. Not far off, to the left, was the Tower of the Capitol.
Triumphal arches, the falling walls of many temples, strewed the ground
at my feet. I strove, I resolved, to force myself to see the Plebeian
multitude and lofty Patrician forms congregated around; and, as the
Diorama of ages passed across my subdued fancy, they were replaced by
the modern Roman; the Pope, in his white stole, distributing
benedictions to the kneeling worshippers; the friar in his cowl; the
dark-eyed girl, veiled by her mezzera; the noisy, sun-burnt rustic,
leading his herd of buffaloes and oxen to the Campo Vaccino. The
romance with which, dipping our pencils in the rainbow hues of sky and
transcendent nature, we to a degree gratuitously endow the Italians,
replaced the solemn grandeur of antiquity. I remembered the dark monk,
and floating figures of “The Italian,” and how my boyish blood had
thrilled at the description. I called to mind Corinna ascending the
Capitol to be crowned, and, passing from the heroine to the author,
reflected how the Enchantress Spirit of Rome held sovereign sway over
the minds of the imaginative, until it rested on me—sole remaining
spectator of its wonders.

I was long wrapt by such ideas; but the soul wearies of a pauseless
flight; and, stooping from its wheeling circuits round and round this
spot, suddenly it fell ten thousand fathom deep, into the abyss of the
present— into self-knowledge—into tenfold sadness. I roused myself—I
cast off my waking dreams; and I, who just now could almost hear the
shouts of the Roman throng, and was hustled by countless multitudes,
now beheld the desart ruins of Rome sleeping under its own blue sky;
the shadows lay tranquilly on the ground; sheep were grazing untended
on the Palatine, and a buffalo stalked down the Sacred Way that led to
the Capitol. I was alone in the Forum; alone in Rome; alone in the
world. Would not one living man —one companion in my weary solitude, be
worth all the glory and remembered power of this time-honoured city?
Double sorrow—sadness, bred in Cimmerian caves, robed my soul in a
mourning garb. The generations I had conjured up to my fancy,
contrasted more strongly with the end of all —the single point in
which, as a pyramid, the mighty fabric of society had ended, while I,
on the giddy height, saw vacant space around me.

From such vague laments I turned to the contemplation of the minutiae
of my situation. So far, I had not succeeded in the sole object of my
desires, the finding a companion for my desolation. Yet I did not
despair. It is true that my inscriptions were set up for the most part,
in insignificant towns and villages; yet, even without these memorials,
it was possible that the person, who like me should find himself alone
in a depopulate land, should, like me, come to Rome. The more slender
my expectation was, the more I chose to build on it, and to accommodate
my actions to this vague possibility.

It became necessary therefore, that for a time I should domesticate
myself at Rome. It became necessary, that I should look my disaster in
the face— not playing the school-boy’s part of obedience without
submission; enduring life, and yet rebelling against the laws by which
I lived.

Yet how could I resign myself? Without love, without sympathy, without
communion with any, how could I meet the morning sun, and with it trace
its oft repeated journey to the evening shades? Why did I continue to
live— why not throw off the weary weight of time, and with my own hand,
let out the fluttering prisoner from my agonized breast?—It was not
cowardice that withheld me; for the true fortitude was to endure; and
death had a soothing sound accompanying it, that would easily entice me
to enter its demesne. But this I would not do. I had, from the moment I
had reasoned on the subject, instituted myself the subject to fate, and
the servant of necessity, the visible laws of the invisible God—I
believed that my obedience was the result of sound reasoning, pure
feeling, and an exalted sense of the true excellence and nobility of my
nature. Could I have seen in this empty earth, in the seasons and their
change, the hand of a blind power only, most willingly would I have
placed my head on the sod, and closed my eyes on its loveliness for
ever. But fate had administered life to me, when the plague had already
seized on its prey—she had dragged me by the hair from out the
strangling waves—By such miracles she had bought me for her own; I
admitted her authority, and bowed to her decrees. If, after mature
consideration, such was my resolve, it was doubly necessary that I
should not lose the end of life, the improvement of my faculties, and
poison its flow by repinings without end. Yet how cease to repine,
since there was no hand near to extract the barbed spear that had
entered my heart of hearts? I stretched out my hand, and it touched
none whose sensations were responsive to mine. I was girded, walled in,
vaulted over, by seven-fold barriers of loneliness. Occupation alone,
if I could deliver myself up to it, would be capable of affording an
opiate to my sleepless sense of woe. Having determined to make Rome my
abode, at least for some months, I made arrangements for my
accommodation—I selected my home. The Colonna Palace was well adapted
for my purpose. Its grandeur— its treasure of paintings, its
magnificent halls were objects soothing and even exhilarating.

I found the granaries of Rome well stored with grain, and particularly
with Indian corn; this product requiring less art in its preparation
for food, I selected as my principal support. I now found the hardships
and lawlessness of my youth turn to account. A man cannot throw off the
habits of sixteen years. Since that age, it is true, I had lived
luxuriously, or at least surrounded by all the conveniences
civilization afforded. But before that time, I had been “as uncouth a
savage, as the wolf-bred founder of old Rome”—and now, in Rome itself,
robber and shepherd propensities, similar to those of its founder, were
of advantage to its sole inhabitant. I spent the morning riding and
shooting in the Campagna—I passed long hours in the various galleries—I
gazed at each statue, and lost myself in a reverie before many a fair
Madonna or beauteous nymph. I haunted the Vatican, and stood surrounded
by marble forms of divine beauty. Each stone deity was possessed by
sacred gladness, and the eternal fruition of love. They looked on me
with unsympathizing complacency, and often in wild accents I reproached
them for their supreme indifference—for they were human shapes, the
human form divine was manifest in each fairest limb and lineament. The
perfect moulding brought with it the idea of colour and motion; often,
half in bitter mockery, half in self-delusion, I clasped their icy
proportions, and, coming between Cupid and his Psyche’s lips, pressed
the unconceiving marble.

I endeavoured to read. I visited the libraries of Rome. I selected a
volume, and, choosing some sequestered, shady nook, on the banks of the
Tiber, or opposite the fair temple in the Borghese Gardens, or under
the old pyramid of Cestius, I endeavoured to conceal me from myself,
and immerse myself in the subject traced on the pages before me. As if
in the same soil you plant nightshade and a myrtle tree, they will each
appropriate the mould, moisture, and air administered, for the
fostering their several properties—so did my grief find sustenance, and
power of existence, and growth, in what else had been divine manna, to
feed radiant meditation. Ah! while I streak this paper with the tale of
what my so named occupations were—while I shape the skeleton of my
days—my hand trembles—my heart pants, and my brain refuses to lend
expression, or phrase, or idea, by which to image forth the veil of
unutterable woe that clothed these bare realities. O, worn and beating
heart, may I dissect thy fibres, and tell how in each unmitigable
misery, sadness dire, repinings, and despair, existed? May I record my
many ravings—the wild curses I hurled at torturing nature—and how I
have passed days shut out from light and food—from all except the
burning hell alive in my own bosom?

I was presented, meantime, with one other occupation, the one best
fitted to discipline my melancholy thoughts, which strayed backwards,
over many a ruin, and through many a flowery glade, even to the
mountain recess, from which in early youth I had first emerged.

During one of my rambles through the habitations of Rome, I found
writing materials on a table in an author’s study. Parts of a
manuscript lay scattered about. It contained a learned disquisition on
the Italian language; one page an unfinished dedication to posterity,
for whose profit the writer had sifted and selected the niceties of
this harmonious language —to whose everlasting benefit he bequeathed
his labours.

I also will write a book, I cried—for whom to read?—to whom dedicated?
And then with silly flourish (what so capricious and childish as
despair?) I wrote,

DEDICATION
TO THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEAD.
SHADOWS, ARISE, AND READ YOUR FALL!
BEHOLD THE HISTORY OF THE
LAST MAN.

Yet, will not this world be re-peopled, and the children of a saved
pair of lovers, in some to me unknown and unattainable seclusion,
wandering to these prodigious relics of the ante-pestilential race,
seek to learn how beings so wondrous in their achievements, with
imaginations infinite, and powers godlike, had departed from their home
to an unknown country?

I will write and leave in this most ancient city, this “world’s sole
monument,” a record of these things. I will leave a monument of the
existence of Verney, the Last Man. At first I thought only to speak of
plague, of death, and last, of desertion; but I lingered fondly on my
early years, and recorded with sacred zeal the virtues of my
companions. They have been with me during the fulfilment of my task. I
have brought it to an end—I lift my eyes from my paper—again they are
lost to me. Again I feel that I am alone.

A year has passed since I have been thus occupied. The seasons have
made their wonted round, and decked this eternal city in a changeful
robe of surpassing beauty. A year has passed; and I no longer _guess_
at my state or my prospects—loneliness is my familiar, sorrow my
inseparable companion. I have endeavoured to brave the storm—I have
endeavoured to school myself to fortitude—I have sought to imbue myself
with the lessons of wisdom. It will not do. My hair has become nearly
grey—my voice, unused now to utter sound, comes strangely on my ears.
My person, with its human powers and features, seem to me a monstrous
excrescence of nature. How express in human language a woe human being
until this hour never knew! How give intelligible expression to a pang
none but I could ever understand!— No one has entered Rome. None will
ever come. I smile bitterly at the delusion I have so long nourished,
and still more, when I reflect that I have exchanged it for another as
delusive, as false, but to which I now cling with the same fond trust.

Winter has come again; and the gardens of Rome have lost their leaves—
the sharp air comes over the Campagna, and has driven its brute
inhabitants to take up their abode in the many dwellings of the
deserted city—frost has suspended the gushing fountains—and Trevi has
stilled her eternal music. I had made a rough calculation, aided by the
stars, by which I endeavoured to ascertain the first day of the new
year. In the old out-worn age, the Sovereign Pontiff was used to go in
solemn pomp, and mark the renewal of the year by driving a nail in the
gate of the temple of Janus. On that day I ascended St. Peter’s, and
carved on its topmost stone the aera 2100, last year of the world!

My only companion was a dog, a shaggy fellow, half water and half
shepherd’s dog, whom I found tending sheep in the Campagna. His master
was dead, but nevertheless he continued fulfilling his duties in
expectation of his return. If a sheep strayed from the rest, he forced
it to return to the flock, and sedulously kept off every intruder.
Riding in the Campagna I had come upon his sheep-walk, and for some
time observed his repetition of lessons learned from man, now useless,
though unforgotten. His delight was excessive when he saw me. He sprung
up to my knees; he capered round and round, wagging his tail, with the
short, quick bark of pleasure: he left his fold to follow me, and from
that day has never neglected to watch by and attend on me, shewing
boisterous gratitude whenever I caressed or talked to him. His
pattering steps and mine alone were heard, when we entered the
magnificent extent of nave and aisle of St. Peter’s. We ascended the
myriad steps together, when on the summit I achieved my design, and in
rough figures noted the date of the last year. I then turned to gaze on
the country, and to take leave of Rome. I had long determined to quit
it, and I now formed the plan I would adopt for my future career, after
I had left this magnificent abode.

A solitary being is by instinct a wanderer, and that I would become. A
hope of amelioration always attends on change of place, which would
even lighten the burthen of my life. I had been a fool to remain in
Rome all this time: Rome noted for Malaria, the famous caterer for
death. But it was still possible, that, could I visit the whole extent
of earth, I should find in some part of the wide extent a survivor.
Methought the sea-side was the most probable retreat to be chosen by
such a one. If left alone in an inland district, still they could not
continue in the spot where their last hopes had been extinguished; they
would journey on, like me, in search of a partner for their solitude,
till the watery barrier stopped their further progress.

To that water—cause of my woes, perhaps now to be their cure, I would
betake myself. Farewell, Italy!—farewell, thou ornament of the world,
matchless Rome, the retreat of the solitary one during long months!—to
civilized life—to the settled home and succession of monotonous days,
farewell! Peril will now be mine; and I hail her as a friend—death will
perpetually cross my path, and I will meet him as a benefactor;
hardship, inclement weather, and dangerous tempests will be my sworn
mates. Ye spirits of storm, receive me! ye powers of destruction, open
wide your arms, and clasp me for ever! if a kinder power have not
decreed another end, so that after long endurance I may reap my reward,
and again feel my heart beat near the heart of another like to me.

Tiber, the road which is spread by nature’s own hand, threading her
continent, was at my feet, and many a boat was tethered to the banks. I
would with a few books, provisions, and my dog, embark in one of these
and float down the current of the stream into the sea; and then,
keeping near land, I would coast the beauteous shores and sunny
promontories of the blue Mediterranean, pass Naples, along Calabria,
and would dare the twin perils of Scylla and Charybdis; then, with
fearless aim, (for what had I to lose?) skim ocean’s surface towards
Malta and the further Cyclades. I would avoid Constantinople, the sight
of whose well-known towers and inlets belonged to another state of
existence from my present one; I would coast Asia Minor, and Syria,
and, passing the seven-mouthed Nile, steer northward again, till losing
sight of forgotten Carthage and deserted Lybia, I should reach the
pillars of Hercules. And then—no matter where—the oozy caves, and
soundless depths of ocean may be my dwelling, before I accomplish this
long-drawn voyage, or the arrow of disease find my heart as I float
singly on the weltering Mediterranean; or, in some place I touch at, I
may find what I seek—a companion; or if this may not be—to endless
time, decrepid and grey headed—youth already in the grave with those I
love— the lone wanderer will still unfurl his sail, and clasp the
tiller—and, still obeying the breezes of heaven, for ever round another
and another promontory, anchoring in another and another bay, still
ploughing seedless ocean, leaving behind the verdant land of native
Europe, adown the tawny shore of Africa, having weathered the fierce
seas of the Cape, I may moor my worn skiff in a creek, shaded by spicy
groves of the odorous islands of the far Indian ocean.

These are wild dreams. Yet since, now a week ago, they came on me, as I
stood on the height of St. Peter’s, they have ruled my imagination. I
have chosen my boat, and laid in my scant stores. I have selected a few
books; the principal are Homer and Shakespeare—But the libraries of the
world are thrown open to me—and in any port I can renew my stock. I
form no expectation of alteration for the better; but the monotonous
present is intolerable to me. Neither hope nor joy are my
pilots—restless despair and fierce desire of change lead me on. I long
to grapple with danger, to be excited by fear, to have some task,
however slight or voluntary, for each day’s fulfilment. I shall witness
all the variety of appearance, that the elements can assume—I shall
read fair augury in the rainbow— menace in the cloud—some lesson or
record dear to my heart in everything. Thus around the shores of
deserted earth, while the sun is high, and the moon waxes or wanes,
angels, the spirits of the dead, and the ever-open eye of the Supreme,
will behold the tiny bark, freighted with Verney—the LAST MAN.

THE END.