 Volume 3, Chapter 8 of The Last Man. 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 her bosoms with renewed spirits to the icy biz, which even at mid-summer used to come from the northern glacier laden with cold. Yet how could we nourish expectation of relief? Like her native England, and the vast extent of fertile France, this mountain-emboured land was desolate of its inhabitants. Nor bleak mountaintop nor snow nor drivelet, not the icy 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, or train half-dead, through fear of death a hopeless, unresisting, almost reckless crew, which in the tossed bark of life had given up all pillage, and resigned themselves to the destructive force of ungoverned winds. Like a few firs 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 hillside, while the flock is in the pen and dies before morning dawn. Like a cloud, like one of many, that were spread an impenetrable wolf over the sky, which, when the shepherd north has driven its companions to drink antipodian 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 outsource the brawling arve through the rock-bound valley of Servox. Besides 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 everything necessary to give life and beauty. Strange that we should seek shelter here, surely if, in those countries where earth was want, like a tender mother to nourish her children, we had found her a destroyer. We need not seek it here, where stricken by keen pinnury she seemed to shudder through her stony veins. Nor were we mistaken in our conjecture. We vainly sought the vast and ever-moving glaciers of Shemuni, rifts of pendant ice, seas of congelated waters, the leafless groves of tempest-battered pines, dells, mere paths for the loud avalanche, and hilltops, the resort of thunderstorms. 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 water spring from the thawed snows of a thousand winters, another and yet another of the remnant of the race of man, closed their eyes forever to the light. Yet we were not quite wrong in seeking a scene like this, were on to close the drama. Nature, true to the last, consoled us in the very heart of misery. Same grandeur of outward objects soothed our hapless hearts, and were in harmony with our desolation. Many sorrows hath befallen man during his checkered course, and many a woe-stricken mourner had found himself sole survivor among many. Our misery took its majestic shape in 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 background, the towering alps, whose snowy capes or bare drigges lifted us from our dull mortal abode to the palaces of nature's own. The solemn harmony of event and situation regulated our feelings and gave, as it were, a fitting costume to the 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 shoes. Near the sources of the Hervéron we performed the rites for, for only accepted, the last of the species. Adrian and I, leaving Clara and Evelyn wrapped in peaceful, unobserving slumber, carried the body to this desolate spot, and placed it in those caves of ice beneath the glacier, which riven split with the slightest sound, and bring destruction on those within the clefs. No bird or beast of prey could hear profane the frozen form. So with hushed steps and in silence we placed the dead on a beer 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 suffice 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 moi en verre, was opposite to us, the glacier at our side. At our feet, arveron, 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 and 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 thunderstorm, and the flow of massive waters display her activity. Such the churchyard, 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 sepulcher, whose obsequies we now celebrated. With this last victim plague vanished from the earth. Death had never wanted, weapons were with 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 her 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 swore the African, and free American had been vanquished and destroyed by her. Her barbarous tyranny came to its close here in the rocky veil of Shaman. Still recurring scenes of misery and pain, the fruits of this distemper may no more a part of her 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 scepter 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 seemed 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 awestruck under beatling 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 pithy and maid, to utter the secrets of futurity, or for some edipus to solve the riddle of the cruel sphinx. Such edipus was I to be, not divining words juggle, but whose agonizing pangs and sorrow-tainted life were to be the engines were with 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 an ally to pleasure, as we stood beside the silent tomb of nature reared by these lifeless mountains above her living veins choking her vital principle. Thus we are left, said Adrien, two melancholy-belasted trees were 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 fulfill, 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, Vernet, that we need no longer dread or 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 mists 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 an endeavor 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 our young imagination. Let us descend to the sunny plains of Italy. Winter will soon be here to clothe this wilderness and 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 Chamonix 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, past long hours on the bridge, which crossing the ravine of Arve commands a prospect of its pine-clothed depths and the snowy mountains that walled 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 Morienne, which leads to Cigny. 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 prefer the prospect of what we were to do to the recollection of what had been done. We felt that 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 snowfall in the river, where 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, discounting on the charms of nature, drinking in the wild her unalienable beauties, we were in an empty world happy. Yet, oh days of joy, days when I spoke to I, and voices sweeter than the music of the swinging branches of the pines, or rivulets, gentle murmur, answered mine. Yet, oh days replete with beatitude, days of love's society, days unutterably dear to me forlorn. Pass, oh pass before me, making me in your memory, forget what I am. Behold how my streaming eyes blot the senseless paper. Behold how my features are convulsed by agonizing throws. At your mere recollection, now that alone my tears flow, my lips quiver, my cries fill the air, unseen, unmarked, unheard. Yet, oh 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. As the uprising of mourn, we sat at our past 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 forever left, talk, thought and chaining, made the hours fly. Oh, that we had lived thus forever and forever, 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 to life's last term. In this manner we endeavored 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 her 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 of 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 hardened soul into these strange masquerades. We had resolved to pass the ensuing winter at Milan, which, at his being a large and luxurious city, would afford us choice of homes. We had descended the alps and left far behind the vast forests and mighty crags. We entered smiling Italy. Mingling 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 spenthrift winds. The fallen foliage of the trees, the wheat 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, masterpieces of art, or galleries of statues, one this genial climb the animals in newfound liberty rambled through the gorgeous palaces and hardly feared our forgotten aspect. The dove-colored oxen turned their full eyes on us, and paced slowly by a startling throng of silly sheep, with pattering feet with startup in some chamber, formally dedicated to the repose of beauty, and rush-huddling passed us down the marble staircase into the street, and again in, at the first open door, taking unrabuked 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 feeded 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 peasant, or the deformed half-human shape of the wretch beggar. We arrived at Milan and stationed ourselves at the Vistroy'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 evenings 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 nevermore to be experienced by us. Metaphysical disquisition, fiction which wandering from all reality lost itself in self-created errors. Poets of time so far gone by that to read of them was as to read of Atlantis and Utopia are 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 forever did the earth roll on and throned in her atmospheric car, speeded by the force of the invisible coarsers of never airing necessity. And now this dewdrop 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 demesany of Taurus and the twins. There, fanned by vernal airs, the spirit of beauty sprung from her colder posts and with winnowing wings and soft-pacing feet set a girdle of frigor 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 low winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth the time of the singing of birds has come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. The fig tree putteth forth her green figs and the vines with their tender grape give a good smell. 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 here to fore walk in its shadow, yet left as we were alone to each other, we looked into each other's faces, with inquiring eyes, not daring altogether to trust her 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 hilltops. Telmas from Como under the steep heights of the eastern mountains by the margin of the lake was a villa called Piñana, from its being built on the side 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 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 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 overhanging craggy banks, thick stone with evergreens which dipped their shining leaf 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 clefs 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, me thinks we should have been happy here were the precipitous mountains nearly pathless shut from our view the far fields of desolate earth and with the small exertion of the imagination we might fancy that cities were still resonant with popular hum and the peasants still guided as plough through the furrow and that we, the world's free denizens, enjoyed a voluntary exile and not a remedi-less cutting off from our extinct species. Not one among us enjoyed the beauty of the scenery as 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 was sadly ten smiles and eyes bright with tears yet without a word of complaint. She approached astimidly, avoided her caresses, nor shook off her embarrassment till some serious discussion or lofty theme called her for a while out of herself. Her beauty grew as a rose which opening to the summer wind discloses leaf after leaf till a sense aches with its excess of loveliness. A slight invariable color tinged her cheeks and her motions seemed attuned by some hidden harmony of surpassing sweetness. We redoubled her 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 overwrought and spun out in the immensity of speculative sorrow. To cherish, to caress, to amuse him was the common task of all. Clara, who fell towards him in some degree like a young mother, gratefully acknowledged kindness towards him. To me, oh to me, who saw the clearer brows and soft eyes of the beloved of my heart, my lost and ever-dear Idris, reborn his gentle face, to me he was dear ever to pain. If I pressed him to my heart, me thought 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 forge 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 ran sector stores with childish ignorance, and we always brought some newfound gift for our fair companion. Then, too, we made discoveries of lovely scenes or gay palaces, whether 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 Clarionette 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 beaten 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 pernosticate evil, but explained it away as a mere casual incident. Not so, Adrien. 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 to 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. Adrien 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 and a posture of utter despondency. Adrien 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 her 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 liniments encaged the embryo of the world's spanning mind of man. Man's nature, brimful of passions and affections, would have had in home in that little heart whose swift pulsations hurried towards their clothes. His small hands' fine mechanism now flaxed and umbent, 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 and resisting the final blow. We watched at his bedside, and when the axis 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 torment and keenness throw us back, as it were, on the deep roots and hidden foundations of our nature, which shake our being with earthquake throw, so that we leave to confine 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 of fortnight, which we pass watching the changes of the sweet child's melody. 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 other 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 endeavored 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 who has confirmed materialists in their belief, I ever felt otherwise. Was that my child, that moveless, decaying animation? My child was enraptured by my caresses. His dear voice clothed with meaning articulations, his thoughts, otherwise inaccessible. His smile was array of the soul, and the same soul sat upon its throne in his eyes. I turned from the smockery of what he was. Take, O earth, I dept. Freely and forever I can sign to thee the garb thou dist 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. Replaced as 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 forever whisper to me, leave thy cumbress flesh and make a part of us. I earnestly entreat you to take me away. So on the 15th of August we bade a deer to our villa, and the empowering shades of this abode of beauty, to calm bay and noisy waterfall, to Evelyn's little grave we bade for well, and then with heavy hearts we departed on our pilgrimage towards Rome. End of Chapter 8. Volume 3, Chapter 9 of The Last Man. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Stephanie Dupal de Martin. The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Volume 3, Chapter 9. Now, soft a while, have I arrived so near the end? Yes. It is all over now. A step or two over those new-made graves and the wearer some way is done. Can I accomplish my task? Can I streak my paper with words capacious of the grand conclusion? Quit thy Cimmerian solitude. Bring with thee murky fogs from hell, which may drink up the day. Bring blight and pastiferous 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 putrefy and the genial atmosphere which clips and globe lose all powers of generation and sustenance. Do this sad visage power while I write while eyes read these pages. And who will read them? Beware tender offspring of the reborn world. Beware fair being with human heart, yet untamed by care and human brow, yet unplowed by time. Beware lest the cheerful current of thy blood be checked, thy golden locks turn gray, 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 bows will be harmony befitting. Seek some cave deep embowered in earth's darkened trails where no light will penetrate to save that which struggles, red and flickering, through a single fissure staining thy page with grimaced 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 me thinks 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 and our way to Rome. There was something to the English peculiarly attractive in the idea of this wave encircled island enthroned city. 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, traveling 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 cells and the murmuring stream waving trees and swelling canvas 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 fervor discoursed of the glorious nations of the dead, of the beautyous earth and the fate of man, she crept near him drinking in a 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 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 ingrated rift at first renders the doubtful light more sensibly obscure till the visual orb having drunken in the beam and adapted itself to enscantiness. He finds that clear noon inhabits a 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 increased fervor while the wintry storms howl. Thus we floated down the widening stream of the post, sleeping when the sakaal saying, awake with the stars, we entered the narrow banks of the Berenta and arrived at the shore of the Laguna at sunrise on the 6th 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 strewn on the beach at Fuzina. We embarked in one of these for the widowed daughter of Ocean who abandoned fallen sat forlorn on her propping aisles, looking towards the far mountains of Greece. We rowed lightly over the Laguna and entered Cala Grande. The tide ebbed suddenly from out the broken portals and violated halls of Venice. Seaweed and sea monsters were left on the blackened marble while the salt ooze defaced the matchless works of art that adorned the walls, and the seagull 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 shown more beauty is 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, stretch far unspecced 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 the sapless 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 a pace. The sun set in calm majesty behind the misty summits of the Apennines, and its golden and rosy at hues painted the mountains of the opposite shore. That land, said Adrienne, tinted with the last glories of the day, is Greece. Greece, the sound-head responsive cord 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 shall 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. Adrienne, who was delighted with Clara's proposal, obviated these objections. The season was favorable, the north-west that blew, would take us transversely across the gulf, and then we might find in some abandoned port a light Greek kayak adapted for such navigation and run down the coast of the Moria, and passing over the isthmus of Corinth without much land travelling or fatigue find ourselves at Athens. This appeared to me while 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 Adrienne 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 enterprise. 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 at Adrienne quoting a translation of Moscus' poem, as in the clear morning light we rode over the lagoon a passlido 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 sunlight 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 imperian afforded smooth conduct to our bark. As the air and waters were tranquil and balmy, so were our minds steeped and quiet. In comparison with the unstained deep, funeral earth appeared aggrave, its high rocks and stately mountains were but monuments, its trees the plumes of a hearse, the brooks and rivers breakish 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 a patriarch of our old floated above the drowned world, let us be saved, as thus we but take ourselves to thy perennial flood. Adrian sat at the helm, I attended to the rigging, the breeze right aft filled our swallowing 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 cyclities, and there in myrtle groves, amidst perpetual spring, fan 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 Adrienne was followed by the flapping of the canvas, as the adverse winds struck it, and our boat lurched. Swift as speech, the web of the storm thickened overhead, the sun went down red, the dark sea was strewed with foam, and our skiff rose and fell in its increasing 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 horse-thunder muttered. Again in the south, the clouds replied, and the forth stream of fire running along the black sky showed us the appalling piles of clouds, now met and obliterated by the heaving waves. Great God, and we alone, we three 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-round contracted to my view, they and all that they contained shrunk up to one point, even to her tossing bark freighted with glorious humanity. A convulsion of a despair across the love-beaming face of Adrian, all with set teeth he murmured, yet they shall be saved. Clara visited by a human pang, pale and trembling crept near him, he looked on her with an encouraging smile. Do you fear, sweet girl? Oh, 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 cells 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, showing us our danger and restoring us to double night. We were all silent, except when Adrian, a 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 endangering child. I sat at the prowl watching our course, when suddenly I heard the water's break with redoubled fury. We were certainly near the shore, at the same time I cried, about there an abroad lightning filling the concave showed us for one moment the level beach ahead, disclosing even the sands and stunted ooze sprinkled beds of reeds that grew at high watermark. Again it was dark, and we drew in our breath with such content as one may. Who, while fragments of volcano hurled rock darkened the air, sees a vast mass plowing 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 ore or spar which might suffice to float them. I was myself an excellent swimmer. The very sight of the sea was want 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 buffettings. 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 and 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 wild 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 fear-scale bore the wrack onwards, and they were lost in the chaotic mingling of sky and sea. Our gunwells had been torn away, our single sail had been rent to ribbons, 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 pops the else feeble mind of man, and enables us to endure the most savage tortures with the 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 past thus, hours which might wright 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 and fury the one before, and our skiff hung on the breaking wave, and then rushed into the valley below, and trembled in spun between the watery precipices that seemed most to meet above her. For a moment the gale paused, an ocean sank to comparative silence. It was a breathless interval, the wind which, as a practice leaper, had gathered itself out before its 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, cry Clara. Save yourselves! Oh, save yourselves! The lightning showed 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 out foremost into the vast billows piled up ahead. 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 her upset boat close to me. I clung to this, grasping it with clenched hand and nails, while I endeavored 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 combatted 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 curled 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 oceans far abysses. At one moment I felt my foot touched 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 ringing 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 unable 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 the sickening feeling I enclosed my eyes, the light of morning met them. Grey 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 increasing stream from the east, behind the waves of the Adriatic, changing the gray to a rosy 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 retrospect emotion I would have started up, but my limbs refused to obey me. My knees trembled. The muscles had lost all power. I still believe 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 in your 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 a 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 one hour after hour I'd gone by, I wondered at the quick flight of time. Yet even now I had not drunk the bitter potion to the drags. I was not yet persuaded of my loss. I did not yet feel in every pulsation, 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 colors 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 watchtowers which at stated distances lined 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 trestles 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 seawater I had drank and of the exhaustion of my frame tormented me. Kind nature had gifted the supply of these wands with pleasurable sensations so that I even I was refreshed and calmed as I ate of the sorry fare and drank a little of the sour wine which half filled the 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 ball into my sense after the hateful odor of seaweed. 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 haymakers 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 woke in a painful agony for I fancied the 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 patterned against the single window. How dreadful it is to emerge from the oblivion of slumber and to receive as a good morrow with 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 forever. 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 looked 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 hurt 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. 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 attained. 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 well 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 ciberate enjoyments I would 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 fireside tale. To none could I ever relate to the story of my adversity. No hope had I. He knew that, beyond the ocean which begurt 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 caraby, the merciless cannibal, or worse than these, the uncouth, brute and remorseless veteran of 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 mold. Human blood would flow in his veins. A human sympathy must link us forever. 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 past 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 scepter for an aspect 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 desolate-ness. 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 wherein 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 deserved 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 laboring 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 antich to myself, I knew that I, the offspring of man, during long years one among many, now are made 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 side of the twinkling stars, and the reflex on the pavement near. Thus I passed the second night of my desolation. CHAPTER 10 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 window's sills and deserted thresholds of the doors. I awoke and my first thought was, Adrien 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 Adrien dained 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 this 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 profit of many ways, not the less deep and drear because she would have forever 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 those remnants of my race. If regret and sorrow came a-thwart me, as well it might in our solitary and uncertain state, the clear tones of Adrian's voice in 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 sons of my benighted soul, repose in my weariness, slumber in my sleepless way, 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 way 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 a teach-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 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 increased, 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 four, 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 perlucid waves could medicine my ways for ever, and was unable to account myself for my tiredness 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 riven showed 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 bedroom. 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 vians 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 tablecloth. 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 unsteady 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 veil 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 foley. 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 being similar to myself. I was not always the wretch I am now. The wide square of foley, 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 newcomers. 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 portrayed. My tattered dress was that in which I had crawled half alive from the tempestuous sea. My long entangled 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 phoppery of a black suit, and thus me thinks 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 a version 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 recurrence 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 folly. 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, me thought, 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, verny, 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 to spare fantastic. To this simple inscription I merely added the adoration, friend, come, I wait for thee, devieni ti asbeto. On the following morning with something like hope for my companion I quitted folly 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 ways, 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 a hell and I were doomed to it, I should come and adapt 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 newborn 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 Apennines, through their valleys 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 wariness, 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 appealed Willewand, 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. A round was spread a plain and circled by the chestnut-covered appendines. 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 civilise nature. Savage and grateful 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, than ever to be recalled, a real and deniable 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 have 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, and those ruled over by the planets, and in looking back on the aids 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. The 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 palycrescent 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 virtuous expanse. She continues to wheel round and round, with alternate night and day, through the sky, though man is not her adornor 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 un-express 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 I am alone, I on this little hilltop 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 organised 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-cops two goats and a little kid by the mother's side. They began to browse 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 poised it, aimed it, then my heart failed me. I held 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 woods, 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 everything forgetful of man, trampling on his memory, defacing his works, proclaiming from hill to hill, and veil to veil, 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 campania, for every rude had been trod by man, and its savage uncultivation, of no recent date, only proclaimed more distinctly his power, since he had given an honorable name and sacred title to what else would have been a worthless barren track. I entered eternal Rome by the Porta dell Papolo, 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, and 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 Place, under whose roof I had been sleeping, and passing out from it at its summit I found myself on Monti Cavallo. The fountains sparkled in the sun, the obelisk above pierced the clear dark blue air. The statues in each side, the works as they are inscribed, of Phidias and Praxitalis, 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 chiseled 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 stoned demigods had outlived. But this afterthought restored me to dignity in my own conception. The sight of the poetry eternised in those 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 conversed 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 hardently 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 Caesars, 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 Stata 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 Gracci, 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 Ciceroe thronged into the open 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 colosseum whose naked ruin is robed by nature in a vergerous and glowing veil lay in the sunlight on my right. Not far off to the left was the tower of the capital. Triumphal arches, the falling walls of many temples, strewed the ground at my feet. I strave, 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 Hermes Era, the noisy sun-burnt rustic leading his herd of buffaloes and oxen to the Campo Vicino. 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 mine Carina ascending the capital to be crowned, and passing from the heroine to the author, reflected how the enchantress's 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 wrapped by such ideas, but the sole 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 desert 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 capital. 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, bread in Sumerian caves robed my soul in the morning 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 minuté 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 schoolboy'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 agonised 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 of 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 forever. 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 brought 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 ripinings without end. Yet how ceased 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, bolted 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 turned 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-bread 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 Campania. I passed long hours in the various galleries. I gazed at each statue and lost myself in a reverie before many of fair Madonna or beautious nymph. I haunted the Vatican and stood surrounded by marble forms of divine beauty. Each stoned deity was possessed by sacred gladness and the eternal fruition of love. They looked on me with unsympathising 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 molding 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 psych'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 Borgie's 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 mold, 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 manner 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 the image forth the veil of unutterable woe that clothed these bare realities. O warn 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 past 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 flower reglaed, 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 and unfinished dedication to posterity, for whose prophet the writer had sifted and selected the niceties of this harmonious language, to whose everlasting benefit he bequeathed his labours. I also were 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 repealed, and the children of a saved pair of lovers, in some to me unknown an unattainable seclusion, wondering to these prodigious relics of the anti-pestilential race, seek to learn how being 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 wanted 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 gray. My voice unused now to utter sound comes strangely on my ears. My person, with its human powers and features, seem to be a monstrous expressance 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 Campania, 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 outworn 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 era of 2100, last year of the world. My only companion was a dog, a shaggy fellow, half-water and half-shepard's dog, whom I found tending sheep in the Campania. 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 Campania 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, showing boisterous gratitude whenever I caress or talk to him. His pattering steps and mine alone were heard when we entered the magnificent extent of Nave and Isle 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 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 burden 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. Me thought the seaside 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 ways, perhaps now to be their cure, I would but take myself. Farewell, Italy, farewell, thou ornament of the world, matchless reign, 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 class 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 beautyous shores and sunny promontories of the blue Mediterranean, past Naples, along Calabria, and would dare the twin perils of Silla and Charibdis, then with fearless aim for what had I to lose skim ocean 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 steered northward again till losing sight of forgotten Carthage and deserted Libya, 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 decrepit 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 plowing seedless ocean, leaving behind the verdant land of native Europe. I down the townish shore of Africa, having weathered the fiercese of the Cape, I may mourn 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 to spare 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 weed 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-opened eye of the Supreme will behold the tiny bark freighted with verny, the last man.