CHAPTER I.
HEAR YOU not the rushing sound of the coming tempest? Do you not behold theclouds open, and destruction lurid and dire pour down on the blasted earth?See you not the thunderbolt fall, and are deafened by the shout of heaventhat follows its descent? Feel you not the earth quake and open withagonizing groans, while the air is pregnant with shrieks and wailings,--all announcing the last days of man? No! none of these things accompaniedour fall! The balmy air of spring, breathed from nature's ambrosial home,invested the lovely earth, which wakened as a young mother about to leadforth in pride her beauteous offspring to meet their sire who had been longabsent. The buds decked the trees, the flowers adorned the land: the darkbranches, swollen with seasonable juices, expanded into leaves, and thevariegated foliage of spring, bending and singing in the breeze, rejoicedin the genial warmth of the unclouded empyrean: the brooks flowedmurmuring, the sea was waveless, and the promontories that over-hung itwere reflected in the placid waters; birds awoke in the woods, whileabundant food for man and beast sprung up from the dark ground. Where waspain and evil? Not in the calm air or weltering ocean; not in the woods orfertile fields, nor among the birds that made the woods resonant with song,nor the animals that in the midst of plenty basked in the sunshine. Ourenemy, like the Calamity of Homer, trod our hearts, and no sound was echoedfrom her steps--
With ills the land is rife, with ills the sea, Diseases haunt our frail humanity, Through noon, through night, on casual wing they glide, Silent,--a voice the power all-wise denied.[1]
Once man was a favourite of the Creator, as the royal psalmist sang, "Godhad made him a little lower than the angels, and had crowned him with gloryand honour. God made him to have dominion over the works of his hands, andput all things under his feet." Once it was so; now is man lord of thecreation? Look at him--ha! I see plague! She has invested his form, isincarnate in his flesh, has entwined herself with his being, and blinds hisheaven-seeking eyes. Lie down, O man, on the flower-strown earth; give upall claim to your inheritance, all you can ever possess of it is the smallcell which the dead require. Plague is the companion of spring, of sunshine,and plenty. We no longer struggle with her. We have forgotten what we didwhen she was not. Of old navies used to stem the giant ocean-waves betwixtIndus and the Pole for slight articles of luxury. Men made perilousjournies to possess themselves of earth's splendid trifles, gems and gold.Human labour was wasted--human life set at nought. Now life is all thatwe covet; that this automaton of flesh should, with joints and springs inorder, perform its functions, that this dwelling of the soul should becapable of containing its dweller. Our minds, late spread abroad throughcountless spheres and endless combinations of thought, now retrenchedthemselves behind this wall of flesh, eager to preserve its well-beingonly. We were surely sufficiently degraded.
At first the increase of sickness in spring brought increase of toil tosuch of us, who, as yet spared to life, bestowed our time and thoughts onour fellow creatures. We nerved ourselves to the task: "in the midst ofdespair we performed the tasks of hope." We went out with the resolution ofdisputing with our foe. We aided the sick, and comforted the sorrowing;turning from the multitudinous dead to the rare survivors, with an energyof desire that bore the resemblance of power, we bade them--live. Plaguesat paramount the while, and laughed us to scorn.
Have any of you, my readers, observed the ruins of an anthill immediatelyafter its destruction? At first it appears entirely deserted of its formerinhabitants; in a little time you see an ant struggling through theupturned mould; they reappear by twos and threes, running hither andthither in search of their lost companions. Such were we upon earth,wondering aghast at the effects of pestilence. Our empty habitationsremained, but the dwellers were gathered to the shades of the tomb.
As the rules of order and pressure of laws were lost, some began withhesitation and wonder to transgress the accustomed uses of society. Palaceswere deserted, and the poor man dared at length, unreproved, intrude intothe splendid apartments, whose very furniture and decorations were anunknown world to him. It was found, that, though at first the stop putto all circulation of property, had reduced those before supported by thefactitious wants of society to sudden and hideous poverty, yet when theboundaries of private possession were thrown down, the products of humanlabour at present existing were more, far more, than the thinned generationcould possibly consume. To some among the poor this was matter ofexultation. We were all equal now; magnificent dwellings, luxuriouscarpets, and beds of down, were afforded to all. Carriages and horses,gardens, pictures, statues, and princely libraries, there were enough ofthese even to superfluity; and there was nothing to prevent each fromassuming possession of his share. We were all equal now; but near at handwas an equality still more levelling, a state where beauty and strength,and wisdom, would be as vain as riches and birth. The grave yawned beneathus all, and its prospect prevented any of us from enjoying the ease andplenty which in so awful a manner was presented to us.
Still the bloom did not fade on the cheeks of my babes; and Clara sprung upin years and growth, unsullied by disease. We had no reason to think thesite of Windsor Castle peculiarly healthy, for many other families hadexpired beneath its roof; we lived therefore without any particularprecaution; but we lived, it seemed, in safety. If Idris became thin andpale, it was anxiety that occasioned the change; an anxiety I could in noway alleviate. She never complained, but sleep and appetite fled from her,a slow fever preyed on her veins, her colour was hectic, and she often weptin secret; gloomy prognostications, care, and agonizing dread, ate up theprinciple of life within her. I could not fail to perceive this change. Ioften wished that I had permitted her to take her own course, and engageherself in such labours for the welfare of others as might have distractedher thoughts. But it was too late now. Besides that, with the nearlyextinct race of man, all our toils grew near a conclusion, she was tooweak; consumption, if so it might be called, or rather the over active lifewithin her, which, as with Adrian, spent the vital oil in the early morninghours, deprived her limbs of strength. At night, when she could leave meunperceived, she wandered through the house, or hung over the couches ofher children; and in the day time would sink into a perturbed sleep, whileher murmurs and starts betrayed the unquiet dreams that vexed her. As thisstate of wretchedness became more confirmed, and, in spite of herendeavours at concealment more apparent, I strove, though vainly, to awakenin her courage and hope. I could not wonder at the vehemence of her care;her very soul was tenderness; she trusted indeed that she should notoutlive me if I became the prey of the vast calamity, and this thoughtsometimes relieved her. We had for many years trod the highway of life handin hand, and still thus linked, we might step within the shades of death;but her children, her lovely, playful, animated children--beings sprungfrom her own dear side--portions of her own being--depositories of ourloves--even if we died, it would be comfort to know that they ran man'saccustomed course. But it would not be so; young and blooming as they were,they would die, and from the hopes of maturity, from the proud name ofattained manhood, they were cut off for ever. Often with maternal affectionshe had figured their merits and talents exerted on life's wide stage. Alasfor these latter days! The world had grown old, and all its inmates partookof the decrepitude. Why talk of infancy, manhood, and old age? We all stoodequal sharers of the last throes of time-worn nature. Arrived at the samepoint of the world's age--there was no difference in us; the name ofparent and child had lost their meaning; young boys and girls were levelnow with men. This was all true; but it was not less agonizing to take theadmonition home.
Where could we turn, and not find a desolation pregnant with the direlesson of example? The fields had been left uncultivated, weeds and gaudyflowers sprung up,--or where a few wheat-fields shewed signs of theliving hopes of the husbandman, the work had been left halfway, theploughman had died beside the plough; the horses had deserted the furrow,and no seedsman had approached the dead; the cattle unattended wanderedover the fields and through the lanes; th
e tame inhabitants of the poultryyard, baulked of their daily food, had become wild--young lambs weredropt in flower-gardens, and the cow stalled in the hall of pleasure.Sickly and few, the country people neither went out to sow nor reap; butsauntered about the meadows, or lay under the hedges, when the inclementsky did not drive them to take shelter under the nearest roof. Many ofthose who remained, secluded themselves; some had laid up stores whichshould prevent the necessity of leaving their homes;--some deserted wifeand child, and imagined that they secured their safety in utter solitude.Such had been Ryland's plan, and he was discovered dead and half-devouredby insects, in a house many miles from any other, with piles of food laidup in useless superfluity. Others made long journies to unite themselves tothose they loved, and arrived to find them dead.
London did not contain above a thousand inhabitants; and this number wascontinually diminishing. Most of them were country people, come up for thesake of change; the Londoners had sought the country. The busy eastern partof the town was silent, or at most you saw only where, half from cupidity,half from curiosity, the warehouses had been more ransacked than pillaged:bales of rich India goods, shawls of price, jewels, and spices, unpacked,strewed the floors. In some places the possessor had to the last kept watchon his store, and died before the barred gates. The massy portals of thechurches swung creaking on their hinges; and some few lay dead on thepavement. The wretched female, loveless victim of vulgar brutality, hadwandered to the toilet of high-born beauty, and, arraying herself in thegarb of splendour, had died before the mirror which reflected to herselfalone her altered appearance. Women whose delicate feet had seldom touchedthe earth in their luxury, had fled in fright and horror from their homes,till, losing themselves in the squalid streets of the metropolis, they haddied on the threshold of poverty. The heart sickened at the variety ofmisery presented; and, when I saw a specimen of this gloomy change, my soulached with the fear of what might befall my beloved Idris and my babes.Were they, surviving Adrian and myself, to find themselves protectorless inthe world? As yet the mind alone had suffered--could I for ever put offthe time, when the delicate frame and shrinking nerves of my child ofprosperity, the nursling of rank and wealth, who was my companion, shouldbe invaded by famine, hardship, and disease? Better die at once--betterplunge a poinard in her bosom, still untouched by drear adversity, and thenagain sheathe it in my own! But, no; in times of misery we must fightagainst our destinies, and strive not to be overcome by them. I would notyield, but to the last gasp resolutely defended my dear ones against sorrowand pain; and if I were vanquished at last, it should not be ingloriously.I stood in the gap, resisting the enemy--the impalpable, invisible foe,who had so long besieged us--as yet he had made no breach: it must be mycare that he should not, secretly undermining, burst up within the verythreshold of the temple of love, at whose altar I daily sacrificed. Thehunger of Death was now stung more sharply by the diminution of his food:or was it that before, the survivors being many, the dead were less eagerlycounted? Now each life was a gem, each human breathing form of far, O! farmore worth than subtlest imagery of sculptured stone; and the daily, nay,hourly decrease visible in our numbers, visited the heart with sickeningmisery. This summer extinguished our hopes, the vessel of society waswrecked, and the shattered raft, which carried the few survivors over thesea of misery, was riven and tempest tost. Man existed by twos and threes;man, the individual who might sleep, and wake, and perform the animalfunctions; but man, in himself weak, yet more powerful in congregatednumbers than wind or ocean; man, the queller of the elements, the lord ofcreated nature, the peer of demi-gods, existed no longer.
Farewell to the patriotic scene, to the love of liberty and well earnedmeed of virtuous aspiration!--farewell to crowded senate, vocal with thecouncils of the wise, whose laws were keener than the sword blade temperedat Damascus!--farewell to kingly pomp and warlike pageantry; the crownsare in the dust, and the wearers are in their graves!--farewell to thedesire of rule, and the hope of victory; to high vaulting ambition, to theappetite for praise, and the craving for the suffrage of their fellows! Thenations are no longer! No senate sits in council for the dead; no scion ofa time honoured dynasty pants to rule over the inhabitants of a charnelhouse; the general's hand is cold, and the soldier has his untimely gravedug in his native fields, unhonoured, though in youth. The market-place isempty, the candidate for popular favour finds none whom he can represent.To chambers of painted state farewell!--To midnight revelry, and thepanting emulation of beauty, to costly dress and birth-day shew, to titleand the gilded coronet, farewell!
Farewell to the giant powers of man,--to knowledge that could pilot thedeep-drawing bark through the opposing waters of shoreless ocean,--toscience that directed the silken balloon through the pathless air,--tothe power that could put a barrier to mighty waters, and set in motionwheels, and beams, and vast machinery, that could divide rocks of graniteor marble, and make the mountains plain!
Farewell to the arts,--to eloquence, which is to the human mind as thewinds to the sea, stirring, and then allaying it;--farewell to poetry anddeep philosophy, for man's imagination is cold, and his enquiring mind canno longer expatiate on the wonders of life, for "there is no work, nordevice, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest!"--tothe graceful building, which in its perfect proportion transcended the rudeforms of nature, the fretted gothic and massy saracenic pile, to thestupendous arch and glorious dome, the fluted column with its capital,Corinthian, Ionic, or Doric, the peristyle and fair entablature, whoseharmony of form is to the eye as musical concord to the ear!--farewell tosculpture, where the pure marble mocks human flesh, and in the plasticexpression of the culled excellencies of the human shape, shines forth thegod!--farewell to painting, the high wrought sentiment and deep knowledgeof the artists's mind in pictured canvas--to paradisaical scenes, wheretrees are ever vernal, and the ambrosial air rests in perpetual glow:--tothe stamped form of tempest, and wildest uproar of universal nature encagedin the narrow frame, O farewell! Farewell to music, and the sound of song;to the marriage of instruments, where the concord of soft and harsh unitesin sweet harmony, and gives wings to the panting listeners, whereby toclimb heaven, and learn the hidden pleasures of the eternals!--Farewellto the well-trod stage; a truer tragedy is enacted on the world's amplescene, that puts to shame mimic grief: to high-bred comedy, and the lowbuffoon, farewell!--Man may laugh no more. Alas! to enumerate theadornments of humanity, shews, by what we have lost, how supremely greatman was. It is all over now. He is solitary; like our first parentsexpelled from Paradise, he looks back towards the scene he has quitted. Thehigh walls of the tomb, and the flaming sword of plague, lie between it andhim. Like to our first parents, the whole earth is before him, a widedesart. Unsupported and weak, let him wander through fields where theunreaped corn stands in barren plenty, through copses planted by hisfathers, through towns built for his use. Posterity is no more; fame, andambition, and love, are words void of meaning; even as the cattle thatgrazes in the field, do thou, O deserted one, lie down at evening-tide,unknowing of the past, careless of the future, for from such fond ignorancealone canst thou hope for ease!
Joy paints with its own colours every act and thought. The happy do notfeel poverty--for delight is as a gold-tissued robe, and crowns them withpriceless gems. Enjoyment plays the cook to their homely fare, and minglesintoxication with their simple drink. Joy strews the hard couch with roses,and makes labour ease.
Sorrow doubles the burthen to the bent-down back; plants thorns in theunyielding pillow; mingles gall with water; adds saltness to their bitterbread; cloathing them in rags, and strewing ashes on their bare heads. Toour irremediable distress every small and pelting inconvenience came withadded force; we had strung our frames to endure the Atlean weight thrown onus; we sank beneath the added feather chance threw on us, "the grasshopperwas a burthen." Many of the survivors had been bred in luxury--theirservants were gone, their powers of command vanished like unreal shadows:the poor even suffered various privations; an
d the idea of another winterlike the last, brought affright to our minds. Was it not enough that wemust die, but toil must be added?--must we prepare our funeral repastwith labour, and with unseemly drudgery heap fuel on our deserted hearths--must we with servile hands fabricate the garments, soon to be ourshroud?
Not so! We are presently to die, let us then enjoy to its full relish theremnant of our lives. Sordid care, avaunt! menial labours, and pains,slight in themselves, but too gigantic for our exhausted strength, shallmake no part of our ephemeral existences. In the beginning of time, when,as now, man lived by families, and not by tribes or nations, they wereplaced in a genial clime, where earth fed them untilled, and the balmy airenwrapt their reposing limbs with warmth more pleasant than beds of down.The south is the native place of the human race; the land of fruits, moregrateful to man than the hard-earned Ceres of the north,--of trees, whoseboughs are as a palace-roof, of couches of roses, and of thethirst-appeasing grape. We need not there fear cold and hunger.
Look at England! the grass shoots up high in the meadows; but they are dankand cold, unfit bed for us. Corn we have none, and the crude fruits cannotsupport us. We must seek firing in the bowels of the earth, or the unkindatmosphere will fill us with rheums and aches. The labour of hundreds ofthousands alone could make this inclement nook fit habitation for one man.To the south then, to the sun!--where nature is kind, where Jove hasshowered forth the contents of Amalthea's horn, and earth is garden.
England, late birth-place of excellence and school of the wise, thychildren are gone, thy glory faded! Thou, England, wert the triumph of man!Small favour was shewn thee by thy Creator, thou Isle of the North; aragged canvas naturally, painted by man with alien colours; but the hues hegave are faded, never more to be renewed. So we must leave thee, thoumarvel of the world; we must bid farewell to thy clouds, and cold, andscarcity for ever! Thy manly hearts are still; thy tale of power andliberty at its close! Bereft of man, O little isle! the ocean waves willbuffet thee, and the raven flap his wings over thee; thy soil will bebirth-place of weeds, thy sky will canopy barrenness. It was not for therose of Persia thou wert famous, nor the banana of the east; not for thespicy gales of India, nor the sugar groves of America; not for thy vinesnor thy double harvests, nor for thy vernal airs, nor solstitial sun--butfor thy children, their unwearied industry and lofty aspiration. They aregone, and thou goest with them the oft trodden path that leads to oblivion,--
Farewell, sad Isle, farewell, thy fatal glory Is summed, cast up, and cancelled in this story.[2]
[1] Elton's translation of Hesiod.[2] Cleveland's Poems.