was said that an hour before noon, a black sun arose: an orb, the size of

that luminary, but dark, defined, whose beams were shadows, ascended from

the west; in about an hour it had reached the meridian, and eclipsed the

bright parent of day. Night fell upon every country, night, sudden,

rayless, entire. The stars came out, shedding their ineffectual glimmerings

on the light-widowed earth. But soon the dim orb passed from over the sun,

and lingered down the eastern heaven. As it descended, its dusky rays

crossed the brilliant ones of the sun, and deadened or distorted them. The

shadows of things assumed strange and ghastly shapes. The wild animals in

the woods took fright at the unknown shapes figured on the ground. They

fled they knew not whither; and the citizens were filled with greater

dread, at the convulsion which "shook lions into civil streets;"--birds,

strong-winged eagles, suddenly blinded, fell in the market-places, while

owls and bats shewed themselves welcoming the early night. Gradually the

object of fear sank beneath the horizon, and to the last shot up shadowy

beams into the otherwise radiant air. Such was the tale sent us from Asia,

from the eastern extremity of Europe, and from Africa as far west as the

Golden Coast. Whether this story were true or not, the effects were certain.

Through Asia, from the banks of the Nile to the shores of the Caspian, from

the Hellespont even to the sea of Oman, a sudden panic was driven. The men

filled the mosques; the women, veiled, hastened to the tombs, and carried

offerings to the dead, thus to preserve the living. The plague was

forgotten, in this new fear which the black sun had spread; and, though the

dead multiplied, and the streets of Ispahan, of Pekin, and of Delhi were

strewed with pestilence-struck corpses, men passed on, gazing on the

ominous sky, regardless of the death beneath their feet. The christians

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The Last Man