These were questions of prudence; there was no immediate necessity for an

earnest caution. England was still secure. France, Germany, Italy and

Spain, were interposed, walls yet without a breach, between us and the

plague. Our vessels truly were the sport of winds and waves, even as

Gulliver was the toy of the Brobdignagians; but we on our stable abode

could not be hurt in life or limb by these eruptions of nature. We could

not fear--we did not. Yet a feeling of awe, a breathless sentiment of

wonder, a painful sense of the degradation of humanity, was introduced into

every heart. Nature, our mother, and our friend, had turned on us a brow of

menace. She shewed us plainly, that, though she permitted us to assign her

laws and subdue her apparent powers, yet, if she put forth but a finger, we

must quake. She could take our globe, fringed with mountains, girded by the

atmosphere, containing the condition of our being, and all that man's mind

could invent or his force achieve; she could take the ball in her hand, and

cast it into space, where life would be drunk up, and man and all his

efforts for ever annihilated.

These speculations were rife among us; yet not the less we proceeded in our

daily occupations, and our plans, whose accomplishment demanded the lapse

of many years. No voice was heard telling us to hold! When foreign

distresses came to be felt by us through the channels of commerce, we set

ourselves to apply remedies. Subscriptions were made for the emigrants, and

merchants bankrupt by the failure of trade. The English spirit awoke to its

full activity, and, as it had ever done, set itself to resist the evil, and

to stand in the breach which diseased nature had suffered chaos and death

305

The Last Man