contemplation, averse to excitement, a lowly student, a man of visions--

but afford him worthy theme, and--

Like to the lark at break of day arising,

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate.[1]

so did he spring up from listlessness and unproductive thought, to the

highest pitch of virtuous action.

With him went enthusiasm, the high-wrought resolve, the eye that without

blenching could look at death. With us remained sorrow, anxiety, and

unendurable expectation of evil. The man, says Lord Bacon, who hath wife

and children, has given hostages to fortune. Vain was all philosophical

reasoning--vain all fortitude--vain, vain, a reliance on probable good.

I might heap high the scale with logic, courage, and resignation--but let

one fear for Idris and our children enter the opposite one, and,

over-weighed, it kicked the beam.

The plague was in London! Fools that we were not long ago to have foreseen

this. We wept over the ruin of the boundless continents of the east, and

the desolation of the western world; while we fancied that the little

channel between our island and the rest of the earth was to preserve us

alive among the dead. It were no mighty leap methinks from Calais to Dover.

The eye easily discerns the sister land; they were united once; and the

little path that runs between looks in a map but as a trodden footway

through high grass. Yet this small interval was to save us: the sea was to

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The Last Man