veiled them. The question was no longer whether I should share Adrian's

toils and danger; but in what manner I could, in Windsor and the

neighbourhood, imitate the prudence and zeal which, under his government,

produced order and plenty in London, and how, now pestilence had spread

more widely, I could secure the health of my own family.

I spread the whole earth out as a map before me. On no one spot of its

surface could I put my finger and say, here is safety. In the south, the

disease, virulent and immedicable, had nearly annihilated the race of man;

storm and inundation, poisonous winds and blights, filled up the measure of

suffering. In the north it was worse--the lesser population gradually

declined, and famine and plague kept watch on the survivors, who, helpless

and feeble, were ready to fall an easy prey into their hands.

I contracted my view to England. The overgrown metropolis, the great heart

of mighty Britain, was pulseless. Commerce had ceased. All resort for

ambition or pleasure was cut off--the streets were grass-grown--the

houses empty--the few, that from necessity remained, seemed already

branded with the taint of inevitable pestilence. In the larger

manufacturing towns the same tragedy was acted on a smaller, yet more

disastrous scale. There was no Adrian to superintend and direct, while

whole flocks of the poor were struck and killed. Yet we were not all to die.

No truly, though thinned, the race of man would continue, and the great

plague would, in after years, become matter of history and wonder.

Doubtless this visitation was for extent unexampled--more need that we

should work hard to dispute its progress; ere this men have gone out in

343

The Last Man