seized the dastard who fled, quelled the brave man who resisted:

despondency entered every heart, sorrow dimmed every eye.

Sights of woe now became familiar to me, and were I to tell all of anguish

and pain that I witnessed, of the despairing moans of age, and the more

terrible smiles of infancy in the bosom of horror, my reader, his limbs

quivering and his hair on end, would wonder how I did not, seized with

sudden frenzy, dash myself from some precipice, and so close my eyes for

ever on the sad end of the world. But the powers of love, poetry, and

creative fancy will dwell even beside the sick of the plague, with the

squalid, and with the dying. A feeling of devotion, of duty, of a high and

steady purpose, elevated me; a strange joy filled my heart. In the midst of

saddest grief I seemed to tread air, while the spirit of good shed round me

an ambrosial atmosphere, which blunted the sting of sympathy, and purified

the air of sighs. If my wearied soul flagged in its career, I thought of my

loved home, of the casket that contained my treasures, of the kiss of love

and the filial caress, while my eyes were moistened by purest dew, and my

heart was at once softened and refreshed by thrilling tenderness.

Maternal affection had not rendered Idris selfish; at the beginning of our

calamity she had, with thoughtless enthusiasm, devoted herself to the care

of the sick and helpless. I checked her; and she submitted to my rule. I

told her how the fear of her danger palsied my exertions, how the knowledge

of her safety strung my nerves to endurance. I shewed her the dangers which

her children incurred during her absence; and she at length agreed not to

go beyond the inclosure of the forest. Indeed, within the walls of the

362

The Last Man