and pain; and if I were vanquished at last, it should not be ingloriously.

I stood in the gap, resisting the enemy--the impalpable, invisible foe,

who had so long besieged us--as yet he had made no breach: it must be my

care that he should not, secretly undermining, burst up within the very

threshold of the temple of love, at whose altar I daily sacrificed. The

hunger of Death was now stung more sharply by the diminution of his food:

or was it that before, the survivors being many, the dead were less eagerly

counted? Now each life was a gem, each human breathing form of far, O! far

more worth than subtlest imagery of sculptured stone; and the daily, nay,

hourly decrease visible in our numbers, visited the heart with sickening

misery. This summer extinguished our hopes, the vessel of society was

wrecked, and the shattered raft, which carried the few survivors over the

sea of misery, was riven and tempest tost. Man existed by twos and threes;

man, the individual who might sleep, and wake, and perform the animal

functions; but man, in himself weak, yet more powerful in congregated

numbers than wind or ocean; man, the queller of the elements, the lord of

created nature, the peer of demi-gods, existed no longer.

Farewell to the patriotic scene, to the love of liberty and well earned

meed of virtuous aspiration!--farewell to crowded senate, vocal with the

councils of the wise, whose laws were keener than the sword blade tempered

at Damascus!--farewell to kingly pomp and warlike pageantry; the crowns

are in the dust, and the wearers are in their graves!--farewell to the

desire of rule, and the hope of victory; to high vaulting ambition, to the

appetite for praise, and the craving for the suffrage of their fellows! The

nations are no longer! No senate sits in council for the dead; no scion of

420

The Last Man