expression of the culled excellencies of the human shape, shines forth the

god!--farewell to painting, the high wrought sentiment and deep knowledge

of the artists's mind in pictured canvas--to paradisaical scenes, where

trees are ever vernal, and the ambrosial air rests in perpetual glow:--to

the stamped form of tempest, and wildest uproar of universal nature encaged

in the narrow frame, O farewell! Farewell to music, and the sound of song;

to the marriage of instruments, where the concord of soft and harsh unites

in sweet harmony, and gives wings to the panting listeners, whereby to

climb heaven, and learn the hidden pleasures of the eternals!--Farewell

to the well-trod stage; a truer tragedy is enacted on the world's ample

scene, that puts to shame mimic grief: to high-bred comedy, and the low

buffoon, farewell!--Man may laugh no more. Alas! to enumerate the

adornments of humanity, shews, by what we have lost, how supremely great

man was. It is all over now. He is solitary; like our first parents

expelled from Paradise, he looks back towards the scene he has quitted. The

high walls of the tomb, and the flaming sword of plague, lie between it and

him. Like to our first parents, the whole earth is before him, a wide

desart. Unsupported and weak, let him wander through fields where the

unreaped corn stands in barren plenty, through copses planted by his

fathers, through towns built for his use. Posterity is no more; fame, and

ambition, and love, are words void of meaning; even as the cattle that

grazes in the field, do thou, O deserted one, lie down at evening-tide,

unknowing of the past, careless of the future, for from such fond ignorance

alone canst thou hope for ease!

Joy paints with its own colours every act and thought. The happy do not

422

The Last Man