prized--his nature would be kin to mine; his form cast in the same mould;

human blood would flow in his veins; a human sympathy must link us for

ever. It cannot be that I shall never behold a fellow being more!--never!

--never!--not in the course of years!--Shall I wake, and speak to

none, pass the interminable hours, my soul, islanded in the world, a

solitary point, surrounded by vacuum? Will day follow day endlessly thus?

-No! no! a God rules the world--providence has not exchanged its golden

sceptre for an aspic's sting. Away! let me fly from the ocean-grave, let me

depart from this barren nook, paled in, as it is, from access by its own

desolateness; let me tread once again the paved towns; step over the

threshold of man's dwellings, and most certainly I shall find this thought

a horrible vision--a maddening, but evanescent dream.

I entered Ravenna, (the town nearest to the spot whereon I had been cast),

before the second sun had set on the empty world; I saw many living

creatures; oxen, and horses, and dogs, but there was no man among them; I

entered a cottage, it was vacant; I ascended the marble stairs of a palace,

the bats and the owls were nestled in the tapestry; I stepped softly, not

to awaken the sleeping town: I rebuked a dog, that by yelping disturbed the

sacred stillness; I would not believe that all was as it seemed--The

world was not dead, but I was mad; I was deprived of sight, hearing, and

sense of touch; I was labouring under the force of a spell, which permitted

me to behold all sights of earth, except its human inhabitants; they were

pursuing their ordinary labours. Every house had its inmate; but I could

not perceive them. If I could have deluded myself into a belief of this

kind, I should have been far more satisfied. But my brain, tenacious of its

588

The Last Man