to discipline my melancholy thoughts, which strayed backwards, over many a

ruin, and through many a flowery glade, even to the mountain recess, from

which in early youth I had first emerged.

During one of my rambles through the habitations of Rome, I found writing

materials on a table in an author's study. Parts of a manuscript lay

scattered about. It contained a learned disquisition on the Italian

language; one page an unfinished dedication to posterity, for whose profit

the writer had sifted and selected the niceties of this harmonious language

--to whose everlasting benefit he bequeathed his labours.

I also will write a book, I cried--for whom to read?--to whom

dedicated? And then with silly flourish (what so capricious and childish as

despair?) I wrote, DEDICATION TO THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEAD. SHADOWS, ARISE,

AND

READ YOUR FALL! BEHOLD THE HISTORY OF THE LAST MAN.

Yet, will not this world be re-peopled, and the children of a saved pair of

lovers, in some to me unknown and unattainable seclusion, wandering to

these prodigious relics of the ante-pestilential race, seek to learn how

beings so wondrous in their achievements, with imaginations infinite, and

powers godlike, had departed from their home to an unknown country?

I will write and leave in this most ancient city, this "world's sole

monument," a record of these things. I will leave a monument of the

existence of Verney, the Last Man. At first I thought only to speak of

610

The Last Man