by Robert Reed
That fable is unjust, which gives the superiority to the sun over
the wind . Who has not seen the lightsome earth, the balmy atmo-
sphere, and basking nature become dark, cold and ungenial, when
the sleeping wind has awoke in the east? Or, when the dun clouds
thickly veil the sky, while exhaustless stores of rain are poured
down, until, the dank earth refusing to imbibe the superabundant
moisture, it lies in pools on the surface; when the torch of day seems
like a meteor, to be quenched; who has not seen the cloud-stirring
north arise, the streaked blue appear, and soon an opening made in
the vapours in the eye of the wind, through which the bright azure
shines? The clouds become thin; an arch is formed for ever rising
upwards, till, the universal cope being unveiled, the sun pours forth
its rays, re-animated and fed by the breeze .
Then mighty art thou, O wind, to be throned above all other vice-
gerents of nature’s power; whether thou comest destroying from the
east, or pregnant with elementary life from the west; thee the clouds
obey; the sun is subservient to thee; the shoreless ocean is thy slave!
Thou sweepest over the earth, and oaks, the growth of centuries,
submit to thy viewless axe; the snow-drift is scattered on the pin-
nacles of the Alps, the avalanche thunders down their vallies . Thou
holdest the keys of the frost, and canst first chain and then set free
the streams; under thy gentle governance the buds and leaves are
born, they flourish nursed by thee.
Why dost thou howl thus, O wind? By day and by night for four
long months thy roarings have not ceased—the shores of the sea are
6
Elton’s translation of Hesiod’s Works .
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strewn with wrecks, its keel-welcoming surface has become impass-
able, the earth has shed her beauty in obedience to thy command; the
frail balloon dares no longer sail on the agitated air; thy ministers,
the clouds, deluge the land with rain; rivers forsake their banks; the
wild torrent tears up the mountain path; plain and wood, and verdant
dell are despoiled of their loveliness; our very cities are wasted by
thee . Alas, what will become of us? It seems as if the giant waves
of ocean, and vast arms of the sea, were about to wrench the deep-
rooted island from its centre; and cast it, a ruin and a wreck, upon
the fields of the Atlantic.
What are we, the inhabitants of this globe, least among the many
that people infinite space? Our minds embrace infinity; the visible
mechanism of our being is subject to merest accident . Day by day
we are forced to believe this . He whom a scratch has disorganized,
he who disappears from apparent life under the influence of the hos-
tile agency at work around us, had the same powers as I—I also am
subject to the same laws . In the face of all this we call ourselves
lords of the creation, wielders of the elements, masters of life and
death, and we allege in excuse of this arrogance, that though the
individual is destroyed, man continues for ever .
Thus, losing our identity, that of which we are chiefly conscious,
we glory in the continuity of our species, and learn to regard death
without terror . But when any whole nation becomes the victim of the
destructive powers of exterior agents, then indeed man shrinks into
insignificance, he feels his tenure of life insecure, his inheritance on
earth cut off .
I remember, after having witnessed the destructive effects of a
fire, I could not even behold a small one in a stove, without a sensa-
tion of fear. The mounting flames had curled round the building, as
it fell, and was destroyed . They insinuated themselves into the sub-
stances about them, and the impediments to their progress yielded
at their touch . Could we take integral parts of this power, and not
be subject to its operation? Could we domesticate a cub of this wild
beast, and not fear its growth and maturity?
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Thus we began to feel, with regard to many-visaged death let
loose on the chosen districts of our fair habitation, and above all,
with regard to the plague . We feared the coming summer . Nations,
bordering on the already infected countries, began to enter upon seri-
ous plans for the better keeping out of the enemy . We, a commercial
people, were obliged to bring such schemes under consideration;
and the question of contagion became matter of earnest disquisition .
That the plague was not what is commonly called contagious,
like the scarlet fever, or extinct small-pox, was proved . It was called
an epidemic . But the grand question was still unsettled of how this
epidemic was generated and increased . If infection depended upon
the air, the air was subject to infection . As for instance, a typhus
fever has been brought by ships to one sea-port town; yet the very
people who brought it there, were incapable of communicating it
in a town more fortunately situated . But how are we to judge of
airs, and pronounce—in such a city plague will die unproductive;
in such another, nature has provided for it a plentiful harvest? In the
same way, individuals may escape ninety-nine times, and receive
the death-blow at the hundredth; because bodies are sometimes in a
state to reject the infection of malady, and at others, thirsty to imbibe
it. These reflections made our legislators pause, before they could
decide on the laws to be put in force . The evil was so wide-spread-
ing, so violent and immedicable, that no care, no prevention could
be judged superfluous, which even added a chance to our escape.
These were questions of prudence; there was no immediate ne-
cessity for an earnest caution . England was still secure . France, Ger-
many, Italy and Spain, were interposed, walls yet without a breach,
between us and the plague . Our vessels truly were the sport of winds
and waves, even as Gulliver was the toy of the Brobdignagians; but
we on our stable abode could not be hurt in life or limb by these
eruptions of nature . We could not fear—we did not . Yet a feeling of
awe, a breathless sentiment of wonder, a painful sense of the deg-
radation of humanity, was introduced into every heart . Nature, our
mother, and our friend, had turned on us a brow of menace . She
shewed us plainly, that, though she permitted us to assign her laws
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1038
and subdue her apparent powers, yet, if she put forth but a finger,
we must quake . She could take our globe, fringed with mountains,
girded by the atmosphere, containing the condition of our being, and
all that man’s mind could invent or his force achieve; she could take
the ball in her hand, and cast it into space, where life would be drunk
up, and man and all his efforts for ever annihilated .
These speculations were rife among us; yet not the less we pro-
ceeded in our daily occupations, and our plans, whose accomplish-
ment demanded the lapse of many years . No voice was heard telling
us to hold! Wh
en foreign distresses came to be felt by us through
the channels of commerce, we set ourselves to apply remedies . Sub-
scriptions were made for the emigrants, and merchants bankrupt by
the failure of trade . The English spirit awoke to its full activity, and,
as it had ever done, set itself to resist the evil, and to stand in the
breach which diseased nature had suffered chaos and death to make
in the bounds and banks which had hitherto kept them out .
At the commencement of summer, we began to feel, that the mis-
chief which had taken place in distant countries was greater than
we had at first suspected. Quito was destroyed by an earthquake.
Mexico laid waste by the united effects of storm, pestilence and
famine . Crowds of emigrants inundated the west of Europe; and our
island had become the refuge of thousands . In the mean time Ryland
had been chosen Protector. He had sought this office with eagerness,
under the idea of turning his whole forces to the suppression of the
privileged orders of our community . His measures were thwarted,
and his schemes interrupted by this new state of things . Many of
the foreigners were utterly destitute; and their increasing numbers
at length forbade a recourse to the usual modes of relief . Trade was
stopped by the failure of the interchange of cargoes usual between
us, and America, India, Egypt and Greece . A sudden break was made
in the routine of our lives . In vain our Protector and his partizans
sought to conceal this truth; in vain, day after day, he appointed a
period for the discussion of the new laws concerning hereditary rank
and privilege; in vain he endeavoured to represent the evil as partial
and temporary . These disasters came home to so many bosoms, and,
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1039
through the various channels of commerce, were carried so entirely
into every class and division of the community, that of necessity they
became the first question in the state, the chief subjects to which we
must turn our attention .
Can it be true, each asked the other with wonder and dismay, that
whole countries are laid waste, whole nations annihilated, by these
disorders in nature? The vast cities of America, the fertile plains of
Hindostan, the crowded abodes of the Chinese, are menaced with
utter ruin . Where late the busy multitudes assembled for pleasure or
profit, now only the sound of wailing and misery is heard. The air
is empoisoned, and each human being inhales death, even while in
youth and health, their hopes are in the flower. We called to mind
the plague of 1348, when it was calculated that a third of mankind
had been destroyed . As yet western Europe was uninfected; would
it always be so?
O, yes, it would—Countrymen, fear not! In the still uncultivated
wilds of America, what wonder that among its other giant destroyers,
Plague should be numbered! It is of old a native of the East, sister of
the tornado, the earthquake, and the simoon . Child of the sun, and
nursling of the tropics, it would expire in these climes . It drinks the
dark blood of the inhabitant of the south, but it never feasts on the
pale-faced Celt . If perchance some stricken Asiatic come among us,
plague dies with him, uncommunicated and innoxious . Let us weep
for our brethren, though we can never experience their reverse . Let
us lament over and assist the children of the garden of the earth . Late
we envied their abodes, their spicy groves, fertile plains, and abun-
dant loveliness . But in this mortal life extremes are always matched;
the thorn grows with the rose, the poison tree and the cinnamon
mingle their boughs . Persia, with its cloth of gold, marble halls, and
infinite wealth, is now a tomb. The tent of the Arab is fallen in the
sands, and his horse spurns the ground unbridled and unsaddled .
The voice of lamentation fills the valley of Cashmere; its dells and
woods, its cool fountains, and gardens of roses, are polluted by the
dead; in Circassia and Georgia the spirit of beauty weeps over the
ruin of its favourite temple—the form of woman .
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1040
Our own distresses, though they were occasioned by the fictitious
reciprocity of commerce, encreased in due proportion . Bankers,
merchants, and manufacturers, whose trade depended on exports
and interchange of wealth, became bankrupt . Such things, when they
happen singly, affect only the immediate parties; but the prosper-
ity of the nation was now shaken by frequent and extensive losses .
Families, bred in opulence and luxury, were reduced to beggary . The
very state of peace in which we gloried was injurious; there were no
means of employing the idle, or of sending any overplus of popula-
tion out of the country . Even the source of colonies was dried up, for
in New Holland, Van Diemen’s Land, and the Cape of Good Hope,
plague raged . O, for some medicinal vial to purge unwholesome
nature, and bring back the earth to its accustomed health!
Ryland was a man of strong intellects and quick and sound deci-
sion in the usual course of things, but he stood aghast at the multi-
tude of evils that gathered round us . Must he tax the landed interest
to assist our commercial population? To do this, he must gain the fa-
vour of the chief land-holders, the nobility of the country; and these
were his vowed enemies—he must conciliate them by abandoning
his favourite scheme of equalization; he must confirm them in their
manorial rights; he must sell his cherished plans for the permanent
good of his country, for temporary relief . He must aim no more at
the dear object of his ambition; throwing his arms aside, he must
for present ends give up the ultimate object of his endeavours . He
came to Windsor to consult with us. Every day added to his difficul-
ties; the arrival of fresh vessels with emigrants, the total cessation of
commerce, the starving multitude that thronged around the palace of
the Protectorate, were circumstances not to be tampered with . The
blow was struck; the aristocracy obtained all they wished, and they
subscribed to a twelvemonths’ bill, which levied twenty percent on
all the rent-rolls of the country . Calm was now restored to the me-
tropolis, and to the populous cities, before driven to desperation;
and we returned to the consideration of distant calamities, wonder-
ing if the future would bring any alleviation to their excess . It was
August; so there could be small hope of relief during the heats . On
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1041
the contrary, the disease gained virulence, while starvation did its
accustomed work . Thousands died unlamented; for beside the yet
warm corpse the mourner was stretched, made mute by death .
On the eighteenth of this month news arrived in London that the
plague was in France and Italy. These tidings were at first whispered
about town; but no one dared express aloud the soul-quailing intel-
ligence . When any one met a friend in the street, he only cried as
he hurried on, “You know!
”— while the other, with an ejaculation
of fear and horror, would answer,— “What will become of us?” At
length it was mentioned in the newspapers . The paragraph was in-
serted in an obscure part: “We regret to state that there can be no
longer a doubt of the plague having been introduced at Leghorn,
Genoa, and Marseilles .” No word of comment followed; each reader
made his own fearful one . We were as a man who hears that his
house is burning, and yet hurries through the streets, borne along
by a lurking hope of a mistake, till he turns the corner, and sees his
sheltering roof enveloped in a flame. Before it had been a rumour;
but now in words uneraseable, in definite and undeniable print, the
knowledge went forth . Its obscurity of situation rendered it the more
conspicuous: the diminutive letters grew gigantic to the bewildered
eye of fear: they seemed graven with a pen of iron, impressed by
fire, woven in the clouds, stamped on the very front of the universe.
The English, whether travellers or residents, came pouring in one
great revulsive stream, back on their own country; and with them
crowds of Italians and Spaniards. Our little island was filled even
to bursting. At first an unusual quantity of specie made its appear-
ance with the emigrants; but these people had no means of receiving
back into their hands what they spent among us . With the advance
of summer, and the increase of the distemper, rents were unpaid,
and their remittances failed them . It was impossible to see these
crowds of wretched, perishing creatures, late nurslings of luxury,
and not stretch out a hand to save them . As at the conclusion of
the eighteenth century, the English unlocked their hospitable store,
for the relief of those driven from their homes by political revolu-
tion; so now they were not backward in affording aid to the victims
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1042
of a more wide-spreading calamity . We had many foreign friends
whom we eagerly sought out, and relieved from dreadful penury .
Our Castle became an asylum for the unhappy . A little population
occupied its halls . The revenue of its possessor, which had always
found a mode of expenditure congenial to his generous nature, was
now attended to more parsimoniously, that it might embrace a wider
portion of utility . It was not however money, except partially, but