by Robert Reed
dire lesson of example? The fields had been left uncultivated, weeds
and gaudy flowers sprung up,—or where a few wheat-fields shewed
signs of the living hopes of the husbandman, the work had been left
halfway, the ploughman had died beside the plough; the horses had
deserted the furrow, and no seedsman had approached the dead; the
cattle unattended wandered over the fields and through the lanes;
the tame inhabitants of the poultry yard, baulked of their daily food,
had become wild—young lambs were dropt in flower-gardens, and
the cow stalled in the hall of pleasure . Sickly and few, the country
people neither went out to sow nor reap; but sauntered about the
meadows, or lay under the hedges, when the inclement sky did not
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1121
drive them to take shelter under the nearest roof . Many of those
who remained, secluded themselves; some had laid up stores which
should prevent the necessity of leaving their homes;—some deserted
wife and child, and imagined that they secured their safety in utter
solitude . Such had been Ryland’s plan, and he was discovered dead
and half-devoured by insects, in a house many miles from any other,
with piles of food laid up in useless superfluity. Others made long
journies to unite themselves to those they loved, and arrived to find
them dead .
London did not contain above a thousand inhabitants; and this
number was continually diminishing . Most of them were country
people, come up for the sake of change; the Londoners had sought
the country . The busy eastern part of the town was silent, or at most
you saw only where, half from cupidity, half from curiosity, the
warehouses had been more ransacked than pillaged: bales of rich
India goods, shawls of price, jewels, and spices, unpacked, strewed
the floors. In some places the possessor had to the last kept watch on
his store, and died before the barred gates . The massy portals of the
churches swung creaking on their hinges; and some few lay dead on
the pavement . The wretched female, loveless victim of vulgar bru-
tality, had wandered to the toilet of high-born beauty, and, arraying
herself in the garb of splendour, had died before the mirror which
reflected to herself alone her altered appearance. Women whose
delicate feet had seldom touched the earth in their luxury, had fled
in fright and horror from their homes, till, losing themselves in the
squalid streets of the metropolis, they had died on the threshold of
poverty . The heart sickened at the variety of misery presented; and,
when I saw a specimen of this gloomy change, my soul ached with
the fear of what might befall my beloved Idris and my babes . Were
they, surviving Adrian and myself, to find themselves protectorless
in the world? As yet the mind alone had suffered—could I for ever
put off the time, when the delicate frame and shrinking nerves of
my child of prosperity, the nursling of rank and wealth, who was
my companion, should be invaded by famine, hardship, and dis-
ease? Better die at once—better plunge a poinard in her bosom, still
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1122
untouched by drear adversity, and then again sheathe it in my own!
But, no; in times of misery we must fight against our destinies, and
strive not to be overcome by them . I would not yield, but to the last
gasp resolutely defended my dear ones against sorrow 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 sac-
rificed. 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 vis-
ible 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 sen-
ate sits in council for the dead; no scion of a time honoured dynasty
pants to rule over the inhabitants of a charnel house; the general’s
hand is cold, and the soldier has his untimely grave dug in his native
fields, unhonoured, though in youth. The market-place is empty, the
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1123
candidate for popular favour finds none whom he can represent. To
chambers of painted state farewell!—To midnight revelry, and the
panting emulation of beauty, to costly dress and birth-day shew, to
title and the gilded coronet, farewell!
Farewell to the giant powers of man,—to knowledge that could
pilot the deep-drawing bark through the opposing waters of shore-
less ocean,—to science that directed the silken balloon through the
pathless air,—to the power that could put a barrier to mighty waters,
and set in motion wheels, and beams, and vast machinery, that could
divide rocks of granite or marble, and make the mountains plain!
Farewell to the arts,—to eloquence, which is to the human mind
as the winds to the sea, stirring, and then allaying it;—farewell to
poetry and deep philosophy, for man’s imagination is cold, and his
enquiring mind can no longer expatiate on the wonders of life, for
“there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the
grave, whither thou goest!”—to the graceful building, which in its
perfect proportion transcended the rude forms of nature, the fretted
gothic and massy saracenic pile, to the stupendous arch and glorious
dome, the fluted column with its capital, Corinthian, Ionic, or Doric,
the peristyle and fair entablature, whose harmony of form is to the
eye as musical concord to the ear!—farewell to sculpture, where the
pure marble mocks human flesh, and in the plastic expression of the
culled excellencies of the
human shape, shines forth the god!—fare-
well 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 uni-
versal 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 LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1124
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 feel poverty—for delight is as a gold-tissued robe, and crowns
them with priceless gems . Enjoyment plays the cook to their homely
fare, and mingles intoxication with their simple drink . Joy strews the
hard couch with roses, and makes labour ease .
Sorrow doubles the burthen to the bent-down back; plants thorns
in the unyielding pillow; mingles gall with water; adds saltness to
their bitter bread; cloathing them in rags, and strewing ashes on their
bare heads . To our irremediable distress every small and pelting in-
convenience came with added force; we had strung our frames to
endure the Atlean weight thrown on us; we sank beneath the added
feather chance threw on us, “the grasshopper was a burthen .” Many
of the survivors had been bred in luxury—their servants were gone,
their powers of command vanished like unreal shadows: the poor
even suffered various privations; and the idea of another winter like
the last, brought affright to our minds . Was it not enough that we
must die, but toil must be added?—must we prepare our funeral
repast with labour, and with unseemly drudgery heap fuel on our de-
serted hearths —must we with servile hands fabricate the garments,
soon to be our shroud?
Not so! We are presently to die, let us then enjoy to its full rel-
ish the remnant of our lives . Sordid care, avaunt! menial labours,
THE LAST MAN, by Mary Shelley | 1125
and pains, slight in themselves, but too gigantic for our exhausted
strength, shall make no part of our ephemeral existences . In the be-
ginning of time, when, as now, man lived by families, and not by
tribes or nations, they were placed in a genial clime, where earth fed
them untilled, and the balmy air enwrapt their reposing limbs with
warmth more pleasant than beds of down . The south is the native
place of the human race; the land of fruits, more grateful to man than
the hard-earned Ceres of the north,—of trees, whose boughs are as
a palace-roof, of couches of roses, and of the thirst-appeasing grape .
We need not there fear cold and hunger .
Look at England! the grass shoots up high in the meadows; but
they are dank and cold, unfit bed for us. Corn we have none, and the
crude fruits cannot support us. We must seek firing in the bowels
of the earth, or the unkind atmosphere will fill us with rheums and
aches . The labour of hundreds of thousands alone could make this
inclement nook fit habitation for one man. To the south then, to the
sun!—where nature is kind, where Jove has showered forth the con-
tents of Amalthea’s horn, and earth is garden .
England, late birth-place of excellence and school of the wise, thy
children are gone, thy glory faded! Thou, England, wert the triumph
of man! Small favour was shewn thee by thy Creator, thou Isle of the
North; a ragged canvas naturally, painted by man with alien colours;
but the hues he gave are faded, never more to be renewed . So we
must leave thee, thou marvel of the world; we must bid farewell to
thy clouds, and cold, and scarcity for ever! Thy manly hearts are
still; thy tale of power and liberty at its close! Bereft of man, O little
isle! the ocean waves will buffet thee, and the raven flap his wings
over thee; thy soil will be birth-place of weeds, thy sky will canopy
barrenness . It was not for the rose of Persia thou wert famous, nor
the banana of the east; not for the spicy gales of India, nor the sugar
groves of America; not for thy vines nor thy double harvests, nor
for thy vernal airs, nor solstitial sun—but for thy children, their un-
wearied industry and lofty aspiration . They are gone, and thou goest
with them the oft trodden path that leads to oblivion, —
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Farewell, sad Isle, farewell, thy fatal glory
Is summed, cast up, and cancelled in this story.20
CHAPTER II.
In the autumn of this year 2096, the spirit of emigration crept in
among the few survivors, who, congregating from various parts of
England, met in London . This spirit existed as a breath, a wish, a
far off thought, until communicated to Adrian, who imbibed it with
ardour, and instantly engaged himself in plans for its execution . The
fear of immediate death vanished with the heats of September . An-
other winter was before us, and we might elect our mode of passing
it to the best advantage . Perhaps in rational philosophy none could
be better chosen than this scheme of migration, which would draw
us from the immediate scene of our woe, and, leading us through
pleasant and picturesque countries, amuse for a time our despair .
The idea once broached, all were impatient to put it in execution .
We were still at Windsor; our renewed hopes medicined the an-
guish we had suffered from the late tragedies . The death of many of
our inmates had weaned us from the fond idea, that Windsor Castle
was a spot sacred from the plague; but our lease of life was renewed
for some months, and even Idris lifted her head, as a lily after a
storm, when a last sunbeam tinges its silver cup . Just at this time
Adrian came down to us; his eager looks shewed us that he was full
of some scheme . He hastened to take me aside, and disclosed to me
with rapidit
y his plan of emigration from England .
To leave England for ever! to turn from its polluted fields and
groves, and, placing the sea between us, to quit it, as a sailor quits
the rock on which he has been wrecked, when the saving ship rides
by . Such was his plan .
To leave the country of our fathers, made holy by their graves!—
We could not feel even as a voluntary exile of old, who might for
pleasure or convenience forsake his native soil; though thousands
of miles might divide him, England was still a part of him, as he
20
Cleveland’s Poems .
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of her . He heard of the passing events of the day; he knew that, if
he returned, and resumed his place in society, the entrance was still
open, and it required but the will, to surround himself at once with
the associations and habits of boyhood . Not so with us, the remnant .
We left none to represent us, none to repeople the desart land, and
the name of England died, when we left her,
In vagabond pursuit of dreadful safety .
Yet let us go! England is in her shroud,—we may not enchain
ourselves to a corpse . Let us go—the world is our country now, and
we will choose for our residence its most fertile spot . Shall we, in
these desart halls, under this wintry sky, sit with closed eyes and
folded hands, expecting death? Let us rather go out to meet it gal-
lantly: or perhaps—for all this pendulous orb, this fair gem in the
sky’s diadem, is not surely plague-striken—perhaps, in some se-
cluded nook, amidst eternal spring, and waving trees, and purling
streams, we may find Life. The world is vast, and England, though
her many fields and wide spread woods seem interminable, is but a
small part of her . At the close of a day’s march over high mountains
and through snowy vallies, we may come upon health, and com-
mitting our loved ones to its charge, replant the uprooted tree of
humanity, and send to late posterity the tale of the ante-pestilential
race, the heroes and sages of the lost state of things .
Hope beckons and sorrow urges us, the heart beats high with
expectation, and this eager desire of change must be an omen of
success . O come! Farewell to the dead! farewell to the tombs of
those we loved!—farewell to giant London and the placid Thames,