The Last Man
destroying their benignant influence. The wind, prince of air, raged
through his kingdom, lashing the sea into fury, and subduing the rebel
earth into some sort of obedience.
The God sends down his angry plagues from high,
Famine and pestilence in heaps they die.
Again in vengeance of his wrath he falls
On their great hosts, and breaks their tottering walls;
Arrests their navies on the ocean’s plain,
And whelms their strength with mountains of the main.[6]
Their deadly power shook the flourishing countries of the south, and
during winter, even, we, in our northern retreat, began to quake under
their ill effects.
That fable is unjust, which gives the superiority to the sun over the
wind. Who has not seen the lightsome earth, the balmy atmosphere, 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 vicegerents
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 pinnacles 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 strewn
with wrecks, its keel-welcoming surface has become impassable, 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 hostile 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 sensation of
fear. The mounting flames had curled round the building, as it fell,
and was destroyed. They insinuated themselves into the substances 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?
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 serious 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-spreading, 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 necessity for
an earnest caution. England was still secure. France, Germany, 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 degradation 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 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 proceeded in
our daily occupations, and our plans, whose accomplishment demanded the
lapse of many years. No voice was heard telling us to hold! When
foreign distresses came to be felt by us through the channels of
commerce, we set ourselves to apply remedies. Subscriptions 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 mischief
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, 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 abundant
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.
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 prosperity of the
nation was now shaken by frequent and extensive losses. Families, bred