The Last Man
fixing his eyes on me: I drew near, still holding out my lure, while
he, depressing his head, rushed at me with his horns. I was a very
fool; I knew it, yet I yielded to my rage. I snatched up a huge
fragment of rock; it would have crushed my rash foe. I poized it—aimed
it—then my heart failed me. I hurled it wide of the mark; it rolled
clattering among the bushes into dell. My little visitants, all aghast,
galloped back into the covert of the wood; while I, my very heart
bleeding and torn, rushed down the hill, and by the violence of bodily
exertion, sought to escape from my miserable self.
No, no, I will not live among the wild scenes of nature, the enemy of
all that lives. I will seek the towns—Rome, the capital of the world,
the crown of man’s achievements. Among its storied streets, hallowed
ruins, and stupendous remains of human exertion, I shall not, as here,
find every thing forgetful of man; trampling on his memory, defacing
his works, proclaiming from hill to hill, and vale to vale,—by the
torrents freed from the boundaries which he imposed—by the vegetation
liberated from the laws which he enforced—by his habitation abandoned
to mildew and weeds, that his power is lost, his race annihilated for
ever.
I hailed the Tiber, for that was as it were an unalienable possession
of humanity. I hailed the wild Campagna, for every rood had been trod
by man; and its savage uncultivation, of no recent date, only
proclaimed more distinctly his power, since he had given an honourable
name and sacred title to what else would have been a worthless, barren
track. I entered Eternal Rome by the Porta del Popolo, and saluted with
awe its time-honoured space. The wide square, the churches near, the
long extent of the Corso, the near eminence of Trinita de’ Monti
appeared like fairy work, they were so silent, so peaceful, and so very
fair. It was evening; and the population of animals which still existed
in this mighty city, had gone to rest; there was no sound, save the
murmur of its many fountains, whose soft monotony was harmony to my
soul. The knowledge that I was in Rome, soothed me; that wondrous city,
hardly more illustrious for its heroes and sages, than for the power it
exercised over the imaginations of men. I went to rest that night; the
eternal burning of my heart quenched,—my senses tranquil.
The next morning I eagerly began my rambles in search of oblivion. I
ascended the many terraces of the garden of the Colonna Palace, under
whose roof I had been sleeping; and passing out from it at its summit,
I found myself on Monte Cavallo. The fountain sparkled in the sun; the
obelisk above pierced the clear dark-blue air. The statues on each
side, the works, as they are inscribed, of Phidias and Praxiteles,
stood in undiminished grandeur, representing Castor and Pollux, who
with majestic power tamed the rearing animal at their side. If those
illustrious artists had in truth chiselled these forms, how many
passing generations had their giant proportions outlived! and now they
were viewed by the last of the species they were sculptured to
represent and deify. I had shrunk into insignificance in my own eyes,
as I considered the multitudinous beings these stone demigods had
outlived, but this after-thought restored me to dignity in my own
conception. The sight of the poetry eternized in these statues, took
the sting from the thought, arraying it only in poetic ideality.
I repeated to myself,—I am in Rome! I behold, and as it were,
familiarly converse with the wonder of the world, sovereign mistress of
the imagination, majestic and eternal survivor of millions of
generations of extinct men. I endeavoured to quiet the sorrows of my
aching heart, by even now taking an interest in what in my youth I had
ardently longed to see. Every part of Rome is replete with relics of
ancient times. The meanest streets are strewed with truncated columns,
broken capitals—Corinthian and Ionic, and sparkling fragments of
granite or porphyry. The walls of the most penurious dwellings enclose
a fluted pillar or ponderous stone, which once made part of the palace
of the Cæsars; and the voice of dead time, in still vibrations, is
breathed from these dumb things, animated and glorified as they were by
man.
I embraced the vast columns of the temple of Jupiter Stator, which
survives in the open space that was the Forum, and leaning my burning
cheek against its cold durability, I tried to lose the sense of present
misery and present desertion, by recalling to the haunted cell of my
brain vivid memories of times gone by. I rejoiced at my success, as I
figured Camillus, the Gracchi, Cato, and last the heroes of Tacitus,
which shine meteors of surpassing brightness during the murky night of
the empire;—as the verses of Horace and Virgil, or the glowing periods
of Cicero thronged into the opened gates of my mind, I felt myself
exalted by long forgotten enthusiasm. I was delighted to know that I
beheld the scene which they beheld—the scene which their wives and
mothers, and crowds of the unnamed witnessed, while at the same time
they honoured, applauded, or wept for these matchless specimens of
humanity. At length, then, I had found a consolation. I had not vainly
sought the storied precincts of Rome—I had discovered a medicine for my
many and vital wounds.
I sat at the foot of these vast columns. The Coliseum, whose naked ruin
is robed by nature in a verdurous and glowing veil, lay in the sunlight
on my right. Not far off, to the left, was the Tower of the Capitol.
Triumphal arches, the falling walls of many temples, strewed the ground
at my feet. I strove, I resolved, to force myself to see the Plebeian
multitude and lofty Patrician forms congregated around; and, as the
Diorama of ages passed across my subdued fancy, they were replaced by
the modern Roman; the Pope, in his white stole, distributing
benedictions to the kneeling worshippers; the friar in his cowl; the
dark-eyed girl, veiled by her mezzera; the noisy, sun-burnt rustic,
leading his herd of buffaloes and oxen to the Campo Vaccino. The
romance with which, dipping our pencils in the rainbow hues of sky and
transcendent nature, we to a degree gratuitously endow the Italians,
replaced the solemn grandeur of antiquity. I remembered the dark monk,
and floating figures of “The Italian,” and how my boyish blood had
thrilled at the description. I called to mind Corinna ascending the
Capitol to be crowned, and, passing from the heroine to the author,
reflected how the Enchantress Spirit of Rome held sovereign sway over
the minds of the imaginative, until it rested on me—sole remaining
spectator of its wonders.
I was long wrapt by such ideas; but the soul wearies of a pauseless
flight; and, stooping from its wheeling circuits round and round this
spot, suddenly it fell ten thousand fathom deep, into the abyss of the
present— into self-knowledge—into tenfold sadness. I roused myself—I
cast off my waking dreams; and I, who just now could almost hear the
shouts of the Roman throng, and was hustled by countless multitudes,
now beheld the desart ruins of Rome sleeping under its own blue sky;
the shadows lay tranquilly on the ground; sheep were grazing untended
on the Palatine, and a buffalo stalked down the Sacred Way that led to
the Capitol. I was alone in the Forum; alone in Rome; alone in the
world. Would not one living man —one companion in my weary solitude, be
worth all the glory and remembered power of this time-honoured city?
Double sorrow—sadness, bred in Cimmerian caves, robed my soul in a
mourning garb. The generations I had conjured up to my fancy,
contrasted more strongly with the end of all —the single point in
which, as a pyramid, the mighty fabric of society had ended, while I,
on the giddy height, saw vacant space around me.
From such vague laments I turned to the contemplation of the minutiae
of my situation. So far, I had not succeeded in the sole object of my
desires, the finding a companion for my desolation. Yet I did not
despair. It is true that my inscriptions were set up for the most part,
in insignificant towns and villages; yet, even without these memorials,
it was possible that the person, who like me should find himself alone
in a depopulate land, should, like me, come to Rome. The more slender
my expectation was, the more I chose to build on it, and to accommodate
my actions to this vague possibility.
It became necessary therefore, that for a time I should domesticate
myself at Rome. It became necessary, that I should look my disaster in
the face— not playing the school-boy’s part of obedience without
submission; enduring life, and yet rebelling against the laws by which
I lived.
Yet how could I resign myself? Without love, without sympathy, without
communion with any, how could I meet the morning sun, and with it trace
its oft repeated journey to the evening shades? Why did I continue to
live— why not throw off the weary weight of time, and with my own hand,
let out the fluttering prisoner from my agonized breast?—It was not
cowardice that withheld me; for the true fortitude was to endure; and
death had a soothing sound accompanying it, that would easily entice me
to enter its demesne. But this I would not do. I had, from the moment I
had reasoned on the subject, instituted myself the subject to fate, and
the servant of necessity, the visible laws of the invisible God—I
believed that my obedience was the result of sound reasoning, pure
feeling, and an exalted sense of the true excellence and nobility of my
nature. Could I have seen in this empty earth, in the seasons and their
change, the hand of a blind power only, most willingly would I have
placed my head on the sod, and closed my eyes on its loveliness for
ever. But fate had administered life to me, when the plague had already
seized on its prey—she had dragged me by the hair from out the
strangling waves—By such miracles she had bought me for her own; I
admitted her authority, and bowed to her decrees. If, after mature
consideration, such was my resolve, it was doubly necessary that I
should not lose the end of life, the improvement of my faculties, and
poison its flow by repinings without end. Yet how cease to repine,
since there was no hand near to extract the barbed spear that had
entered my heart of hearts? I stretched out my hand, and it touched
none whose sensations were responsive to mine. I was girded, walled in,
vaulted over, by seven-fold barriers of loneliness. Occupation alone,
if I could deliver myself up to it, would be capable of affording an
opiate to my sleepless sense of woe. Having determined to make Rome my
abode, at least for some months, I made arrangements for my
accommodation—I selected my home. The Colonna Palace was well adapted
for my purpose. Its grandeur— its treasure of paintings, its
magnificent halls were objects soothing and even exhilarating.
I found the granaries of Rome well stored with grain, and particularly
with Indian corn; this product requiring less art in its preparation
for food, I selected as my principal support. I now found the hardships
and lawlessness of my youth turn to account. A man cannot throw off the
habits of sixteen years. Since that age, it is true, I had lived
luxuriously, or at least surrounded by all the conveniences
civilization afforded. But before that time, I had been “as uncouth a
savage, as the wolf-bred founder of old Rome”—and now, in Rome itself,
robber and shepherd propensities, similar to those of its founder, were
of advantage to its sole inhabitant. I spent the morning riding and
shooting in the Campagna—I passed long hours in the various galleries—I
gazed at each statue, and lost myself in a reverie before many a fair
Madonna or beauteous nymph. I haunted the Vatican, and stood surrounded