ron yoke of
servitude; poverty will quit us, and with that, sickness. What may not the
forces, never before united, of liberty and peace achieve in this dwelling
of man?"

"Dreaming, for ever dreaming, Windsor!" said Ryland, the old adversary of
Raymond, and candidate for the Protectorate at the ensuing election. "Be
assured that earth is not, nor ever can be heaven, while the seeds of hell
are natives of her soil. When the seasons have become equal, when the air
breeds no disorders, when its surface is no longer liable to blights and
droughts, then sickness will cease; when men's passions are dead, poverty
will depart. When love is no longer akin to hate, then brotherhood will
exist: we are very far from that state at present."

"Not so far as you may suppose," observed a little old astronomer, by name
Merrival, "the poles precede slowly, but securely; in an hundred thousand
years--"

"We shall all be underground," said Ryland.

"The pole of the earth will coincide with the pole of the ecliptic,"
continued the astronomer, "an universal spring will be produced, and earth
become a paradise."

"And we shall of course enjoy the benefit of the change," said Ryland,
contemptuously.

"We have strange news here," I observed. I had the newspaper in my hand,
and, as usual, had turned to the intelligence from Greece. "It seems that
the total destruction of Constantinople, and the supposition that winter
had purified the air of the fallen city, gave the Greeks courage to visit
its site, and begin to rebuild it. But they tell us that the curse of God
is on the place, for every one who has ventured within the walls has been
tainted by the plague; that this disease has spread in Thrace and
Macedonia; and now, fearing the virulence of infection during the coming
heats, a cordon has been drawn on the frontiers of Thessaly, and a strict
quarantine exacted." This intelligence brought us back from the prospect of
paradise, held out after the lapse of an hundred thousand years, to the
pain and misery at present existent upon earth. We talked of the ravages
made last year by pestilence in every quarter of the world; and of the
dreadful consequences of a second visitation. We discussed the best means
of preventing infection, and of preserving health and activity in a large
city thus afflicted--London, for instance. Merrival did not join in this
conversation; drawing near Idris, he proceeded to assure her that the
joyful prospect of an