at runs between looks in a map but as a trodden footway
through high grass. Yet this small interval was to save us: the sea was to
rise a wall of adamant--without, disease and misery--within, a shelter
from evil, a nook of the garden of paradise--a particle of celestial
soil, which no evil could invade--truly we were wise in our generation,
to imagine all these things!

But we are awake now. The plague is in London; the air of England is
tainted, and her sons and daughters strew the unwholesome earth. And now,
the sea, late our defence, seems our prison bound; hemmed in by its gulphs,
we shall die like the famished inhabitants of a besieged town. Other
nations have a fellowship in death; but we, shut out from all
neighbourhood, must bury our own dead, and little England become a wide,
wide tomb.

This feeling of universal misery assumed concentration and shape, when I
looked on my wife and children; and the thought of danger to them possessed
my whole being with fear. How could I save them? I revolved a thousand and
a thousand plans. They should not die--first I would be gathered to
nothingness, ere infection should come anear these idols of my soul. I
would walk barefoot through the world, to find an uninfected spot; I would
build my home on some wave-tossed plank, drifted about on the barren,
shoreless ocean. I would betake me with them to some wild beast's den,
where a tyger's cubs, which I would slay, had been reared in health. I
would seek the mountain eagle's eirie, and live years suspended in some
inaccessible recess of a sea-bounding cliff--no labour too great, no
scheme too wild, if it promised life to them. O! ye heart-strings of mine,
could ye be torn asunder, and my soul not spend itself in tears of blood
for sorrow!

Idris, after the first shock, regained a portion of fortitude. She
studiously shut out all prospect of the future, and cradled her heart in
present blessings. She never for a moment lost sight of her children. But
while they in health sported about her, she could cherish contentment and
hope. A strange and wild restlessness came over me--the more intolerable,
because I was forced to conceal it. My fears for Adrian were ceaseless;
August had come; and the symptoms of plague encreased rapidly in London. It
was deserted by all who possessed the power of removing; and he, the
brother of my soul, was exposed to the perils from which all but slaves
enchained by circumstance fled. He remained to com