om his fellows, and was transported with
terror at the print of a human foot. I would have knelt down and worshipped
the same. The wild and cruel Caribbee, the merciless Cannibal--or worse
than these, the uncouth, brute, and remorseless veteran in the vices of
civilization, would have been to me a beloved companion, a treasure dearly
prized--his nature would be kin to mine; his form cast in the same mould;
human blood would flow in his veins; a human sympathy must link us for
ever. It cannot be that I shall never behold a fellow being more!--never!
--never!--not in the course of years!--Shall I wake, and speak to
none, pass the interminable hours, my soul, islanded in the world, a
solitary point, surrounded by vacuum? Will day follow day endlessly thus?
--No! no! a God rules the world--providence has not exchanged its golden
sceptre for an aspic's sting. Away! let me fly from the ocean-grave, let me
depart from this barren nook, paled in, as it is, from access by its own
desolateness; let me tread once again the paved towns; step over the
threshold of man's dwellings, and most certainly I shall find this thought
a horrible vision--a maddening, but evanescent dream.

I entered Ravenna, (the town nearest to the spot whereon I had been cast),
before the second sun had set on the empty world; I saw many living
creatures; oxen, and horses, and dogs, but there was no man among them; I
entered a cottage, it was vacant; I ascended the marble stairs of a palace,
the bats and the owls were nestled in the tapestry; I stepped softly, not
to awaken the sleeping town: I rebuked a dog, that by yelping disturbed the
sacred stillness; I would not believe that all was as it seemed--The
world was not dead, but I was mad; I was deprived of sight, hearing, and
sense of touch; I was labouring under the force of a spell, which permitted
me to behold all sights of earth, except its human inhabitants; they were
pursuing their ordinary labours. Every house had its inmate; but I could
not perceive them. If I could have deluded myself into a belief of this
kind, I should have been far more satisfied. But my brain, tenacious of its
reason, refused to lend itself to such imaginations--and though I
endeavoured to play the antic to myself, I knew that I, the offspring of
man, during long years one among many--now remained sole survivor of my
species.

The sun sank behind the western hills; I had fasted since the preceding
evening, but, though faint an