ce of highest civilization. I had imbibed a
prescience of our Fate from comparison of China the simple and enduring,
with Assyria the architect, with Egypt the astrologer, with Nubia, more
crafty than either, the turbulent mother of all Arts. In history {*2}
of these regions I met with a ray from the Future. The individual
artificialities of the three latter were local diseases of the Earth,
and in their individual overthrows we had seen local remedies applied;
but for the infected world at large I could anticipate no regeneration
save in death. That man, as a race, should not become extinct, I saw
that he must be "born again."
And now it was, fairest and dearest, that we wrapped our spirits, daily,
in dreams. Now it was that, in twilight, we discoursed of the days to
come, when the Art-scarred surface of the Earth, having undergone that
purification {*3} which alone could efface its rectangular obscenities,
should clothe itself anew in the verdure and the mountain-slopes and
the smiling waters of Paradise, and be rendered at length a fit
dwelling-place for man:--for man the Death purged--for man to whose now
exalted intellect there should be poison in knowledge no more--for the
redeemed, regenerated, blissful, and now immortal, but still for the
material, man.
_Una._ Well do I remember these conversations, dear Monos; but the epoch
of the fiery overthrow was not so near at hand as we believed, and as
the corruption you indicate did surely warrant us in believing. Men
lived; and died individually. You yourself sickened, and passed into the
grave; and thither your constant Una speedily followed you. And though
the century which has since elapsed, and whose conclusion brings us thus
together once more, tortured our slumbering senses with no impatience of
duration, yet, my Monos, it was a century still.
_Monos._ Say, rather, a point in the vague infinity. Unquestionably, it
was in the Earth's dotage that I died. Wearied at heart with anxieties
which had their origin in the general turmoil and decay, I succumbed
to the fierce fever. After some few days of pain, and many of dreamy
delirium replete with ecstasy, the manifestations of which you mistook
for pain, while I longed but was impotent to undeceive you--after some
days there came upon me, as you have said, a breathless and motionless
torpor; and this was termed Death by those who stood around me.
Words are vague things. My condition did not deprive me of sentien
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