London in 1857. 511 



blingly eager hand rush with the worm it rode over through the 

 flame-undulating streets, and yell at last in exultation over the 

 mighty destruction which it had effected, and the rash creature that 

 in sacrificing himself to the scorching, devouring breath of the thing 

 he had produced, fell a victim to that which he had himself brought 

 into its terrible, its godlike existence. Fire I thought must be the 

 issue. The city could not stand, I should go mad before I neared its 

 boundaries; its churchyard silence seemed already to overpower 

 my soul! I must destroy it. Fire and myself must be its kings, and 

 we must expire together. Had there been but one being left to 

 share the solitude with me, methinks I could have borne it. How 

 did I know? there might be yet another solitary individual like my- 

 self at some extremity of the metropolis, who was making the same 

 lamentations as I was making, and mourning his desolate condition, 

 wandering the empty streets alone, perhaps, like myself. This 

 thought operated like magic, it allayed the fire in my brain in a 

 moment, and I gradually became more quiet in mind and composed 

 in body. 



Some time elapsed. I gasped less convulsively, and my pulses 

 began to cease the fearful rapidity of their movements. I walked 

 down the street, rounded the Quadrant, passed along the lower por- 

 tion of the street, and found myself entering into Waterloo Place, 

 where it widens towards the flight of steps, the Shakspeare* column, 

 the clubhouses, and the Park ; still, still the same silence, unbroken 

 silence ; a desert of buildings, a solitude more profound than that of 

 the vastest desert, whose thousands of miles of parching sand reduce 

 the solitary traveller to the insignificance of one of the very grains 

 that is unperceivable in a foot square of the universal space, the sky- 

 like blank around him. I could not induce myself to enter any of 

 the houses, though all were open. Shops, doors of large buildings, 

 stared me in the face in every direction, and smiled me almost into 

 frenzy. I hurried on through the graves of universal mortality. 



And how could I account for all this? There was the terrible cer- 

 tainty, however, before me. Where had the inhabitants fled to ? Had 

 they sunk into the earth? been wholly swept away by some invisible 

 and inscrutable decree? and all in one night? London was itself but 

 last night, and what is it now ? I seek my bed with the world around, 

 and wake its solitary tenant! By what strange and awful means had 

 the people thus imperceptibly passed away passed away like a fugi- 

 tive thought, never to again exist ; faded, like the baseless fabric of 

 a vision, leaving not a trace behind? This suspense, this weight of 

 hopeless speculation, was torturing. I could but ask the question. 

 Where have they fled to *? whither have they gone ? and echo could 

 only answer me in my own word where'? 



I passed down Pall Mall and entered Trafalgar Square. How dif- 

 ferent from yesterday ! where was the crowd pressing through the 

 doors of the National Gallery? There were all inanimate objects, 

 unconscious and unchanged ; the naval monument of Nelson, with its 



* This column was, I believe, twenty years ago called by another name, and dedi- 

 cated to and surmounted by a statue of Frederic, Duke of York, brother of George IV. 



