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 combat the fiend—­his side unguarded, his toils unshared—­infection might even reach him, and he die unattended and alone.  By day and night these thoughts pursued me.  I resolved to visit London, to see him; to quiet these agonizing throes by the sweet medicine of hope, or the opiate of despair.

It was not until I arrived at Brentford, that I perceived much change in the face of the country.  The better sort of houses were shut up; the busy trade of the town palsied; there was an air of anxiety among the few passengers I met, and they looked wonderingly at my carriage—­the first they had seen pass towards London, since pestilence sat on its high places, and possessed its busy streets.  I met several funerals; they were slenderly attended by mourners, and were regarded by the spectators as omens of direst import.  Some gazed on these processions with wild eagerness—­ others fled timidly—­some wept aloud.