Where could we turn, and not find a desolation pregnant with the dire lesson of example?  The fields had been left uncultivated, weeds and gaudy flowers sprung up,—­or where a few wheat-fields shewed signs of the living hopes of the husbandman, the work had been left halfway, the ploughman had died beside the plough; the horses had deserted the furrow, and no seedsman had approached the dead; the cattle unattended wandered over the fields and through the lanes; the tame inhabitants of the poultry yard, baulked of their daily food, had become wild—­young lambs were dropt in flower-gardens, and the cow stalled in the hall of pleasure.  Sickly and few, the country people neither went out to sow nor reap; but sauntered about the meadows, or lay under the hedges, when the inclement sky did not drive them to take shelter under the nearest roof.  Many of those who remained, secluded themselves; some had laid up stores which should prevent the necessity of leaving their homes;—­some deserted wife and child, and imagined that they secured their safety in utter solitude.  Such had been Ryland’s plan, and he was discovered dead and half-devoured by insects, in a house many miles from any other, with piles of food laid up in useless superfluity.  Others made long journies to unite themselves to those they loved, and arrived to find them dead.

London did not contain above a thousand inhabitants; and this number was continually diminishing.  Most of them were country people, come up for the sake of change; the Londoners had sought the country.  The busy eastern part of the town was silent, or at most you saw only where, half from cupidity, half from curiosity, the warehouses had been more ransacked than pillaged:  bales of rich India goods, shawls of price, jewels, and spices, unpacked, strewed the floors.  In some places the possessor had to the last kept watch on his store, and died before the barred gates.  The massy portals of the churches swung creaking on their hinges; and some few lay dead on the pavement.  The wretched female, loveless victim of vulgar brutality, had wandered to the toilet of high-born beauty, and, arraying herself in the garb of splendour, had died before the mirror which reflected to herself alone her altered appearance.  Women whose delicate feet had seldom touched the earth in their luxury, had fled in fright and horror from their homes, till, losing themselves in the squalid streets of the metropolis, they had died on the threshold of poverty.  The heart sickened at the variety of misery presented; and, when I saw a specimen of this gloomy change, my soul ached with the fear of what might befall my beloved Idris and my babes.  Were they, surviving Adrian and myself, to find themselves protectorless in the world?  As yet the mind alone had suffered—­could I for ever put off the time, when the delicate frame and shrinking nerves of my child of prosperity, the nursling of rank and wealth, who was my companion, should be invaded by