The first cold weather of an English October, made us hasten our preparations.  I persuaded Idris to go up to London, where she might better attend to necessary arrangements.  I did not tell her, that to spare her the pang of parting from inanimate objects, now the only things left, I had resolved that we should none of us return to Windsor.  For the last time we looked on the wide extent of country visible from the terrace, and saw the last rays of the sun tinge the dark masses of wood variegated by autumnal tints; the uncultivated fields and smokeless cottages lay in shadow below; the Thames wound through the wide plain, and the venerable pile of Eton college, stood in dark relief, a prominent object; the cawing of the myriad rooks which inhabited the trees of the little park, as in column or thick wedge they speeded to their nests, disturbed the silence of evening.  Nature was the same, as when she was the kind mother of the human race; now, childless and forlorn, her fertility was a mockery; her loveliness a mask for deformity.  Why should the breeze gently stir the trees, man felt not its refreshment?  Why did dark night adorn herself with stars—­man saw them not?  Why are there fruits, or flowers, or streams, man is not here to enjoy them?

Idris stood beside me, her dear hand locked in mine.  Her face was radiant with a smile.—­“The sun is alone,” she said, “but we are not.  A strange star, my Lionel, ruled our birth; sadly and with dismay we may look upon the annihilation of man; but we remain for each other.  Did I ever in the wide world seek other than thee?  And since in the wide world thou remainest, why should I complain?  Thou and nature are still true to me.  Beneath the shades of night, and through the day, whose garish light displays our solitude, thou wilt still be at my side, and even Windsor will not be regretted.”

I had chosen night time for our journey to London, that the change and desolation of the country might be the less observable.  Our only surviving servant drove us.  We past down the steep hill, and entered the dusky avenue of the Long Walk.  At times like these, minute circumstances assume giant and majestic proportions; the very swinging open of the white gate that admitted us into the forest, arrested my thoughts as matter of interest; it was an every day act, never to occur again!  The setting crescent of the moon glittered through the massy trees to our right, and when we entered the park, we scared a troop of deer, that fled bounding away in the forest shades.  Our two boys quietly slept; once, before our road turned from the view, I looked back on the castle.  Its windows glistened in the moonshine, and its heavy outline lay in a dark mass against the sky—­the trees near us waved a solemn dirge to the midnight breeze.  Idris leaned back in the carriage; her two hands pressed mine, her countenance was placid, she seemed to lose the sense of what she now left, in the memory of what she still possessed.