We had expected this moment with eagerness, for now we had accomplished the worst part of our drear journey, and Switzerland was near at hand.  Yet how could we congratulate ourselves on any event thus imperfectly fulfilled?  Were these miserable beings, who, worn and wretched, passed in sorrowful procession, the sole remnants of the race of man, which, like a flood, had once spread over and possessed the whole earth?  It had come down clear and unimpeded from its primal mountain source in Ararat, and grew from a puny streamlet to a vast perennial river, generation after generation flowing on ceaselessly.  The same, but diversified, it grew, and swept onwards towards the absorbing ocean, whose dim shores we now reached.  It had been the mere plaything of nature, when first it crept out of uncreative void into light; but thought brought forth power and knowledge; and, clad with these, the race of man assumed dignity and authority.  It was then no longer the mere gardener of earth, or the shepherd of her flocks; “it carried with it an imposing and majestic aspect; it had a pedigree and illustrious ancestors; it had its gallery of portraits, its monumental inscriptions, its records and titles."[1]

This was all over, now that the ocean of death had sucked in the slackening tide, and its source was dried up.  We first had bidden adieu to the state of things which having existed many thousand years, seemed eternal; such a state of government, obedience, traffic, and domestic intercourse, as had moulded our hearts and capacities, as far back as memory could reach.  Then to patriotic zeal, to the arts, to reputation, to enduring fame, to the name of country, we had bidden farewell.  We saw depart all hope of retrieving our ancient state—­all expectation, except the feeble one of saving our individual lives from the wreck of the past.  To preserve these we had quitted England—­England, no more; for without her children, what name could that barren island claim?  With tenacious grasp we clung to such rule and order as could best save us; trusting that, if a little colony could be preserved, that would suffice at some remoter period to restore the lost community of mankind.

But the game is up!  We must all die; nor leave survivor nor heir to the wide inheritance of earth.  We must all die!  The species of man must perish; his frame of exquisite workmanship; the wondrous mechanism of his senses; the noble proportion of his godlike limbs; his mind, the throned king of these; must perish.  Will the earth still keep her place among the planets; will she still journey with unmarked regularity round the sun; will the seasons change, the trees adorn themselves with leaves, and flowers shed their fragrance, in solitude?  Will the mountains remain unmoved, and streams still keep a downward course towards the vast abyss; will the tides rise and fall, and the winds fan universal nature; will beasts pasture, birds fly, and fishes swim, when man, the lord, possessor, perceiver, and recorder of all these things, has passed away, as though he had never been?  O, what mockery is this!  Surely death is not death, and humanity is not extinct; but merely passed into other shapes, unsubjected to our perceptions.  Death is a vast portal, an high road to life:  let us hasten to pass; let us exist no more in this living death, but die that we may live!