I awoke in a painful agony—­for I fancied that ocean, breaking its bounds, carried away the fixed continent and deep rooted mountains, together with the streams I loved, the woods, and the flocks—­it raged around, with that continued and dreadful roar which had accompanied the last wreck of surviving humanity.  As my waking sense returned, the bare walls of the guard room closed round me, and the rain pattered against the single window.  How dreadful it is, to emerge from the oblivion of slumber, and to receive as a good morrow the mute wailing of one’s own hapless heart —­to return from the land of deceptive dreams, to the heavy knowledge of unchanged disaster!—­Thus was it with me, now, and for ever!  The sting of other griefs might be blunted by time; and even mine yielded sometimes during the day, to the pleasure inspired by the imagination or the senses; but I never look first upon the morning-light but with my fingers pressed tight on my bursting heart, and my soul deluged with the interminable flood of hopeless misery.  Now I awoke for the first time in the dead world—­I awoke alone—­and the dull dirge of the sea, heard even amidst the rain, recalled me to the reflection of the wretch I had become.  The sound came like a reproach, a scoff—­like the sting of remorse in the soul—­I gasped—­the veins and muscles of my throat swelled, suffocating me.  I put my fingers to my ears, I buried my head in the leaves of my couch, I would have dived to the centre to lose hearing of that hideous moan.

But another task must be mine—­again I visited the detested beach—­ again I vainly looked far and wide—­again I raised my unanswered cry, lifting up the only voice that could ever again force the mute air to syllable the human thought.

What a pitiable, forlorn, disconsolate being I was!  My very aspect and garb told the tale of my despair.  My hair was matted and wild—­my limbs soiled with salt ooze; while at sea, I had thrown off those of my garments that encumbered me, and the rain drenched the thin summer-clothing I had retained—­my feet were bare, and the stunted reeds and broken shells made them bleed—­the while, I hurried to and fro, now looking earnestly on some distant rock which, islanded in the sands, bore for a moment a deceptive appearance—­now with flashing eyes reproaching the murderous ocean for its unutterable cruelty.

For a moment I compared myself to that monarch of the waste—­Robinson Crusoe.  We had been both thrown companionless—­he on the shore of a desolate island:  I on that of a desolate world.  I was rich in the so called goods of life.  If I turned my steps from the near barren scene, and entered any of the earth’s million cities, I should find their wealth stored up for my accommodation—­clothes, food, books, and a choice of dwelling beyond the command of the princes of former times—­every climate was subject to my selection, while he was obliged to toil in the acquirement of every necessary, and