le orphan, and awaken to new
hopes the shut heart of the mourner. I can enchain the plague in limits,
and set a term to the misery it would occasion; courage, forbearance, and
watchfulness, are the forces I bring towards this great work.

"O, I shall be something now! From my birth I have aspired like the eagle
--but, unlike the eagle, my wings have failed, and my vision has been
blinded. Disappointment and sickness have hitherto held dominion over me;
twin born with me, my would, was for ever enchained by the shall not, of
these my tyrants. A shepherd-boy that tends a silly flock on the mountains,
was more in the scale of society than I. Congratulate me then that I have
found fitting scope for my powers. I have often thought of offering my
services to the pestilence-stricken towns of France and Italy; but fear of
paining you, and expectation of this catastrophe, withheld me. To England
and to Englishmen I dedicate myself. If I can save one of her mighty
spirits from the deadly shaft; if I can ward disease from one of her
smiling cottages, I shall not have lived in vain."

Strange ambition this! Yet such was Adrian. He appeared given up to
contemplation, averse to excitement, a lowly student, a man of visions--
but afford him worthy theme, and--

Like to the lark at break of day arising,
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate.[1]

so did he spring up from listlessness and unproductive thought, to the
highest pitch of virtuous action.

With him went enthusiasm, the high-wrought resolve, the eye that without
blenching could look at death. With us remained sorrow, anxiety, and
unendurable expectation of evil. The man, says Lord Bacon, who hath wife
and children, has given hostages to fortune. Vain was all philosophical
reasoning--vain all fortitude--vain, vain, a reliance on probable good.
I might heap high the scale with logic, courage, and resignation--but let
one fear for Idris and our children enter the opposite one, and,
over-weighed, it kicked the beam.

The plague was in London! Fools that we were not long ago to have foreseen
this. We wept over the ruin of the boundless continents of the east, and
the desolation of the western world; while we fancied that the little
channel between our island and the rest of the earth was to preserve us
alive among the dead. It were no mighty leap methinks from Calais to Dover.
The eye easily discerns the sister land; they were united once; and the
little path th