The Last Man : Large Print

I AM the native of a sea-surrounded nook, a cloud-enshadowed land, which, when thesurface of the globe, with its shoreless ocean and trackless continents, presents itself to mymind, appears only as an inconsiderable speck in the immense whole; and yet, whenbalanced in the scale of mental power, far outweighed countries of larger extent and morenumerous population.

So true it is, that man's mind alone was the creator of all that wasgood or great to man, and that Nature herself was only his first minister.

England, seatedfar north in the turbid sea, now visits my dreams in the semblance of a vast and wellmanned ship, which mastered the winds and rode proudly over the waves.

In my boyishdays she was the universe to me. When I stood on my native hills, and saw plain andmountain stretch out to the utmost limits of my vision, speckled by the dwellings of mycountrymen, and subdued to fertility by their labours, the earth's very centre was fixed forme in that spot, and the rest of her orb was as a fable, to have forgotten which would havecost neither my imagination nor understanding an effort.My fortunes have been, from the beginning, an exemplification of the power that mutabilitymay possess over the varied tenor of man's life.

With regard to myself, this came almost byinheritance.

My father was one of those men on whom nature had bestowed to prodigalitythe envied gifts of wit and imagination, and then left his bark of life to be impelled by thesewinds, without adding reason as the rudder, or judgment as the pilot for the voyage.

Hisextraction was obscure; but circumstances brought him early into public notice, and hissmall paternal property was soon dissipated in the splendid scene of fashion and luxury inwhich he was an actor.

During the short years of thoughtless youth, he was adored by thehigh-bred triflers of the day, nor least by the youthful sovereign, who escaped from theintrigues of party, and the arduous duties of kingly business, to find never-failingamusement and exhilaration of spirit in his society.

My father's impulses, never under hisown controul, perpetually led him into difficulties from which his ingenuity alone couldextricate him; and the accumulating pile of debts of honour and of trade, which would havebent to earth any other, was supported by him with a light spirit and tameless hilarity;while his company was so necessary at the tables and assemblies of the rich, that hisderelictions were considered venial, and he himself received with intoxicating flattery.