The Last Man | Page 5

orphans to the friendship of
his royal master, and felt satisfied that, by this means, their prosperity was better assured
in his death than in his life. This letter was enclosed to the care of a nobleman, who, he

did not doubt, would perform the last and inexpensive office of placing it in the king's
own hand.
He died in debt, and his little property was seized immediately by his creditors. My
mother, pennyless and burthened with two children, waited week after week, and month
after month, in sickening expectation of a reply, which never came. She had no
experience beyond her father's cottage; and the mansion of the lord of the manor was the
chiefest type of grandeur she could conceive. During my father's life, she had been made
familiar with the name of royalty and the courtly circle; but such things, ill according
with her personal experience, appeared, after the loss of him who gave substance and
reality to them, vague and fantastical. If, under any circumstances, she could have
acquired sufficient courage to address the noble persons mentioned by her husband, the
ill success of his own application caused her to banish the idea. She saw therefore no
escape from dire penury: perpetual care, joined to sorrow for the loss of the wondrous
being, whom she continued to contemplate with ardent admiration, hard labour, and
naturally delicate health, at length released her from the sad continuity of want and
misery.
The condition of her orphan children was peculiarly desolate. Her own father had been an
emigrant from another part of the country, and had died long since: they had no one
relation to take them by the hand; they were outcasts, paupers, unfriended beings, to
whom the most scanty pittance was a matter of favour, and who were treated merely as
children of peasants, yet poorer than the poorest, who, dying, had left them, a thankless
bequest, to the close-handed charity of the land.
I, the elder of the two, was five years old when my mother died. A remembrance of the
discourses of my parents, and the communications which my mother endeavoured to
impress upon me concerning my father's friends, in slight hope that I might one day
derive benefit from the knowledge, floated like an indistinct dream through my brain. I
conceived that I was different and superior to my protectors and companions, but I knew
not how or wherefore. The sense of injury, associated with the name of king and noble,
clung to me; but I could draw no conclusions from such feelings, to serve as a guide to
action. My first real knowledge of myself was as an unprotected orphan among the
valleys and fells of Cumberland. I was in the service of a farmer; and with crook in hand,
my dog at my side, I shepherded a numerous flock on the near uplands. I cannot say
much in praise of such a life; and its pains far exceeded its pleasures. There was freedom
in it, a companionship with nature, and a reckless loneliness; but these, romantic as they
were, did not accord with the love of action and desire of human sympathy, characteristic
of youth. Neither the care of my flock, nor the change of seasons, were sufficient to tame
my eager spirit; my out-door life and unemployed time were the temptations that led me
early into lawless habits. I associated with others friendless like myself; I formed them
into a band, I was their chief and captain. All shepherd-boys alike, while our flocks were
spread over the pastures, we schemed and executed many a mischievous prank, which
drew on us the anger and revenge of the rustics. I was the leader and protector of my
comrades, and as I became distinguished among them, their misdeeds were usually
visited upon me. But while I endured punishment and pain in their defence with the spirit
of an hero, I claimed as my reward their praise and obedience.

In such a school my disposition became rugged, but firm. The appetite for admiration and
small capacity for self-controul which I inherited from my father, nursed by adversity,
made me daring and reckless. I was rough as the elements, and unlearned as the animals I
tended. I often compared myself to them, and finding that my chief superiority consisted
in power, I soon persuaded myself that it was in power only that I was inferior to the
chiefest potentates of the earth. Thus untaught in refined philosophy, and pursued by a
restless feeling of degradation from my true station in society, I wandered among the hills
of civilized England as uncouth a savage as the wolf-bred founder of old Rome. I owned
but one law, it was that of the strongest, and my greatest deed of virtue was