What relief had I from these sensations? Was it relief, that I spent the
day in the midst of profligacy and execrations--that I saw reflected
from every countenance agonies only inferior to my own? He that would
form a lively idea of the regions of the damned, need only to witness,
for six hours, a scene to which I was confined for many months. Not for
one hour could I withdraw myself from this complexity of horrors, or
take refuge in the calmness of meditation. Air, exercise, series,
contrast, those grand enliveners of the human frame, I was for ever
debarred from, by the inexorable tyranny under which I was fallen. Nor
did I find the solitude of my nightly dungeon less insupportable. Its
only furniture was the straw that served me for my repose. It was
narrow, damp, and unwholesome. The slumbers of a mind, wearied, like
mine, with the most detestable uniformity, to whom neither amusement nor
occupation ever offered themselves to beguile the painful hours, were
short, disturbed, and unrefreshing. My sleeping, still more than my
waking thoughts, were full of perplexity, deformity, and disorder. To
these slumbers succeeded the hours which, by the regulations of our
prison, I was obliged, though awake, to spend in solitary and cheerless
darkness. Here I had neither books nor pens, nor any thing upon which to
engage my attention; all was a sightless blank. How was a mind, active
and indefatigable like mine, to endure this misery? I could not sink it
in lethargy; I could nor forget my woes: they haunted me with
unintermitted and demoniac malice. Cruel, inexorable policy of human
affairs, that condemns a man to torture like this; that sanctions it,
and knows not what is done under its sanction; that is too supine and
unfeeling to enquire into these petty details; that calls this the
ordeal of innocence, and the protector of freedom! A thousand times I
could have dashed my brains against the walls of my dungeon; a thousand
times I longed for death, and wished, with inexpressible ardour, for an
end to what I suffered; a thousand times I meditated suicide, and