s. Blessed state of
innocence and self-approbation! The sunshine of conscious integrity
pierced through all the barriers of my cell, and spoke ten thousand
times more joy to my heart, than the accumulated splendours of nature
and art can communicate to the slaves of vice.

I found out the secret of employing my mind. I said, "I am shut up for
half the day in total darkness, without any external source of
amusement; the other half I spend in the midst of noise, turbulence,
and, confusion. What then? Can I not draw amusement from the stores of
my own mind? Is it not freighted with various knowledge? Have I not been
employed from my infancy in gratifying an insatiable curiosity? When
should I derive benefit from these superior advantages, if not at
present?" Accordingly I tasked the stores of my memory, and my powers of
invention. I amused myself with recollecting the history of my life. By
degrees I called to mind a number of minute circumstances, which, but
for this exercise, would have been for ever forgotten. I repassed in my
thoughts whole conversations, I recollected their subjects, their
arrangement, their incidents, frequently their very words. I mused upon
these ideas, till I was totally absorbed in thought. I repeated them,
till my mind glowed with enthusiasm. I had my different employments,
fitted for the solitude of the night, in which I could give full scope
to the impulses of my mind; and for the uproar of the day, in which my
chief object was, to be insensible to the disorder with which I was
surrounded.

By degrees I quitted my own story, and employed myself in imaginary
adventures. I figured to myself every situation in which I could be
placed, and conceived the conduct to be observed in each. Thus scenes of
insult and danger, of tenderness and oppression, became familiar to me.
In fancy I often passed the awful hour of dissolving nature. In some of
my reveries I boiled with impetuous indignation, and in others patiently
collected the whole force of my mind for some fearful encounter. I
cultivated the powers of oratory suited to these different states, and
improved more in eloquence in the solitude of my dungeon, than perhaps I
should have done in the busiest and most crowded scenes.

At length I proceeded to as regular a disposition of my time, as the man
in his study, who passes from mathematics to poetry, and from poetry to
the law of nations, in the different parts of each single day; and I as
seldo