! You have not had your
learning for nothing, I see. You are set upon not dying dunghill. But
that is to come, lad; you had better by half keep your courage till you
shall find it wanted."

The assizes, which passed over without influence to me, produced a great
revolution among my fellow-prisoners. I lived long enough in the jail to
witness a general mutation of its inhabitants. One of the housebreakers
(the rival of the Duke of Bedford), and the coiner, were hanged. Two
more were cast for transportation, and the rest acquitted. The
transports remained with us; and, though the prison was thus lightened
of nine of its inhabitants, there were, at the next half-yearly period
of assizes, as many persons on the felons' side, within three, as I had
found on my first arrival.

The soldier, whose story I have already recorded, died on the evening of
the very day on which the judges arrived, of a disease the consequence
of his confinement. Such was the justice, that resulted from the laws of
his country to an individual who would have been the ornament of any
age; one who, of all the men I ever knew, was perhaps the kindest, of
the most feeling heart, of the most engaging and unaffected manners, and
the most unblemished life. The name of this man was Brightwel. Were it
possible for my pen to consecrate him to never-dying fame, I could
undertake no task more grateful to my heart. His judgment was
penetrating and manly, totally unmixed with imbecility and confusion,
while at the same time there was such an uncontending frankness in his
countenance, that a superficial observer would have supposed he must
have been the prey of the first plausible knavery that was practised
against him. Great reason have I to remember him with affection! He was
the most ardent, I had almost said the last, of my friends. Nor did I
remain in this respect in his debt. There was indeed a great
congeniality, if I may presume to say so, in our characters, except that
I cannot pretend to rival the originality and self-created vigour of his
mind, or to compare with, what the world has scarcely surpassed, the
correctness and untainted purity of his conduct. He heard my story, as
far as I thought proper to disclose it, with interest; he examined it
with sincere impartiality; and if, at first, any doubt remained upon his
mind, a frequent observation of me in my most unguarded moments taught
him in no long time to place an unreserved confidence in my innocence