meek and quiet spirit, might hold out well enough for awhile, more
especially if supported by the reflection that he was suffering for his
country's good or for his own private advantage. But take the converse
example of a man unsupported by any consolations of patriotism or
peculation, of a temperament somewhat impatient, and prone to anger,
accustomed, too, from youth upwards, to constant habits of strong
out-door exercise, with such an one I fancy it will fare--very much as
it fared with me. It is an established fact, that a few months'
confinement within four walls, without stint of food or aggravation of
punishment, will bring an athletic Red Indian to the extreme of bodily
prostration, if not to mortal sickness.

It is humiliating to confess, but I fear unhappily true, that in despite
of all advantages of a civilized education, some of us, under like
circumstances, will go down as helplessly as the noble savage.

Would you like to hear of the process? It is not pleasant to look upon,
or to tell.

The first few days are spent in an uneasy, irritable expectation that
every hour will bring some news--good or bad--from the world without,
bearing on your own especial case; then comes the frame of mind wherein
you allow that there must be certain official delays, and begin to
calculate, wearily, how far the wire-drawn formalities will be
protracted, making a liberal margin for unexpected contingencies: this
phase soon passes away: then comes the bitter, up-hill fight of hoping
against hope; how long this may endure depends much on temperament--more
on bodily health; but in most cases it is soon over, and is succeeded by
the last state, ten thousand times worse than the first: slowly, but
very surely, the dense black cloud of utter listlessness settles down,
never broken thereafter save by brief flashes of a futile, irrational
ferocity. All your ideas move round like tired mill-horses, in the
narrowest circle, with an unhappy Ipse Ego for its centre: all the
passing events of the outward world seem unnaturally dwarfed and
distant, as if seen through an inverted telescope: the struggles of
stranger nations move you no more than the battles on an ant-hill; the
only question of civil or religious liberty in which you feel the
faintest interest is the unimportant one involving your own personal
freedom. And throughout you are shamefully conscious that this
indifference is not philosophical, but simply selfish.

So much f