anged behind his descending person.

The philosophic and still more the imaginative mind is apt to suppose
itself prepared for any mortal accident. Prison, among other ills, was
one that had been often faced by the undaunted _Arethusa_. Even as he
went down the stairs, he was telling himself that here was a famous
occasion for a roundel, and that like the committed linnets of the
tuneful cavalier, he too would make his prison musical. I will tell the
truth at once: the roundel was never written, or it should be printed in
this place, to raise a smile. Two reasons interfered: the first moral,
the second physical.

It is one of the curiosities of human nature, that although all men are
liars, they can none of them bear to be told so of themselves. To get
and take the lie with equanimity is a stretch beyond the stoic; and the
_Arethusa_, who had been surfeited upon that insult, was blazing
inwardly with a white heat of smothered wrath. But the physical had also
its part. The cellar in which he was confined was some feet underground,
and it was only lighted by an unglazed, narrow aperture high up in the
wall, and smothered in the leaves of a green vine. The walls were of
naked masonry, the floor of bare earth; by way of furniture there was an
earthenware basin, a water-jug, and a wooden bedstead with a blue-grey
cloak for bedding. To be taken from the hot air of a summer's afternoon,
the reverberation of the road and the stir of rapid exercise, and
plunged into the gloom and damp of this receptacle for vagabonds, struck
an instant chill upon the _Arethusa's_ blood. Now see in how small a
matter a hardship may consist: the floor was exceedingly uneven under
foot, with the very spade-marks, I suppose, of the labourers who dug the
foundations of the barrack; and what with the poor twilight and the
irregular surface, walking was impossible. The caged author resisted
for a good while, but the chill of the place struck deeper and deeper;
and at length, with such reluctance as you may fancy, he was driven to
climb upon the bed and wrap himself in the public covering. There, then,
he lay upon the verge of shivering, plunged in semi-darkness, wound in a
garment whose touch he dreaded like the plague, and (in a spirit far
removed from resignation) telling the roll of the insults he had just
received. These are not circumstances favourable to the muse.

Meantime (to look at the upper surface where the sun was still shining
and the g