 to go out of
the world in silence, the victim of this man's obduracy and art. In every view I
felt my heart ulcerated with a sense of his injustice; and my very soul spurned
these pitiful indulgences at a time that he was grinding me into dust with the
inexorableness of his vengeance.
    I was influenced by these sentiments in my reply to the jailor; and I found
a secret pleasure in pronouncing them in all their bitterness. I viewed him with
a sarcastic smile, and said, I was glad to find him of a sudden become so
humane: I was not however without some penetration as to the humanity of a
jailor, and could guess at the circumstances by which it was produced. But he
might tell his employer that his cares were fruitless; I would accept no favours
from a man that held a halter about my neck, and had courage enough to endure
the worst both in time to come and now. - The jailor looked at me with
astonishment, and, turning upon his heel, exclaimed, Well done, my cock! You
have not had your learning for nothing I see. You are set upon not dying
dunghil. 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
