Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 100.djvu/58

44 several times over before we see it as it is. This assurance lends fresh hope to the interest which waits on his future—the future of a very young man, who is not above painstaking and self-discipline—yesterday drudging in the shawl-manufactory, and to-day feasting with barons high in the ducal towers of Inverary—forMay that future correspond with his avowed resolve to "go forth 'mong; men, not mailed in scorn, but in the armour of a pure intent;" and with the spirit of those lines in which he makes Walter repress his greed of mere Fame ("next grandest word to God!"), and, in riper purpose, reason thus with life:

a narrow cell sat one who was a prisoner for life. Around him were the four dingy walls, covered with great black characters, scratched thereon at sundry times with bits of charcoal: but there was no pleasure in reading these hieroglyphics, for they were the fruit of solitude and melancholy, whose heavy, heavy thoughts had thus expressed themselves. High up was placed the little window, the only connexion with life—with nature—and with the heavens; but the black iron bars kept watch over that, and obscured the clear daylight. The links of his chain, round his hand and his foot, kept the prisoner bound in his dreary cage, but they could not fetter the soul's deep longing after liberty.

Days and years had passed in this gloomy cell. A charming, fresh summer's morning it was, when the door of this prison was first closed on him, and when he was told that Death alone should set him free. Here he had remained ever since; severed from the rest of mankind, shut up from them as if he had been a wild beast; and their farewell words to