"Oh! yes, it might be worse. To be condemned to perfect solitude, and silence too, with nothing but thought, thought, thought, rolling one upon the other, like the eternal billows of a dark and gloomy sea: not a sight for the eye, not a sound for the ear, till the one became blind, the other deaf, for want of objects. It is horrible! What monster could devise such a means of starving the senses one by one, till the living death of hopeless idiocy became the wretch's fate? What were the cord, or the axe, or the rack itself to that? Yet, even that might have an aggravation--if there were guilt upon the mind--some dark terrible crime--murder!--the death of a fellow-creature, sent before to be our accuser at God's throne! What awful storms would then move that black ocean of thought, prolonged through the whole of life! What would it be with me, even through three or four short days, when, innocent as I am, the passing of these solitary hours is well nigh intolerable.--Innocent as I am! Who is innocent? Who can lay his hand upon his heart, with God and his own conscience to witness, and say, 'I am innocent; I have done no wrong?'--Who can arraign the decree of the Almighty which strikes him for many a hidden fault, through the instrumentality of the false judgment or iniquitous persecution of his fellow-man? Not I, for one! I raised my hand against Lord Overton unjustly; I shed his blood, though I did not take his life; I was a murderer in intention, if not in act; and now I am accused of--perhaps may suffer for--the death of one whom I would have shed my own blood to defend. The ways of God are strange and wonderful, but very just.