Solitude and bondage are melancholy companions. Hearts that never knew the melting influence of pity, or experienced the thrill of fear, but met every vicissitude with a stern and unbending front, have been cowed and overwhelmed by their first whispers, and have been hurried on, by an enlarged and more intimate fellowship, into distraction and despair. They are a sort of living death, enclosing the spark of life in a walled grave, where the air, so sweet and buoyant without, is pestilence, and one’s breath corruption. Acquainted with these, we seem to be dead before our time, and yet, though shut out from action, to live in thought,--to suffer all the terror and captivity of the grave, and be convulsed with the workings of a restless vitality. As he heard the fastenings of his dungeon-door secured, a chill like that of death, if one can form a conception of the last sensibility of the dying, crept through the bosom of Hildebrand. He was there alone--without solace, without hope, without even God. He durst not pray. The reflection that he had been brought into this situation by his own imprudence--nay, by a corrupt and abandoned selfishness, which affected the peace of another--this reflection was upon him; and, when he thought of imploring the protection of Heaven, it met his prayer in his throat, and turned it back with a reproach. But the image of Inez, though predominant, was not his only accuser. If, urged by despair, he drove it for a moment from his mind, a hundred bitter and remorseful recollections rushed into its place. His imprudence, if so mild a term may be retained, had not only brought destruction on himself, from which there was no prospect of escape, but, in its consequences, would entail ruin on others. He could not think of his ship, lying in an enemy’s harbour, within the range of the batteries, and every moment liable to be visited by the local officials, without a thrill of anguish. Even his benefactor, Sir Walter Raleigh, would not be exempt from the effects of his folly; and, in the utter failure of his design on the Mexican fleet, which he had laboured so diligently to accomplish, and in which he had embarked the chief part of his fortune, would suffer irreparable detriment. Nor did Hildebrand forget, while pursuing this train of reflection, to charge himself with having failed seriously in his duty to his country. The assertion of Don Felix, on his being arrested, that the Spanish government contemplated the invasion of England, and which the martial preparations everywhere in progress amply corroborated, afforded ground to his conscience for a more startling accusation, and a more bitter and excruciating reproach.