ged with a verd antique colouring that makes you look
like a man in bronze.

Outside the door, but near enough for every purpose of annoyance, stands
a great hulking old clock, that ticks away incessantly--true type of
time that passes on its road whether you be sick or sorry, merry or
mournful. With what a burr the old fellow announces that he is going
to strike--it is like the asthmatic wheezing of some invalid, making an
exertion beyond his strength, and then, the heavy plod of sabots, back
and forward through the little hall, into the Kitchen, and out again to
the stable yard; with the shrill yell of some drabbled wench, screaming
for "Johann" or "Iacob;" and all the little platitudes of the "menage"
that reach you, seasoned from time to time by the coarse laughter of
the boors, or the squabbling sounds that issue streetwards, where some
vender of "schnaps" or "kirch-wasser" holds his tap.

What a dreary sensation comes over one, to think of the people who pass
their lives in such a place, with its poor, little, miserable, interests
and occupations, and how one shudders at the bare idea of sinking down
to the level of such a stagnant pool--knowing the small notorieties, and
talking like them; and yet, with all this holy horror, how rapidly, and
insensibly, is such a change induced. Every day rubs off some former
prejudice, and induces some new habit, and, as the eye of the prisoner,
in his darksome dungeon, learns to distinguish each object clear, as if
in noon-day; so will the mind accommodate itself to the moral gloom of
such a cell as this, ay, and take a vivid interest in each slight event
that goes on there, as though he were to the "manner born."

In a fortnight, or even less, I lay awake, conjecturing why the urchin
who brought the mail from Gotha, had not arrived;--before three weeks
I participated in the shock of the town, at the conduct of the Frow von
Buetterwick, who raised the price of Schenkin or Schweinfleisch, I
forget which--by some decimal of a farthing; and fully entered into the
distressed feelings of the inhabitants, who foretold a European war,
from the fact that a Prussian corporal with a pack on his shoulders, was
seen passing through the town, that morning, before day-break.

When I came to think over these things, I got into a grievous state of
alarm. "Another week, Arthur," said I, "and thou art done for: Eisenach
may claim thee as its own; and the Grand Duke of------, Heaven forgive
me