d although a military prison be not
altogether a garden of delights, it is still preferable to a gallows. In
the third, I am almost ashamed to say it, but I found a certain pleasure
in our place of residence: being an obsolete and really mediaeval
fortress, high placed and commanding extraordinary prospects, not only
over sea, mountain, and champaign, but actually over the thoroughfares
of a capital city, which we could see blackened by day with the moving
crowd of the inhabitants, and at night shining with lamps. And lastly,
although I was not insensible to the restraints of prison or the
scantiness of our rations, I remembered I had sometimes eaten quite as
ill in Spain, and had to mount guard and march perhaps a dozen leagues
into the bargain. The first of my troubles, indeed, was the costume we
were obliged to wear. There is a horrible practice in England to trick
out in ridiculous uniforms, and as it were to brand in mass, not only
convicts but military prisoners, and even the children in charity
schools. I think some malignant genius had found his masterpiece of
irony in the dress which we were condemned to wear: jacket, waistcoat,
and trousers of a sulphur or mustard yellow, and a shirt of
blue-and-white striped cotton. It was conspicuous, it was cheap, it
pointed us out to laughter--we, who were old soldiers, used to arms, and
some of us showing noble scars,--like a set of lugubrious zanies at a
fair. The old name of that rock on which our prison stood was (I have
heard since then) the "Painted Hill." Well, now it was all painted a
bright yellow with our costumes; and the dress of the soldiers who
guarded us being of course the essential British red rag, we made up
together the elements of a lively picture of hell. I have again and
again looked round upon my fellow-prisoners, and felt my anger rise, and
choked upon tears, to behold them thus parodied. The more part, as I
have said, were peasants; somewhat bettered perhaps by the
drill-sergeant, but for all that ungainly, loutish fellows, with no more
than a mere barrack-room smartness of address: indeed, you could have
seen our army nowhere more discreditably represented than in this Castle
of Edinburgh. And I used to see myself in fancy, and blush. It seemed
that my more elegant carriage would but point the insult of the
travesty. And I remembered the days when I wore the coarse but
honourable coat of a soldier; and remembered further back how many of
the noble,