ittle suitable for the nobility":[27] which, of all babyish utterances
that ever fell from any public man, may surely bear the bell. Scarcely
disembarked, he followed his victor, with such wry face as we may fancy,
through the streets of holiday London. And then the doors closed upon
his last day of garish life for more than a quarter of a century. After
a boyhood passed in the dissipations of a luxurious court or in the camp
of war, his ears still stunned and his cheeks still burning from his
enemies' jubilations; out of all this ringing of English bells and
singing of English anthems, from among all these shouting citizens in
scarlet cloaks, and beautiful virgins attired in white, he passed into
the silence and solitude of a political prison.[28]

His captivity was not without alleviations. He was allowed to go
hawking, and he found England an admirable country for the sport; he was
a favourite with English ladies, and admired their beauty; and he did
not lack for money, wine, or books; he was honourably imprisoned in the
strongholds of great nobles, in Windsor Castle and the Tower of London.
But when all is said, he was a prisoner for five-and-twenty years. For
five-and-twenty years he could not go where he would, or do what he
liked, or speak with any but his jailers. We may talk very wisely of
alleviations; there is only one alleviation for which the man would
thank you: he would thank you to open the door. With what regret
Scottish James I. bethought him (in the next room perhaps to Charles) of
the time when he rose "as early as the day." What would he not have
given to wet his boots once more with morning dew, and follow his
vagrant fancy among the meadows? The only alleviation to the misery of
constraint lies in the disposition of the prisoner. To each one this
place of discipline brings his own lesson. It stirs Latude or Baron
Trenck into heroic action; it is a hermitage for pious and conformable
spirits. Beranger tells us he found prison life, with its regular hours
and long evenings, both pleasant and profitable. The "Pilgrim's
Progress" and "Don Quixote" were begun in prison. It was after they were
become (to use the words of one of them), "Oh, worst imprisonment--the
dungeon of themselves!" that Homer and Milton worked so hard and so well
for the profit of mankind. In the year 1415 Henry V. had two
distinguished prisoners, French Charles of Orleans and Scottish James
I., who whiled away the hours of their ca