I threw back my shoulders, expanding the chest through mouth and nostrils, and lifted my face to the sky.

A pale gleam of sunshine pierced through the canopy of London smoke.

It might have looked ghastly to a resident in the country, unused to the light London calls day, but to one immured in a prison cell it was an irradiation of glory.

The mind expanded under the lustre; imagination preened its wings, and sped beyond the haze into the everlasting blue.
Gallant Lovelace, in durance vile, boasted his unfettered mind, and sang-- "Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage." True, but the model prison was not invented then, nor was the silent system in vogue.

Lovelace's apartment was, perhaps, not so scrupulously clean as mine, but it commanded a finer prospect.