to the Tower of the Temple—that gloomy
revolutionary Bastile, the scene of the last
days of Louis the Sixteenth and Marie
Antoinette, and of the slow agony and death of
the poor little captive dauphin—the tower
that was afterwards to witness the darkest
episodes of the Consulate—the reported
suicides, but whispered murders, of Pichegru
and Captain Wright—the last adieux of the
simple, yet desperate, Chouans—the stern
presence of their leader Georges Cadoudal. In
the Temple, then, Sir Sidney Smith was
incarcerated. The guards were doubled, the
defences strengthened, all communication
from without was denied him, and the most
rigid surveillance was exercised over all his
actions.

Once having got their prisoner safe within
the four strong walls of the Temple, however,
isolated him from all exterior influences, and
placed a strong guard over him, the Directory
did not feel it necessary to treat him with any
great personal severity. They did not load
him with chains, they did not lock him up in
a dungeon, they did not feed him upon bread
and water. Sir Sidney was amply provided
with pecuniary resources, and was allowed to
keep himself. Apartments, the most commodious
that the prison could afford, were
allotted to him, and, furthermore, he was
allowed to maintain something like an
establishment of domestics. Besides Captain
Wright, who acted as his secretary, he had a
cook, a valet, and notably an English servant,
half groom, half confidential man, called
Sparkes. The cook and valet were freemen,
and Frenchmen; Sparkes had been taken
prisoner at the same time as the commodore, but
the condition attached to the French who
were permitted to attend upon Sir Sidney
was, that they should share his imprisonment—
not one was permitted to pass the outer gate
of the Temple.

I am not aware whether it has ever been
the lot of any of the ladies or gentlemen who
read this to have suffered the slow torture of
imprisonment. I hope not; but if any such
there be, they will readily understand how
prone is the human mind, when the body is
incarcerated, to devote itself to the culinary
art. Most prisoners are good cooks, or, at
least, love good eating. The man with the iron
mask was a gourmand. The sham dauphin
(one of the nine hundred and ninety-nine
sham dauphins) who called himself Duke de
Normandie, and had passed three-fourths of
his existence in the different prisons of Europe,
was renowned for the confection of roast
turkey stuffed with chestnuts. When confined
in Ste Pèlagie, in eighteen hundred and thirty-
three, it was a matter of daily occurrence to
hear a cry from his fellow prisoners of " Capet,
is the turkey nearly ready?" and the pseudo-
descendant of St. Louis would answer, " I am
dishing it." The late Mr. Rush, on the
memorable occasion of his trial, addressed
a very specific and emphatic billet-doux from
his retreat in Norwich Castle to the eating-
house keeper opposite, commanding pig, " and
plenty of plum sauce." I have seen in Whitecross
Street prison an analytical chemist
frying pancakes, and it was once my fortune
to know, in the Queen's Bench, a doctor
of divinity whose mockturtle soup would
have rather astonished Mr. Farrance of
Spring Gardens. Now, though Sir Sidney
Smith on shipboard would have been
perfectly content with ship's cookery,—salt junk,
salt horse, or salt mahogany, as it is
indifferently called; plum duff, grey pea-soup,
sea pie, lobscouse, weevilly biscuit, and new
rum—no sooner did he find himself immured
in the Temple, than he fell into the ordinary
idiosyncrasy of prisoners, and became an
accomplished bon-vivant. The choicest of
fish, flesh, and fowl were procured from the
Parisian market, and (after being strictly
examined at the gate to see whether they
contained any treasonable missives) furnished
forth, by no means coldly, his prison table.
The famous roast beef of Old England was
seen, and smoked within those gloomy walls.
Sir Sidney had endless disputes with the
French cook concerning the thickness of
melted butter, the propriety of potatoes
appearing at table with their skins on; the
injury done to a rumpsteak by beating
it; the discretion necessary in the employment
of garlic, and the number of hours
necessary to be devoted to the boiling of a
plum-pudding. The cook would not boil it
long enough. Unless closely watched, he
would withdraw it furtively from the pot,
hide it in secret places till dinner-time, and
declare stoutly that it had been boiling eight
hours when it had not been three on the fire.
But, errors excepted, the captives lived as
well as those bellicose bipeds of the
gallinaceous breed whose spur-combats were
formerly the delight of our British nobility,
are popularly supposed to live. Nor were
good liquids wanting to wash down these
succulent repasts. For the first time,
perhaps, in France that noble compound, the
punch of the United Kingdom (for England,
Scotland, and Ireland are all equally famous
for it) was brewed within the prison walls;
and every Frenchman who tasted it— even
the rabidest enemy of " Pitt et Cobourg"
thenceforth renounced the small-beer julep,
half sour, half syruppy, thitherto misnamed
"punch " abroad. Brandy, sherry, and claret
also formed part of the commodore's cellar,
and, in particular, he had laid in a supply of
admirable old port wine—rare old stuff—
bottles of liquid rubies, in a setting of rich
crust and cobwebs. Money can do almost
anything in any times. It can break the
sternest of blockades, and, though it could
not get Sir Sidney Smith out of prison, it
could procure him a supply of the primest
wines in the English market. The French
cook admired the old port wine hugely. He
discovered that " porto " was required for a