What I have said of servitude, I again say of imprisonment, we are all prisoners. [3853]What is our life but a prison?  We are all imprisoned in an island.  The world itself to some men is a prison, our narrow seas as so many ditches, and when they have compassed the globe of the earth, they would fain go see what is done in the moon.  In [3854]Muscovy and many other northern parts, all over Scandia, they are imprisoned half the year in stoves, they dare not peep out for cold.  At [3855]Aden in Arabia they are penned in all day long with that other extreme of heat, and keep their markets in the night.  What is a ship but a prison?  And so many cities are but as so many hives of bees, anthills; but that which thou abhorrest, many seek:  women keep in all winter, and most part of summer, to preserve their beauties; some for love of study:  Demosthenes shaved his beard because he would cut off all occasions from going abroad:  how many monks and friars, anchorites, abandon the world. Monachus in urbe, piscis in arido.  Art in prison?  Make right use of it, and mortify thyself; [3856] “Where may a man contemplate better than in solitariness,” or study more than in quietness?  Many worthy men have been imprisoned all their lives, and it hath been occasion of great honour and glory to them, much public good by their excellent meditation. [3857]Ptolomeus king of Egypt, cum viribus attenuatis infirma valetudine laboraret, miro descendi studio affectus, &c. now being taken with a grievous infirmity of body that he could not stir abroad, became Strato’s scholar, fell hard to his book, and gave himself wholly to contemplation, and upon that occasion (as mine author adds), pulcherrimum regiae opulentiae monumentum, &c., to his great honour built that renowned library at Alexandria, wherein were 40,000 volumes.  Severinus Boethius never writ so elegantly as in prison, Paul so devoutly, for most of his epistles were dictated in his bands:  “Joseph,” saith [3858]Austin, “got more credit in prison, than when he distributed corn, and was lord of Pharaoh’s house.”  It brings many a lewd, riotous fellow home, many wandering rogues it settles, that would otherwise have been like raving tigers, ruined themselves and others.

Banishment is no grievance at all, Omne solum forti patria, &c. et patria est ubicunque bene est, that’s a man’s country where he is well at ease.  Many travel for pleasure to that city, saith Seneca, to which thou art banished, and what a part of the citizens are strangers born in other places? [3859]_Incolentibus patria_, ’tis their country that are born in it, and they would think themselves banished to go to the place which thou leavest, and from which thou art so loath to depart.  ’Tis no disparagement to be a stranger, or so irksome to be an exile. [3860]"The rain is a stranger to the earth, rivers to the sea, Jupiter in Egypt, the sun to us all.  The soul is an alien to the body, a nightingale to the air, a swallow in a house,