"My thoughts are indeed within me, humming in my head. I must go forth to meet the spirits. Look here," he went on, "the soul of man is like a fly in a cobweb. It can't spread its wings till it breaks loose, and then it very often carries away some of the threads with it."
Mr. Jacks gives us, in his "Human Studies," one of a shepherd on the Wolds, the counterpart of my postman. There be more of these men than is generally supposed. But he who would deal with this subject would be constrained to say with the knight in the "Canterbury Pilgrims"—
"I have, God wot, a large field to ere
And wayke ben the oxen in the plough."
I have broken away from my caves, and have rambled—I know not whither.
Vive, vale: si quid novisti rectius istis,
Candidus imperti; si non, his utere mecum.
—HORACE, Epist. i. 6.
APPENDIX
Owing to the great kindness of Mr. Wm. Stevenson, author of "Bygone Nottinghamshire," I am able to give some additional matter that must be of interest, with which he has supplied me.
(p. 32.) "Your account reminds me of a rock excavation of great extent with turns and windings on the old time 'Way to the Gallows,' in Nottingham, where a number of cave-dwellings existed down to a century ago. The last tenant was a sandman who stabled his ass in the cave behind. He passed the greater part of his life in selling sand about the town, carrying it in a sack across the back of his ass. Time wore him out, and he had to enter the workhouse. His cave was then explored, and it was found of enormous extent, in two storeys. It is supposed to have been mainly wrought day after day and year after year by this sandman. It is still to be seen, but dangerous to explore. One party of investigators a few years ago carried a string with them as a clue by means of which to find their way out again. There is a story of it becoming a lurking place of robbers after the sandman's day. A number of the excavations under the town are held to have been made or extended by the tenants above, obtaining their supply of sand from below. Formerly floors were sanded."
(p. 35.) Puticoli. Slave pits have been found in South Africa. "When the old town hall and town prison at Nottingham was demolished a few years ago, and the site was excavated for the advance of the Great Central Railway, seven or more pits were found, one with a rusty chain in it. They were about four feet in diameter at the top, and seven feet at the bottom, with dished floors. They varied from about twelve to eighteen feet in depth. We had no knowledge of anything of the kind in local history. Two others were found a distance away that could have had no connection with the prison site."
Formerly at Monte Carlo the bodies of suicides were thrust into the holes that riddle the limestone rock and gave it the name of Les Spelunges. But the conditions became insanitary, and Italian workmen were employed to get them out, and carry them away to sea and there sink them.