nd
gave to the Cistercian monks of Neath all his conquests in South Wales.
It was a huge rambling building, half castle, half dwelling-house, such
as may be seen still (almost an unique specimen) in Compton Castle
near Torquay, the dwelling-place of Humphrey Gilbert, Walter Raleigh's
half-brother, and Richard Grenville's bosom friend, of whom more
hereafter. On three sides, to the north, west, and south, the lofty
walls of the old ballium still stood, with their machicolated turrets,
loopholes, and dark downward crannies for dropping stones and fire on
the besiegers, the relics of a more unsettled age: but the southern
court of the ballium had become a flower-garden, with quaint terraces,
statues, knots of flowers, clipped yews and hollies, and all the
pedantries of the topiarian art. And toward the east, where the vista
of the valley opened, the old walls were gone, and the frowning Norman
keep, ruined in the Wars of the Roses, had been replaced by the rich
and stately architecture of the Tudors. Altogether, the house, like the
time, was in a transitionary state, and represented faithfully enough
the passage of the old middle age into the new life which had just burst
into blossom throughout Europe, never, let us pray, to see its autumn or
its winter.

From the house on three sides, the hill sloped steeply down, and the
garden where Sir Richard and Amyas were walking gave a truly English
prospect. At one turn they could catch, over the western walls, a
glimpse of the blue ocean flecked with passing sails; and at the next,
spread far below them, range on range of fertile park, stately avenue,
yellow autumn woodland, and purple heather moors, lapping over and over
each other up the valley to the old British earthwork, which stood black
and furze-grown on its conical peak; and standing out against the sky on
the highest bank of hill which closed the valley to the east, the lofty
tower of Kilkhampton church, rich with the monuments and offerings of
five centuries of Grenvilles. A yellow eastern haze hung soft over park,
and wood, and moor; the red cattle lowed to each other as they stood
brushing away the flies in the rivulet far below; the colts in the
horse-park close on their right whinnied as they played together, and
their sires from the Queen's Park, on the opposite hill, answered them
in fuller though fainter voices. A rutting stag made the still woodland
rattle with his hoarse thunder, and a rival far up the valley