t leading out to a walk that goes right round the castle cliffs at
the base of the ivy-draped walls.

From down below comes the sound of the river, ceaselessly chafing its
rocky bottom and the big boulders that lie in the way. You can
distinguish the hollow sound of the waters as they fall over ledges
into deep pools, and you can watch the silvery gleams of broken water
between the old stone bridge and the dark shade of the woods. The
masses of trees clothing the side of the gorge add a note of mystery to
the picture by swallowing up the river in their heavy shade, for, owing
to its sinuous course among the cliffs, one can see only a short piece
of water beyond the bridge.

The old corner of the town at the foot of Bargate appears over the edge
of the rocky slope, but on the opposite side of the Swale there is
little to be seen beside the green meadows and shady coppices that
cover the heights above the river.

There is a fascination in this view in its capacity for change. It
responds to every mood of the weather, and every sunset that glows
across the sombre woods has some freshness, some feature that is quite
unlike any other. Autumn, too, is a memorable time for those who can
watch the face of Nature from this spot, for when one of those opulent
evenings of the fall of the year turns the sky into a golden sea of
glory, studded with strange purple islands, there is unutterable beauty
in the flaming woods and the pale river.

On the way back to the market-place we pass a decayed arch that was
probably a postern in the walls of the town. There can be no doubt
whatever of the existence of these walls, for Leland begins his
description of the town with the words '_Richemont_ Towne is
waullid,' and in another place he says: 'Waullid it was, but the waul
is now decayid. The Names and Partes of 4 or 5 Gates yet remaine.' We
cannot help wondering why Richmond could not have preserved her gates
as York has done, or why she did not even make the effort sufficient to
retain a single one, as Bridlington and Beverley did. The two
posterns--one we have just mentioned, and the other in Friar's Wynd, on
the north side of the market-place, with a piece of wall 6 feet thick
adjoining--are interesting, but we would have preferred something much
finer than these mere arches; and while we are grumbling over what
Richmond has lost, we may also measure the disaster which befell the
market-place in 1771, when the old cross was destroyed