d
it so exceedingly bitter that it struck me there would be small virtue for
me in abstinence.

KENILWORTH [Footnote: From Scott's "Kenilworth." Kenilworth is now the
most stately ruined castle in England. Its destruction dates from the
Civil War, when it was dismantled by soldiers under Cromwell. Then it was
allowed to decay. Scott describes it as it was in Queen Elizabeth's time.]

BY SIR WALTER SCOTT

The outer wall of this splendid and gigantic structure enclosed seven
acres, a part of which was occupied by extensive stables, and by a
pleasure garden, with its trim arbors and parterres, and the rest formed
the large base-court, or outer-yard, of the noble castle. The lordly
structure itself, which rose near the center of this spacious enclosure,
was composed of a huge pile of magnificent castellated buildings,
apparently of different ages, surrounding an inner court, and bearing in
the names attached to each portion of the magnificent mass, and in the
armorial bearings which were there blazoned, the emblems of mighty chiefs
who had long passed away, and whose history, could ambition have lent ear
to it, might have read a lesson to the haughty favorite, who had now
acquired and was augmenting the fair domain. A large and massive keep,
which formed the citadel of the castle, was of uncertain tho great
antiquity. It bore the name of Caesar, perhaps from its resemblance to that
in the Tower of London so called.

Some antiquaries ascribe its foundation to the time of Kenelph, from whom
the castle had its name, a Saxon King of Mercia, and others to an early
era after the Norman Conquest. On the exterior walls frowned the
escutcheon of the Clintons, by whom they were founded in the reign of
Henry I., and of the yet more redoubted Simon de Montfort, by whom, during
the Barons' wars, Kenilworth was long held out against Henry III. Here
Mortimer, Earl of March, famous alike for his rise and his fall, had once
gaily revelled in Kenilworth, while his dethroned sovereign, Edward II.
languished in its dungeons. Old John of Gaunt, "time-honored Lancaster,"
had widely extended the castle, erecting that noble and massive pile which
yet bears the name of Lancaster's buildings: and Leicester himself had
outdone the former possessors, princely and powerful as they were, by
erecting another immense structure, which now lies crusht under its own
ruins, the monument of its owner's ambition. The external wall of this
royal castle