coast before him: he felt as though he had at some
early period of his life been familiar with some of its features: which
yet seemed impossible: for he now understood from the helmsman that
what he saw were parts of the Caernarvonshire and Merionethshire coasts
in the neighbourhood of Pwlheli Bay.

The wind was fair, and the _Fleurs de lys_ carried so much sail, that
within the next hour the whole line of coast and bay began to unfold
itself; and all the larger objects were now becoming tolerably
distinct. Of these the most conspicuous was a lofty headland which
threw its bold granite front in advance of all the adjacent shore, and
ran out far into the sea. Like a diadem upon its summit was planted an
ancient castle; presenting a most interesting object to the painter, if
it were not in some respects rather grotesque. It might truly be
described as "planted:" for it seemed literally a natural growth of the
rock, and without division of substance: it was indeed in many places
an excavation quarried into the rocks rather than a superstructure upon
it: and, where this was not the case, the foundations had yet been
inlaid and dovetailed as it were so artificially into the splintered
crest of the rock, and the whole surface had been for ages so
completely harmonized in colour by storms and accidents of climate,
that it was impossible to say where the hand of art began or that of
nature ended. The whole building displayed a naked baronial grandeur
and disdain of ornament; whatever beauty it had--seeming to exist
rather in defiance of the intentions of its occupants and as if won
from those advantages of age and situation which it had not been in
their power to destroy. The main body of the building, by following and
adjusting itself to the outline of the rock, had of necessity taken the
arrangement of a vast system of towers and quadrangles irregularly
grouped and connected: at intervals it was belted with turrets: and its
habitable character was chiefly proclaimed by the immense number of its
windows, and by a roof of deep red tiles; which last, though generally
felt as a harsh blot in the picturesque honours of the castle, were
however at this particular time lowered into something like keeping by
the warm ruddy light of the morning sun which was now glancing upon
every window in the sea-front, and also by the dusky scarlet of
decaying ferns which climbed all the neighbouring hills and in many
plains skirted the water's ed