ssible, and the natural
impediments of approach were increased by walls, and gates, and ditches,
and draw-bridges. The door of access was often a window in the wall, ten
or fifteen feet from the ground, to which the inmates or their friends
mounted by a ladder. The floors were of stone, the walls were naked, the
ceiling was a rudely-constructed series of arches. The apartments, too,
were ordinarily small, and were arranged one above another, in the
successive stories of a tower. Nor could these cell-like chambers be
enlivened by the wide and cheerful windows of modern times, which not
only admit the light to animate the scene within, but also afford to the
spectator there, wide-spread, and sometimes enchanting views of the
surrounding country. The castle windows of ancient days were, on the
contrary, narrow loop-holes, each at the bottom of a deep recess in the
thick wall. If they had been made wide they would have admitted too
easily the arrows and javelins of besiegers, as well as the wind and
rain of wintery storms. There were no books in these desolate dwellings,
no furniture but armor, no pleasures but drinking and carousals.

Nor could these noble and valiant knights and barons occupy themselves
in any useful employment. There was nothing which it was respectable for
them to do but to fight. They looked down with contempt upon all the
industrial pursuits of life. The cultivation of farms, the rearing of
flocks and herds, arts, manufactures, and commerce--every thing of this
sort, by which man can benefit his fellow-man, was entirely beneath
them. In fact, their descendants to the present day, even in England,
entertain the same ideas. Their younger sons can enter the army or the
navy, and spend their lives in killing and destroying, or in awaiting,
in idleness, dissipation, and vice, for orders to kill and destroy,
without dishonor; but to engage in any way in those vast and magnificent
operations of peaceful industry, on which the true greatness and glory
of England depend, would be perpetual and irretrievable disgrace. A
young nobleman can serve, in the most subordinate official capacity, on
board a man-of-war, and take pay for it, without degradation; but to
_build_ a man-of-war itself and take pay for it, would be to compel his
whole class to disown him.

It was in consequence of this state of feeling among the knights and
barons of William's day that peace was always tedious and irksome to
them, and they wer