it is that the top of the hill
is cut up into small fields with high hedges, and that the ditch is cut
up into gardens. There is therefore no means either of going freely
about, or of taking any connected view of the top of the hill. Still,
the general line of the place can be easily made out, and we soon see
that a site well suited for its purpose has been made the most of. The
actual hill of the castle makes no special show in the distance. No
longer marked by the castle itself, it seems simply part of the general
mass of high ground on which both town and castle stand, and from which
the castle-hill itself stands forward in a peninsular fashion towards
the north. The hill is round, or nearly so; and no small measure of
human skill has been employed in adapting it to purposes of defence. We
spoke of a ditch; but a ditch is hardly the right word. At a good height
above the actual bottom, as one feels very strongly in going up the road
from Argentan, the castle-hill strictly so called is surrounded by the
artificial work which, for want of a better name, we have called a
ditch. But it is safer to say that the hill-side has been cut, leaving
the upper part of the hill with scarped sides rising above a flat piece
of ground all round, which puts on the character of a ditch or not
according as the hill-side at different points supplies a bank on the
other side. It is on the side towards the town that it is most truly a
ditch. The general effect is something like the clerestory of a round
church, the Temple Church or any other, rising above a flat-roofed
surrounding aisle. The ditch is wide, and doubtless has been
deeper--that is, more of a ditch--than it is now; that is, its use for
gardens must have raised its general level. One's thoughts somehow
rather go away to Marsala than to Arques or Old Sarum--perhaps because
in those last we can freely go about, while gardens, houses, what not,
come in the way both at Marsala and at Exmes. If they were away, the
whole thing would be more like some of the ditches on the Malvern hills
than anything else.

Such is all that is to be seen of the castle of Exmes; but, in the
absence of an actual donjon that can have seen the wars of the Conqueror
and his sons, it is quite enough. The look-out is a wide one indeed; but
it is now easier to get it from the road going back to Argentan than
from the top of the hill itself. The eye ranges over a vast space
chiefly to the north-west, over the