tern on the top, and underneath an arched
cavern which you are pleased to learn is bomb-proof. As you cross the
drawbridge, you feel bound to admit that the prospect is not inviting.
It seems as if you were going to prison instead of to visit, at his
marine residence, one of the most courtly and (peradventure) the most
hospitable noblemen of his age. The severe stonework frowns upon you;
the portholes stare, and you almost wish that, regardless of expense,
you had kept your hansom waiting.

But all uneasiness vanishes as you cross the reverberating stone floor,
and pass into the apartments fronting the sea. You feel as if you had
journeyed into a new world, a sunnier clime. Your host, with
outstretched hand, welcomes you to Walmer, and makes kindly inquiries as
to the incidents of your journey.

"It is, I expect, very cold in London," he says, with his genial smile;
"you will find it Walmer here."

You protest that varieties of temperature are of very inconsiderable
concern to you, and, throwing yourself on the walnut couch by the recess
window, daintily draped with orange-and-blue chintz, you gaze forth on
the varied scene without. The stately ships go on to their haven under
the hill; the ever-changing procession presses on, homeward or outward
bound; and, beyond, the unbroken, treacherous barrier of the Goodwin
Sands.

"It's strange you should choose that place," your host says, in his
soft, liquid tones; "that was the favourite corner of a former
predecessor in the honourable office I now hold. In the first year of
this century, as you know, WILLIAM PITT was Lord Warden of the Cinque
Ports, and, tradition says, used, when he came down here, to sit at that
very window by the hour, gazing across the Downs towards the coast of
France, where his great enemy was preparing for a descent on the British
coast."

Naturally pleased by this coincidence, you endeavour to make your eyes
flash as you look across the sea (you remember to have read somewhere
that PITT had "an eagle eye;" perhaps two, but only one is mentioned);
try and think what PITT looked like generally, and what he did with his
arms, which you finally decide to fold across your chest, though
conscious that you more resemble NAPOLEON crossing the Alps than the
Great Commoner sitting at his drawing-room window in Walmer Castle.

Your host is pardonably proud of his Arboretum, which he has set out on
the roof where, in Tudor times, the cistern flaunted the