o
the lower town, and that only priests, poor people, and prisoners dwell in
these upper regions. In the wide, dry moat at the base of the castle-wall
are clustered whole colonies of small houses, some of brick, but the
larger portion built of old stones which once made part of the Norman
keep, or of Roman structures that existed before the Conqueror's castle
was ever dreamed about. They are like toadstools that spring up from the
mould of a decaying tree. Ugly as they are, they add wonderfully to the
picturesqueness of the scene, being quite as valuable, in that respect, as
the great, broad, ponderous ruin of the castle-keep, which rose high above
our heads, heaving its huge gray mass out of a bank of green foliage and
ornamental shrubbery, such as lilacs and other flowering-plants, in which
its foundations were completely hidden.

After walking quite round the castle, I made an excursion through the
Roman gateway, along a pleasant and level road bordered with dwellings of
various character. One or two were houses of gentility, with delightful
and shadowy lawns before them; many had those high, red-tiled roofs,
ascending into acutely pointed gables, which seem to belong to the same
epoch as some of the edifices in our own earlier towns; and there were
pleasant-looking cottages, very sylvan and rural, with hedges so dense and
high, fencing them in, as almost to hide them up to the eaves of their
thatched roofs. In front of one of these I saw various images, crosses,
and relics of antiquity, among which were fragments of old Catholic
tombstones, disposed by way of ornament.

We now went home to the Saracen's Head; and as the weather was very
unpropitious, and it sprinkled a little now and then, I would gladly have
felt myself released from further thraldom to the Cathedral. But it had
taken possession of me, and would not let me be at rest; so at length I
found myself compelled to climb the hill again, between daylight and dusk.
A mist was now hovering about the upper height of the great central tower,
so as to dim and half obliterate its battlements and pinnacles, even while
I stood in the close beneath it. It was the most impressive view that I
had had. The whole lower part of the structure was seen with perfect
distinctness; but at the very summit the mist was so dense as to form an
actual cloud, as well denned as ever I saw resting on a mountain-top.
Really and literally, here was a "cloud-capt tower."

The entire