lumes or other idle trappings of
fictitious woe, through the avenues of unhired mutes, whose heads were
bowed in heartfelt reverence, and lines of infant mourners, clad in the
livery of their benefactor's bounty, and watering the pathway to his tomb
with honest tears of childhood's love--the attitudes of grief and
saddened faces that filled the crowded aisles, and no less crowded walks
above--the hushed breathing that left the air free to echo the tones of
the wailing dirge, as it rose upon the voices of the surpliced choir, who
mourned a child of harmony, and wafted their strains of lamentation
through all the heights of the vaulted roof, while beneath its centre the
grave was receiving the earthly tabernacle of the good, the
noble-hearted, and the great in deeds of love and charity? Who does not
remember the measured tread of the dispersing thousands, as each took his
last look of the simple coffin in its last resting-place, and as the dead
march sent forth its full low notes from the organ's peal, and the rich
closing bursts of harmony proclaimed like a rush of mighty wind the
soul's release and triumph? and who has not often since lingered around
the simple marble slab that marks the spot, and felt that it had been
consecrated as a shrine, by a baptism of tears from the fountain of
loving hearts on that memorable day?

CHAPTER III.
THE CASTLE.

_The Castle_.--_Present aspect_.--_Grave of the Murderer_.--_Historical
Associations_.--_View from the Battlements_.--_Thorpe_.--_Kett's
Castle_.--_Lollard's Pit_.--_Mousehold_.--_Plan of Military Structure of
Feudal Times_.--_Marriage of Ralph Guader_.--_Roger Bigod_.--_Feudal
Ranks_.--_Social Life_.--_Field Sports_.--_Hawking_.--_Legend of
Lothbroc_.--_Laws of Chivalry_.--_Tournaments_.--_Feminine
Occupations_.--_Tapestry_.

In the centre of the Old City rises one of those huge mounds, heaped up
by our ancient warrior forefathers, which here and there, over the
surface of our island, yet stand out in bold relief against the blue
back-ground of the sky, like giant models for some modern monster
twelfth-cake, only, however, occasionally crowned by the original
structures, of which they were the ground-works, and in no other case,
perhaps by one whose outward coating of modern date more thoroughly might
carry out the suggested idea of a frosted moulding, designed to grace the
summit of a supper-table fortification.

How involuntary is the longing to peel off the