ildings, and a high embattled wall. On
the northern side arose a considerable mountain, of which the descent
that lay between the eminence on which the Castle was situated seemed a
detached portion, and which had been improved and deepened by three
successive huge trenches. Another very deep trench was drawn in front of
the main entrance from the east, where the principal gateway formed the
termination of the street, which, as we have noticed, ascended from the
village, and this last defence completed the fortifications of the
tower.

In the ancient gardens of the Castle, and upon all sides of it excepting
the western, which was precipitous, large old trees had found root,
mantling the rock and the ancient and ruinous walls with their dusky
verdure, and increasing the effect of the shattered pile which towered
up from the centre.

Seated on the threshold of this ancient pile, where the "proud porter"
had in former days "rear'd himself,"[I-2] a stranger had a complete and
commanding view of the decayed village, the houses of which, to a
fanciful imagination, might seem as if they had been suddenly arrested
in hurrying down the precipitous hill, and fixed as if by magic in the
whimsical arrangement which they now presented. It was like a sudden
pause in one of Amphion's country-dances, when the huts which were to
form the future Thebes were jigging it to his lute. But, with such an
observer, the melancholy excited by the desolate appearance of the
village soon overcame all the lighter frolics of the imagination.
Originally constructed on the humble plan used in the building of Scotch
cottages about a century ago, the greater part of them had been long
deserted; and their fallen roofs, blackened gables, and ruinous walls,
showed Desolation's triumph over Poverty. On some huts the rafters,
varnished with soot, were still standing, in whole or in part, like
skeletons, and a few, wholly or partially covered with thatch, seemed
still inhabited, though scarce habitable; for the smoke of the
peat-fires, which prepared the humble meal of the indwellers, stole
upwards, not only from the chimneys, its regular vent, but from various
other crevices in the roofs. Nature, in the meanwhile, always changing,
but renewing as she changes, was supplying, by the power of vegetation,
the fallen and decaying marks of human labour. Small pollards, which had
been formerly planted around the little gardens, had now waxed into huge
and high fore