CLIFF CASTLES
protracted reign of oppression and then a sudden upheaval in resentment and a firebrand applied to them all. The old English mansion has its cellars, but never an oubliette, its porch-door always open to welcome a neighbour and to relieve the indigent. It was not insulated by a dyke, and its doors clenched with a portcullis. The spoils of the chase were not a drove of "lifted" cattle taken from a peasant left stark upon his threshold, but foxes' masks and the antlers of deer. The pigeons coo about the English gables and the peacock dreams in the sun on the balustrade of the terrace, as in past centuries, but the castle of the French noble and the burg of the German ritter are given over to the bats and owls, and are quarries whence the peasants pick out the heraldic carvings for the construction of their pig-styes.
Nowhere did tears so stain and furrow the face of the land as in that portion of France that was ceded to England. De Quincey says: "Within fifty years in three pitched battles that resounded to the ends of the earth, the chivalry of France had been exterminated. Her oriflamme had been dragged through the dust. The Eldest Son of Baptism had been prostrated. The daughter of France had been surrendered on coercion as a bride to her English conqueror. The child of that marriage, so ignominious to the land, was King of France by the consent of Christendom; that child's uncle domineered as regent of France; and that child's armies were in military possession of the land. But were they undisputed masters? No!—under a perfect conquest there would have been repose; whereas the presence of the English armies did but furnish a plea, making strong in patriotism, for gathering everywhere of lawless marauders, of soldiers that had deserted their banners, and of robbers by profession. This was the woe of France more even than the military dishonour."[1]
- ↑ Essay on Charles Lamb.
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