and this may have been done by some impoverished Crusader, who, among his many ideas derived from travel and foreign association, had got this one of walling up alive any one whom jealousy or fear or avarice might make it desirable for him to dispense with. Ah! those were barbarous times, we exclaim. Truly, they were. Nor is the world quite free from that barbarism yet, nor will be till ambition, the great master passion of man, true to the central fact of all truth, revolves universally in its own legitimate track round Life, making that, in lieu of wealth, power, or position, the passion and purpose of existence.
Where all is so vague and conjectural, very little can be said; but in perambulating the precincts of the Castle it is well to pause here and let the mind realise the fact that a living lady was once the sufferer of an extraordinary barbarism there, since it is the spirit which we bring to or find amongst things which is the best help to knowledge, and which avails the most also in producing within us the faculties which lead to its proper use.
Passing out of this ancient gateway, before which now lies a very large open space of ground used for drilling, &c., and beyond which are the barracks, we come to the guard house and outer gate. The first of these is a very old place, close by the gate, with windows in the old barbaric style of one pane only. Our conductor told us there was nothing to be seen there, and so we did not go in; but these guard houses were the old novelist's favourite places for intrigues and midnight machinations; and could the old dim walls of this guard house articulate, we might possibly hear
