far-off time, some hints of a Mayday revel, of a state execution, of a
royal entry. You may catch some sound which recalls the thrum of a queen's
virginal, the cry of a victim on the rack, the laughter of a bridal feast.
For all these sights and sounds--the dance of love and the dance of
death--are part of that gay and tragic memory which clings around the
Tower.

From the reign of Stephen down to that of Henry of Richmond, Caesar's
tower (the great Norman keep, now called the White Tower), was a main part
of the royal palace; and for that large interval of time the story of the
White Tower is in some part that of our English society as well as of our
English kings. Here were kept the royal wardrobe and the royal jewels; and
hither came with their goody wares the tiremen, the goldsmiths, the
chasers and embroiderers, from Flanders, Italy, and Almaigne. Close by
were the Mint, the lion's den, the old archery-grounds, the Court of
King's Bench, the Court of Common Pleas, the Queen's gardens, the royal
banqueting-hall, so that art and trade, science and manners, literature
and law, sport and politics, find themselves equally at home.

Two great architects designed the main parts of the Tower: Gundulf the
Weeper and Henry the Builder; one a poor Norman monk, the other a great
English king.

Gundulf, a Benedictine friar, had, for that age, seen a great deal of the
world; for he had not only lived in Rouen and Caen, but had traveled in
the East. Familiar with the glories of Saracenic art, no less than with
the Norman simplicities of Bec, St. Ouen, and St. Etienne, a pupil of
Lanfranc, a friend of Anselm, he had been employed in the monastery of Bec
to marshal with the eye of an artist all the pictorial ceremonies of his
church. But he was chiefly known in that convent as a weeper. No monk at