I ever saw in any ancient work in England."

[3] _Beauties of England and Wales_, vol. ii.

The reader may more than once have noticed our predilection for
illustrating the castellated antiquities of Britain in our pages. We
have a threefold object in this choice: first, the architectural
investigation of these structures is of untiring interest; the events of
their histories are so many links in the annals of our country; while
they enable us to take comprehensive glances of the domestic manners of
times past, and by contrasting them with the present, to appreciate the
peaceful state of society in which we live.

Happily, such means of defence as castles supplied to our ancestors, are
no longer requisite. The towers, ramparts, and battlements that once
awed the enemy, or struck terror into an oppressed people, are now mere
objects of curiosity, The unlettered peasant gazes upon their ruins with
idle wonder; the antiquary explores their flittering masses with
admiration and delight. The breaches of the last siege are unrepaired;
the courtyard is choked up and overgrown with luxuriant weeds; the walls
become dank and discoloured with rank vegetation; the winds and rains of
heaven displace and disintegrate their massive stones; the tempest tears
them as in a terrific siege; or the slow and silent devastations of
nature go on beneath ivy and mossy crusts obscuring the proud work of
man's hand, and defacing its glories in desert waste. Such effects the
reader may witness in a few of the illustrations of the present volume:
the long tale of conquest upon conquest is told from the Norman sway to
the Revolution, in the history of Pontefract Castle (page 50); the
picturesqueness of decay in the towers of Wilton (page 306); and the
stratagems of war in the mounds and lines of Dunheved.