walls seems to have been faced with brick of comparatively modern date.
The keep also was coated with brick within, and with stones carefully
squared without. The windows are so battered, that no idea can be formed
of their original style. The walls of the keep are filled with small
square apertures. At Rochester, and at many other castles in England, we
observe the same; and unless you can give a better guess respecting
their use, you must content yourself with mine: that is to say, that
they are merely the holes left by the scaffolding. At the foot of the
hill to the west is a gate-house, by no means ancient, from which a wall
ascends to the castle; and another similar wall connects the fortress
with the ground below, on the north-eastern side; but the extent or
nature of these out-works can no longer be traced. Still less possible
would it be to say any thing with certainty as to the excavations, of
the length of which, tradition speaks, as usual, in extravagant terms,
and mixes sundry marvellous and frightful tales with the recital.

In the general plan a great resemblance is to be traced between many
castles in Wales and its frontiers, especially Goodrich Castle, and this
at Arques. Yet I do not think that any of ours are of an equal extent;
nor can you well conceive a more noble object than this, when seen at a
distance: and it is only then that the eye can comprehend the vast
expanse and strength of the external wall, with the noble keep towering
high above it.

[Illustration: Church at Arques]

Until the revolution, the decaying town of Arques was not wholly
deprived of all the vestiges of its former honours: the standards of the
weights and measures of Upper Normandy were deposited here. It was the
seat of the courts of the Archbishop of Rouen, and, though the actual