decent, rosy, smiling, talking old woman, who has come bustling out of the
gatehouse, and who has a large, dropsical, innocent husband standing about
on crutches in the sun and making no sign when you ask after his health.
This poor man has reached that ultimate depth of human simplicity at which
even a chance to talk about one's ailments is not appreciated. But the
civil old woman talks for every one, even for an artist who has come out of
one of the rooms, where I see him afterward reproducing its mouldering
quaintness. The rooms are all unoccupied and in a state of extreme decay,
though the castle is, as yet, far from being a ruin. From one of the
windows I see a young lady sitting under a tree across a meadow, with her
knees up, dipping something into her mouth. It is a camel's hair
paint-brush: the young lady is sketching. These are the only besiegers to
which the place is exposed now, and they can do no great harm, as I doubt
whether the young lady's aim is very good. We wandered about the empty
interior, thinking it a pity things should be falling so to pieces. There
is a beautiful great hall--great, that is, for a small castle (it would be
extremely handsome in a modern house)--with tall, ecclesiastical-looking
windows, and a long staircase at one end climbing against the wall into a
spacious bedroom. You may still apprehend very well the main lines of that
simpler life; and it must be said that, simpler though it was, it was
apparently by no means destitute of many of our own conveniences. The
chamber at the top of the staircase ascending from the hall is charming
still, with its irregular shape, its low-browed ceiling, its cupboards in
the walls, and its deep bay window formed of a series of small lattices.
You can fancy people stepping out from it upon the platform of the
staircase, whose rugged wooden logs, by way of steps, and solid,
deeply-guttered hand-rail, still remain. They looked down into the hall,
where, I take it, there was always a certain congregation of retainers,
much lounging and waiting and passing to and fro, with a door open into the
court. The court, as I said just now, was not the grassy, æsthetic spot