deeply and darkly at the extreme angles of a curtain, or flat
wall, which united them, and thus protecting the main entrance,
that opened through a lofty arch in the centre of the curtain into
the inner court of the castle. The arms of the family, carved in
freestone, frowned over the gateway, and the portal showed the
spaces arranged by the architect for lowering the portcullis and
raising the drawbridge. A rude farm-gate, made of young fir-trees
nailed together, now formed the only safeguard of this once
formidable entrance. The esplanade in front of the castle
commanded a noble prospect.

The dreary scene of desolation through which Mannering's road had
lain on the preceding evening was excluded from the view by some
rising ground, and the landscape showed a pleasing alternation of
hill and dale, intersected by a river, which was in some places
visible, and hidden in others, where it rolled betwixt deep and
wooded banks. The spire of a church and the appearance of some
houses indicated the situation of a village at the place where the
stream had its junction with the ocean. The vales seemed well
cultivated, the little inclosures into which they were divided
skirting the bottom of the hills, and sometimes carrying their
lines of straggling hedgerows a little way up the ascent. Above
these were green pastures, tenanted chiefly by herds of black
cattle, then the staple commodity of the country, whose distant
low gave no unpleasing animation to the landscape. The remoter
hills were of a sterner character, and, at still greater distance,
swelled into mountains of dark heath, bordering the horizon with a
screen which gave a defined and limited boundary to the cultivated
country, and added at the same time the pleasing idea that it was
sequestered and solitary. The sea-coast, which Mannering now saw