supported the Ionic volute, while the arch, which appeared to spring
from these capitals, had, for a keystone, heads more monstrous than
those of the fabled animals of Ctesias; or so ludicrous, that you forgot
the classic griffin in the grotesque conception of the Italian artist.
Here was a gibbering monkey, there a grinning pulcinello; now you viewed
a chattering devil, which might have figured in the "Temptation of St.
Anthony;" and now a mournful, mystic, bearded countenance, which might
have flitted in the back scene of a "Witches' Sabbath."

A long gallery wound through the upper story of two other sides of the
quadrangle, and beneath were the show suite of apartments with a sight
of which the admiring eyes of curious tourists were occasionally
delighted.

The grey stone walls of this antique edifice were, in many places,
thickly covered with ivy and other parasitical plants, the deep green of
whose verdure beautifully contrasted with the scarlet glories of the
pyrus japonica, which gracefully clustered round the windows of the
lower chambers. The mansion itself was immediately surrounded by
numerous ancient forest trees. There was the elm with its rich branches
bending down like clustering grapes; there was the wide-spreading oak
with its roots fantastically gnarled; there was the ash, with its smooth
bark and elegant leaf; and the silver beech, and the gracile birch; and
the dark fir, affording with its rough foliage a contrast to the trunks
of its more beautiful companions, or shooting far above their branches,
with the spirit of freedom worthy of a rough child of the mountains.

Around the Castle were extensive pleasure-grounds, which realised the
romance of the "Gardens of Verulam." And truly, as you wandered through
their enchanting paths there seemed no end to their various beauties,