CHAPTER XVII.

I ARRIVE AT THE MARQUESS'S CASTLE.—AN ACCOUNT OF IT.

Go to the rude ribs of that ancient castle;

Through brazen trumpet send the breath of parle,

Into its ruin'd ears.

SHAKSPEARE.-Richard II.

BELFORD Castle, or Tower, for both names were common to it, was, as I have said, still twenty miles off, and it was evening (the sun being set) when I approached it. Parrot's account of the intervening country, particularly after I got to the town of Belford, was by no means exaggerated. Such a black, naked, wet moor, or rather morass, could hardly be seen, even in the wilder parts of Northumberland. I say wilder, because the beauties of the Tyne, the noble site of Hexham, and many other fine lines of the county, have always been admired by me.

Here, however, if a man was intent upon finding a place to increase his disgusts at the world, I

thought he could not have succeeded better than the marquess, when his election fell upon the spot in which this ancestral fortress had been placed. It must have been of this bleak and iron region that old Canterbury thought, when, speculating how to secure the country from the inroads of the Scot, while Henry V. warred in France, he assures his master,

"They of those marches, gracious sovereign,

Shall be a wall sufficient to defend

Our inland from the pilfering borderers."

According to their present appearance, the good archbishop might rather have said, that no wall was necessary, for there was nothing to pilfer. Except, indeed, the castle itself, and the park surrounding it, abruptly starting up, like an oasis in the desert, there was nothing to be seen for miles but slate quarries and wet heather, on which browsed a score or two skeletons of cattle and stunted sheep.

By the park-gate was a mere country hovel, by way of lodge, out of which issued a dirty old Hecate, to open it, without shoes or stockings, and with only one petticoat, in which, too, there was more than one rent.

When I entered the park, what struck me was, its wild and uncultivated look, though a paradise to the surrounding country. The ground plot of it was rather peculiar, composed of hills of different

shapes, conical, pyramidical, and tabular, some of them of steep ascent, some presenting a dark mass of planting, others quite bare, or merely dotted with

trees.

But though among these latter were some old oaks and elms, the bushes and brakes were in far greater abundance, full of wild berries, not unpicturesque at this time of year, but altogether left to nature, without a glimpse of art. There was certainly nothing like "meadows trim and daisies pied;" but there were shallow brooks with fringed banks in plenty, and two or three large fish-ponds in succession, the abode of carp, tench, and wildducks, flocks of which last flew up as we passed, so that I thought I was on a shooting excursion on the wastes of an extensive manor, instead of approaching the mansion of a great nobleman. Even the carriage road, which had once been gravelled, had been allowed to cover itself with grass, docks, and thistles, and the quartering was desperate. The deer were as wild as all the rest, just shewing their horns and looking at us through the glades that led up the hills, and then precipitately retreating to the covert on their tops.

And yet, though not what I expected so near to the dwelling of a grandee, and what all Browns and Reptons would have been shocked with, and Price, perhaps, have written a book to prove a

solecism in taste, there was something in it that pleased me. It was certainly no more than in unison with a massive, antique, and neglected tower, which looked down upon me, with no hospitable or friendly air, from the top of a steep and rocky mount, which it cost my horses infinite toil, not without danger, to ascend.

The castle itself was, however, interesting in this, that it was a real old border strong-hold, erected in the time of Edward II., and appeared, externally at least, just as it had been left in the days of Henry VII., when the ancestor of the marquess succeeded to it. It stood, as I said, upon a craggy hill, rising suddenly at the end of the park, and overlooking the sea, with a distant view of the Tweed, the white sails upon which proceeding to Berwick could in a clear day be seen. Like the Tantallon, immortalized by Scott, on the land side,

"Its varying circle did combine

Bulwark, and bartizan, and line,

And bastion, tower, and antage coign."

But seaward there was no need for these, for, in the language of the same poet,

"The far projecting battlement,

The steepy rock and frantic tide,
Approach of human step denied ;
And thus these lines and ramparts rude
Were left in deepest solitude."*

* Marmion.

Deep indeed; for, unless when thronged with a numerous border garrison, its inhabitants must have led,

"In high baronial pride,

A life both dull and dignified."

This indeed struck me potently, when I had scaled the steep on which the Tower was situated, and saw not a creature, any more than in the long drive I had taken through the park, to give sign of habitation.

The evening was grey and solemn, the Tower looked sullen, and the union flag, which in general spread itself out to the winds that almost constantly sweep over these heights, had now dropt listlessly down, and closely lapt itself round the staff, as if from very feebleness.

I know not why the gloom, which the loneliness of the scene occasioned, got such hold of me; but I have often thought of it since, and was carried instantly back to it, when, many 'years afterwards, I read in the poet I have just quoted,

"St. George's banner, broad and gay,
Now faded, as the fading ray

Less bright, and less was flung;

The evening gale had scarce the power
To wave it on the donjon tower,
So heavily it hung."*

Although, therefore, there was still a sort of grandeur about the place, it was an uncheerful

* Marmion,