ages and uses in the various departments of its structure. From the ground it occupied, one would hardly conceive it to have been a fighting castle. But when you come to look at the massive Cæsar's Tower, you will be impressed with its impregnable strength in the bow-and-arrow period of English warfare. Its lofty walls hold their frontage and perpendicular lines as true and even as if they were a last year's structure. It is seemingly composed of several towers connected by walls sixteen feet thick, perforated by window-holes which look like so many archways. It is built or faced with hewn red sandstone, and is a perfect specimen of mason-work. The Insurgent Barons stood a siege of six months against Henry III behind these strong walls, and in the reign of Edward I, Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, presided over a grand tournament beneath them. In a later century the castle passed into the hands of John o' Gaunt, who added the noble structure called the Lancaster Buildings, or banqueting hall. This must have been one of the finest specimens of architecture of his time in England, and, in ruins, presents the graceful proportions and embellishments of its structure. Under the regime of that celebrated nobleman the castle began to put a civilian dress over its coat of mail, and to echo with the music and mirth of dancing and feasting, instead of the clangour
