were it not for this. It helps our fancy to fill up the vast breaks in the walls of Kenilworth. Dudley, and Chepstow; to reconstruct their banqueting halls, their drawing-rooms, galleries, crypts, and kitchens; and to reproduce them entire in their first and fullest grandeur. By the light of Warwick we can not only rebuild and roof the broken walls of these old castles, but bring into the vista of the imagination their interior embellishments, their carved cornices and wainscoting, their luxurious furniture, tapestry, paintings, and other works of art. Thus Warwick represents to us in its living being and form of to-day the hundreds of castles that were planted over the island in the first century after the Conquest. Schamyl in his native costume and dignity could not represent better at St. Petersburgh the leaders of the Circassian race and country, than does this grand home and fortress of the Warwicks the embattled citadels of the old English knights.
Warwick Castle, the fortress of one of the stoutest and grimmest of the old English fighting knights, did not put on the armour of nature to help out its own. It did not take advantage of perpendicular rocks or river-sides like Stirling, Edinburgh, or Chepstow. At first thought one might fancy the founders of it selected the location more for fishing than fighting. And now, in
