began. Many a block which once
may have helped to form a bastion here rests now in broken and diminished
shape as part of the chimney-corner of some shepherd's cottage within the
distant horizon, and the corner-stones of this heathen altar may form the
base-course of some adjoining village church.

Yet the very bareness of these inner courts and wards, their condition of
mere pasturage, protects what remains of them as no defences could do.
Nothing is left visible that the hands can seize on or the weather
overturn, and a permanence of general outline at least results, which no
other condition could ensure.

The position of the castle on this isolated hill bespeaks deliberate and
strategic choice exercised by some remote mind capable of prospective
reasoning to a far extent. The natural configuration of the surrounding
country and its bearing upon such a stronghold were obviously long
considered and viewed mentally before its extensive design was carried
into execution. Who was the man that said, 'Let it be built here!'--not
on that hill yonder, or on that ridge behind, but on this best spot of
all? Whether he were some great one of the Belgae, or of the Durotriges,
or the travelling engineer of Britain's united tribes, must for ever
remain time's secret; his form cannot be realized, nor his countenance,
nor the tongue that he spoke, when he set down his foot with a thud and
said, 'Let it be here!'

Within the innermost enclosure, though it is so wide that at a
superficial glance the beholder has only a sense of standing on a breezy
down, the solitude is rendered yet more solitary by the knowledge that
between the benighted sojourner herein and all kindred humanity are those
three concentric walls of earth which no being would think of scaling on
such a night as this, even were he to hear the most pathetic cries
issuing hence that could be uttered by a spectre-chased soul. I reach a
central mound or platform--the crown and axis of the whole structure. The
view from here by day must be of almost limitless extent. On this raised
floor, dais, or rostrum, harps have probably twanged more or less tuneful
notes in celebration of daring, strength, or cruelty; of worship,
superstition, love, birth, and death; of simple loving-kindness perhaps
never. Many a time must the king or leader have directed his keen eyes
hence across the open lands towards the ancient road, the Icening Way,
still visible in the distance, on th