s departed, and those years
When, from an antique tower, ere life's fair prime,
The mournful mazes of their mingling chime
First wak'd my wondering childhood into tears!"

From the Cathedral I passed to the mansion of Old Earl Patrick,--a
stately ruin, in the more ornate castellated style of the sixteenth
century. It stands in the middle of a dense thicket of what are _trying_
to be trees, and have so far succeeded, that they conceal, on one of the
sides, the lower story of the building, and rise over the _spring_ of
the large richly-decorated turrets. These last form so much nearer the
base of the edifice than is common in our old castles, that they exhibit
the appearance rather of hanging towers than of turrets,--of towers with
their foundations cut away. The projecting windows, with their deep
mouldings, square mullions, and cruciform shot-holes, are rich
specimens of their peculiar style; and, with the double-windowed turrets
with which they range, they communicate a sort of _high-relief_ effect
to the entire erection, "the exterior proportions and ornaments of
which," says Sir Walter Scott, in his Journal, "are very handsome."
Though a roofless and broken ruin, with the rank grass waving on its
walls, it is still a piece of very solid masonry, and must have been
rather stiff working as a quarry. Some painstaking burgher had, I found,
made a desperate attempt on one of the huge chimney lintels of the great
hall of the erection,--an apartment which Sir Walter greatly admired,
and in which he lays the scene in the "Pirate" between Cleveland and
Jack Bunce, but the lintel, a curious example of what, in the exercise
of a little Irish liberty, is sometimes termed a _rectilinear arch_,
defied his utmost efforts; and, after half-picking out the keystone, he
had to give it up in despair. The bishop's palace, of which a handsome
old tower still remains tolerably entire, also served for a quarry in
its day; and I was scarce sufficiently distressed to learn, that on
almost the last occasion on which it had been wrought for this purpose,
one of the two men engaged in the employment suffered a stone, which he
had loosed out of the wall, to drop on the head of his companion, who
stood watching for it below, and killed him on the spot.

CHAPTER XI.

The Bishop's Palace at Orkney--Haco the Norwegian--Icelandic
Chronicle respecting his Expedition to Scotland--His Death--Removal
of his Remains to Norway