room in which, as well as in that above it, is
finished with compact smooth stonework, both having chimney-pieces,
with an arch resting on triple clustered pillars. In the third story,
or guard-chamber, is a small recess with a loop-hole, probably a
bedchamber, and in that floor above a niche for a saint or holy-water
pot. Mr. King imagines this a Saxon castle of the first ages of the
Heptarchy. Mr. Watson thus describes it. From the first floor to the
second story, (third from the ground,) is a way by a stair in the wall
five feet wide. The next staircase is approached by a ladder, and ends
at the fourth story from the ground. Two yards from the door, at the
head of this stair, is an opening nearly east, accessible by treading
on the ledge of the wall, which diminishes eight inches each story; and
this last opening leads into a room or chapel ten feet by twelve, and
fifteen or sixteen high, arched with free-stone, and supported by small
circular columns of the same, the capitals and arches Saxon. It has
an east window, and on each side in the wall, about four feet from the
ground, a stone basin with a hole and iron pipe to convey the water into
or through the wall. This chapel is one of the buttresses, but no sign
of it without, for even the window, though large within, is only a long
narrow loop-hole, scarcely to be seen without. On the left side of this
chapel is a small oratory, eight by six in the thickness of the wall,
with a niche in the wall, and enlightened by a like loop-hole. The
fourth stair from the ground, ten feet west from the chapel door, leads
to the top of the tower through the thickness of the wall, which at top
is but three yards. Each story is about fifteen feet high, so that the
tower will be seventy-five feet from the ground. The inside forms a
circle, whose diameter may be about twelve feet. The well at the bottom
of the dungeon is piled with stones."--Gough's "Edition Of Camden's
Britannia". Second Edition, vol. iii. p. 267.

************ FOOTNOTES ******************

]

[Footnote 1: The motto alludes to the Author returning to the stage repeatedly
after having taken leave.]

[Footnote 2: This very curious poem, long a desideratum in Scottish literature,
and given up as irrecoverably lost, was lately brought to light by
the researches of Dr Irvine of the Advocates' Library, and has been
reprinted by Mr David Laing, Edinburgh.]

[Footnote 3: Vol. ii. p. 167.]

[Footnote 4: Like the Herm