side, which had once been defended by a strong iron
grating of which some part remained: it led to a flight of stone
stairs, which I began to ascend slowly, stopping every moment to
listen; but all was still as the grave. On each side of this winding
staircase I peeped into several chambers, all solitary and ruinous:
more and more surprised, I continued to ascend till I put my head
unexpectedly through a trap-door, and found myself on the roof on the
tower: it was spacious, defended by battlements, and contained the
only signs of warlike preparation I had met with; _videlicet_, two
cannons, or culverins, as they are called, and a pyramidal heap of
balls, rusted by the sea air.

I sat down on one of the cannon, and leaning on the battlements,
surveyed the scene around, below me, with a feeling of rapture, not a
little enhanced by the novelty and romance of my situation. I was
alone--I had no reason to think there was a single human being within
hearing. I was at such a vast height above the town and the shore,
that not a sound reached me, except an indistinct murmur now and then,
borne upwards by the breeze, and the scream of the sea-fowl as they
wheeled round and round my head. I looked down giddily upon the blue
sea, all glowing and trembling in the sunshine: and the scenery around
me was such, as the dullest eye--the coldest, the most _unimaginative_
soul, could not have contemplated without emotion. I sat, I know not
how long, abandoned to reveries, sweet and bitter, till I was startled
by footsteps close to me, and turning round, I beheld a figure so
strange and fantastic, and considering the time, place, and
circumstance, so incomprehensible and extraordinary, that I was dumb
with surprise. It was a little spare old man, with a face and form
which resembled the anatomy of a baboon, dressed in an ample nightgown
of flowered silk, which hung upon him as if it had been made for a
giant, and trailed on the ground, a yard and a half behind him. He had
no stockings, but on his feet a pair of red slippers, turned up in
front like those the Turks wear. His beard was grizzled, and on his
head he wore one of the long many-coloured woollen caps usually worn
in this country, with two tassels depending from it, which nearly
reached his knees. I had full time to examine the appearance and
costume of this strange apparition as he stood before me, bowing
profoundly, and looking as if fright and wonder had deprived him of
speech.