he eager eye with mixed
melancholy and surprise! The singular half-circular, and half-square,
corner towers, hanging over the ever-restless wave, interested us
exceedingly. The guide shewed us where the prisoners used to be kept--in
a dungeon, apparently impervious to every glimmer of day-light, and
every breath of air. I cannot pretend to say at what period even the
oldest part of the castle of Montmorenci[194] was built: but I saw
nothing that seemed to be more ancient than the latter end of the
fifteenth century. Perhaps the greater portion may be of the beginning
of the sixteenth; but, amidst unroofed rooms, I could not help admiring
the painted borders, chiefly of a red color, which run along the upper
part of the walls, or wainscots--giving indication not only of a good,
but of a splendid, taste. Did I tell you that this sort of ornament was
to be seen in some part of the eastern end of the abbey of Jumieges?
_Here_, indeed, they afforded evidence--an evidence mingled with
melancholy sensations on conviction--of the probable state of
magnificence which once reigned throughout the castle. Between the
corner towers, upon that part which runs immediately parallel with the
Seine, there is a noble terrace, now converted into garden ground, which
commands an immediate and extensive view of the embouchure of the river.
It is the property of a speculator residing at Havre. Parallel with this
terrace, runs the more modernised part of the castle, which the last
residing owner inhabited. It may have been built about fifty years ago,
and is--or rather the remains of it are--quite in the modern style of
domestic architecture. The rooms are large, lofty, and commodious;--yet
nothing but the shells of them remain. The revolutionary patriots
completely gutted them of every useful and every valuable piece of
furniture; and even the bare walls are beginning to grow damp, and
threaten immediate decay. I made several memoranda upon the spot, which
have been unluckily, and I fear irretrievably, misplaced; so that, of
this once vast, and yet commanding and interesting edifice, I regret
that I am compelled to send you so short and so meagre an account.
Farewell--a long and perhaps perpetual farewell--to the Castle of
Montmorenci!"

NOTES:

[192] According to Masseville, (_Histoire de Normandie_, II. p. 192,)
this abbey was not founded till the year 1114; but such a statement is
irreconcileable with the fact of the dead body of the C