gentlemen and statesmen, I should not have been
driven to the course I intend to pursue.

"I left the Terrace very early this morning, and at
half-past seven o'clock I arrived at the carriage-road of
Dilstone Castle. I stood, and before me lay stretched the
ruins of my grandfather's baronial castle; my heart beat
more quickly as I approached. I am attended by my two
faithful retainers, Michael and Andrew. Mr. Samuel Aiston
conveyed a few needful things; the gentle and docile pony
trotted on until I reached the level top of the
carriage-road, and then we stopped. I dismounted and opened
the gate and bid my squires to follow, and, in front of the
old flag tower, I cut with a spade three square feet of
green sod into a barrier for my feet, in the once happy
nursery--the mother's joyful upstairs parlour--the only room
now standing, and quite roofless. I found not a voice to
cheer me, nothing but naked plasterless walls; a hearth with
no frame of iron; the little chapel which contains the
sacred tombs of the silent dead, and the dishonoured ashes
of my grandsires.

"All here is in a death-like repose, no living thing save a
few innocent pigeons, half wild; but there has been a
tremendous confusion, a wild and wilful uproar of rending,
and a crash of headlong havoc, every angle is surrounded
with desolation, and the whole is a monument of state
vengeance and destruction. But here is the land--the home of
my fathers--which I have been robbed of; this is a piece of
the castle, and the room in which they lived, and talked,
and walked, and smiled, and were cradled and watched with
tender affection. You never saw this old tower nearer than
from the road; the walls of it are three feet or more in
some parts thick, and of rough stone inside. The floor of
this room where I am writing this scrawl is verdure, and
damp with the moisture from heaven. It has not even beams
left for a ceiling, and the stairs up to it are scarcely
passible; but I am truly thankful that all the little
articles I brought are now up in this room, and no accident
to my men.

"Radcliffe's flag is once more raised! and the portraits of
my grandfather and great-grandfather are _here_, back again
to Devilstone Castle (_alias_ Dilstone), and hung on each
si