lapideo consistunt. Pictae domus et exterius et interius splendent.
Civitatis populus 50,000 _communicantium_ creditur. I suppose this gives
at least double for the total population. He proceeds to represent the
manners of the city in a less favourable point of view, charging the
citizens with gluttony and libertinism, the nobility with oppression,
the judges with corruption, &c. Vienna probably had the vices of a
flourishing city; but the love of amplification in so rhetorical a
writer as AEneas Sylvius weakens the value of his testimony, on whichever
side it is given.

[656] Vols. iv. and vi.

[657] Mr. Lysons refers Castleton to the age of William the Conqueror,
but without giving any reasons. Lysons's Derbyshire, p. ccxxxvi. Mr.
King had satisfied himself that it was built during the Heptarchy, and
even before the conversion of the Saxons to Christianity; but in this he
gave the reins, as usual, to his imagination, which as much exceeded his
learning, as the latter did his judgment. Conisborough should seem, by
the name, to have been a royal residence, which it certainly never was
after the Conquest. But if the engravings of the decorative parts in the
Archaeologia, vol. vi. p. 244, are not remarkably inaccurate, the
architecture is too elegant for the Danes, much more for the unconverted
Saxons. Both these castles are enclosed by a court or ballium, with a
fortified entrance, like those erected by the Normans.

[No doubt is now entertained but that Conisborough was built late in the
Norman period. Mr. King's authority, which I followed for want of a
better, is by no means to be depended upon. 1848.]

[658] Whitaker's Hist. of Whalley; Lysons's Cumberland, p. ccvi.

[659] The ruins of Herstmonceux are, I believe, tolerably authentic
remains of Henry VI.'s age, but only a part of Haddon Hall is of the
fifteenth century.

[660] Archaeologia, vol. vi.

[661] Blomefield's Norfolk, vol. iii. p. 242.

[662] Whitaker's Hist. of Whalley.

[663] Lyttelton, t. iv. p. 130.

[664] Harrison says, that few of the houses of the commonalty, except
here and there in the west country towns, were made of stone. p. 314.
This was about 1570.

[665] Hist. of Whalley.

[666] "The ancient manors and houses of our gentlemen," says Harrison,
"are yet and for the most part, of strong timber, in framing whereof our
carpenters have been and are worthily preferred before those of like
science among all other nations. Howbeit such