Upon entering the court, our attention was somewhat divided, between the remains of the baronial hall, numerous apartments, and the kitchen, which surrounded the area; and the well-turned arm that pointed to the several objects. A number of rooms in this court are kept in repair, and form a commodious residence, which is tenanted by Mr. Williams under a lease from the Duke of Beaufort. From this we passed to the second court, now laid out as a kitchen-garden. The third court contained the chapel, a fine remnant of antiquity, possessing a greater degree of decoration than any other part of the castle; a range of niches appear within the walk of this structure, at some distance from the floor, which is said to have been filled with statues; and the mortices of beams seem to indicate, that a gallery was conducted round the room. The style of the windows and enrichments is Gothic; but the original part of the building is Norman. Indeed, a unity of design and architecture appears throughout the fundamental parts of the castle; although, as may be expected, the continual alterations and additions of successive proprietors have left us several specimens of the intermediate modes of building between the Norman foundation and the present age. Among the undecorative additions of the latter period, are the deserted works of a glass-house, and a dog-kennel. Beyond the chapel we ascended a flight of steps to the battlements, shadowed by wide branching trees of various descriptions, issuing from the moat beneath. Opposite to us, beyond the moat, appeared the low embowered ruins of the fourth and last court, separated from the principal mass of building by a drawbridge. Returning, our fair guide conducted us to a subterraneous chamber with an engroined roof, excavated in the rock, beneath the ruin, and opening to the overhanging brow of the cliff. Here several old ivys darted from stony fissures that seemed to forbid vegetation, binding the mouldering summit of the cliff in their sinewy embrace; and, shedding their light tendrils round the cavern, embowered its aperture as they aspired in frequent volutions to the loftiest turrets of the pile. Here, and from several points in our perambulation of the ruin, we timidly looked down on the rapid Wye, rolling its swelling tide at an immense depth perpendicularly beneath us; and at other times the green waving hills of Piercefield rose in all their peculiar grandeur to our view, darkening the river with their widely projected shadows.