Everything has vanished now, and for ever. Up on that wonderful crag to-day, where the scene is so still, and the "heavens' breath smells wooingly," we feel far more profoundly than in streets and cities, how grateful is the dominion of peace compared with the turbulence of war. For, looking over the westward parapet, at our feet is Vale Royal, a warm and smiling plain that stretches, literally, to the rim of the landscape. Randulph looked upon those far away Welsh mountains, the Frodsham hills, the estuaries of the Dee and the Mersey, all so beautiful as ingredients in the magnificent prospect. To-day we have that which he did _not_ see, and probably never imagined. Scattered over this glorious map are villages, homesteads, orchards, gardens innumerable; the vast breadth of bright emerald and sunny pasture laced with hedgerows that in spring are blossom-dappled, and streams, of which, although so distant, we get twinkling glimpses among the leafage. If it be autumn, the scene is chequered with the hues of harvest, every field plainly distinguishable, for one of the peculiar charms of the view from Beeston Castle rock, granting a favourable day, with lucid atmosphere, is that while the country is brimful, every element is well-defined. Later still, we may watch October winding its tinted way through the green summer of the reluctant trees;--this, no doubt, it did just in the same sweet old amber-sandalled fashion five centuries ago, but the trees did not then, as now, cast their shadows upon liberty and civilisation. Two periods there are when Beeston calls upon us to remember, with a sigh, that there are forms of beauty in the world in which we may not hope to revel many times, perhaps, in their perfection, not more than once or twice. One is mid-winter, when in the great hush of the virgin snow the landscape becomes a world carved in spotless marble; the other, when the corn is waiting the sickle, and the vast plain is steeped in sunset such as August only witnesses. Watched from this tall rock, the wind-sculptured clouds that an hour before were glistening pearl slowly change to purple mountains, while the molten gold boils up above their brows; these go, and by and by there are left only bars of delicate rose, and veils of fading asphodel, and at last we are with old Homer and the camp before Troy, "when the stars are seen round the bright moon, and the air is breathless, and all beacons, and lofty summits, and forests appear, and the shepherd is delighted in his mind."[15] So that, adding all together, the value of the grand old stronghold has in no wise died out, but only taken another shape. Instead of inspiring awe and terror, it supplies the heart with noble enjoyments, and with new and animating incentives to seek the rewards that attend love of the pure and beautiful. When at Beeston, on descending from the castle, we visit, as a matter of course, Peckforton, a mile beyond, the residence of Lord Tollemache.