Of the few stories of escapes from the Tower, none is more romantic than that of Lord Nithsdale, saved by his wife's devotion. Failing to obtain a pardon from King George I. she, in her love and despair, bethought herself of a desperate plan. Under the pretence of a last visit, and with the connivance of a faithful servant, she managed to disguise her husband as her Welsh maid, and got him past the Tower sentries into safety; the next morning he would have perished with Lord Derwentwater, "the pride of the North," and the rest of the Scotch Jacobites. Yet the Tower, even in mediæval times, was not all tragedy; for here, from Henry III.'s era, a royal menagerie was kept,--a menagerie of which the famous "Tower Lions," that existed here up to 1853, were the eventual outcome. (From the Tower Lions comes originally the phrase, "to see the Lions," or the sights, of a place.) The beasts are still commemorated in the Tower by the "Lions' Gate,"--or principal entrance. The Tower Moat, the broad ditch that encircled the building, and added to its mediæval impregnability, was drained in 1843, and its banks are now planted, on the north-east, with a pleasant shrubbery; through which winds a foot-path with comfortable seats and delightful views, much enjoyed and appreciated by the very poor. Thus, the old age of the Tower,--Julius Cæsar's traditional fortress, and the scene of England's darkest national crimes,--is, as often that of Man himself, full of benevolence and serenity. Its brutal youth, its sanguinary middle life, are alike far behind it; and "that which should accompany old age, as honour, love, and troops of friends," it may now look to have. And the long roll of the Tower victims, lying, many of them, in nameless graves, their very bones sometimes uncoffined; these have at any rate, by their death often achieved an immortality greater than any they could ever have gained by their lives. They were, in a sense, as was that old Roman, Marcus Curtius, sacrifices to their country's gods; for by such throes as overthrew them, have all nations reached peace and salvation. "I see," they might, like Sydney Carton, have cried prophetically at the block, "I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time ... gradually making expiation for itself."