Directly across the river from Leyburn is Middleham, the old-time capital of Wensleydale and one of the quaintest and least modernized towns it was our good fortune to see. The drab-colored buildings straggle up the hill upon whose crest sits Middleham Castle, grim, vast and wholly ruinous. And after wandering through the maze of shattered walls and tottering towers, it seemed to us that here was the very ideal of ruined castles. We had seen many of them, but none more awe-inspiring, none more suggestive of the power of the cataclysm which left such fortresses, seemingly impregnable as the hills themselves, in shapeless wreck and ruin. Here and there the ivy and wall flower mantled the nakedness of the mouldering stone, and a stout sapling of several years' growth had fastened its roots in the deep mould high on one of the towers. Truly, Cromwell did his work well at Middleham. Such a stronghold could be dealt with only by gunpowder mines, which were responsible for the cracked and sundered walls and the shapeless masses of stone and mortar which have never been cleared away. [Illustration: MIDDLEHAM CASTLE, WENSLEYDALE.] There are memories connected with Middleham Castle as grim as the ruin itself; for with them is intertwined the name of Richard of Gloucester, the hunchback whose crimes, wrought into the imperishable lines of Shakespeare, have horrified the world. When he came here the castle was owned by the Nevilles, and here he married Anne, the daughter of the house, and thus became possessed of the estate. Here his only son, for whom he committed his unspeakable crimes, was born and here his ambitions were blasted by the boy's early death. But it is no task of mine to tell the story of Richard III.--only to recall his associations with Middleham. And we noted on one of the two ancient town crosses the rudely carved figure of a boar, the emblem of this ruthless king. Altogether, Middleham is very unique--old-world describes it better than any other term, perhaps. There is scarcely a jarring note of any kind; the only thing approaching mediocrity and seemingly much out of place, is the Victoria Jubilee Fountain. And the customs of the town still have a savor of medievalism--bulls were baited within the memory of living men.