Least altered of all is the medieval kitchen, which occupies the base of a large tower and is one of the most interesting features of the castle. Its immense size serves to impress upon one the proportions of feudal hospitality--that the lord of the castle must look above everything else to the good cheer of his guests. But there is a touch of modernism here, too, in the iron ranges which have superseded the great fireplace--perhaps thirty feet in width--of former times. [Illustration: RABY CASTLE.] Raby cannot greatly boast of historic events, yet it is interesting to know that it was once the home of the younger Sir Henry Vane, who was governor of the colony of Massachusetts Bay in 1636. It was built by the Nevilles in 1370, but passed to other hands two hundred years later, when that family took part in the Catholic uprising in the north. But after all, Raby is far more interesting as a survival of the "days of roselight and romance" than would be the story of the tenure of this or that forgotten lord or earl. Barnard Castle takes its name from the ancient fortress whose scanty ruin still looms over the town. It stands on a cliff which drops from the castle wall almost sheer to the shallow Tees beneath. One thinks first of Dickens' association with the town and naturally enough hastens to the King's Head, where the novelist's room is still shown. Master Humphrey's clock, which adorned a building just opposite the hotel, has disappeared--purchased by an American, a native told us with a shade of indignation in his voice--but the town itself is little different from the one Dickens knew. He gained here much material for "Nicholas Nickleby," though at Bowes, high on the moor to the westward, is supposed to have been the original of Dotheboys Hall.