The irregular outline of the castle may be traced, and two detached groups of ruins, with a couple of drum towers, remain; but there is nothing of any special interest excepting the gateway and its defences. LINCOLN CASTLE. When “the devil looked over Lincoln” he is said to have smiled at man’s costly devotion. But if the smile of the arch-enemy of mankind was, as must be supposed, in derision of man’s attempts at progress, the occasion of it was singularly ill-chosen, for in the whole of Britain it would be difficult to find a tract for the well-being of which man has exerted himself so much and so successfully. Two thousand years ago, that broad but not unbroken plain which extends from the Wash to the Humber, from the Trent and the uplands of Nottingham and Derby to the German Ocean was composed of arid heath and moorish fen, contributing little to the material support of man, and probably nothing to his moral culture. Beasts of chase, fish, and water-fowl shared the territory with savage hordes, but little removed from the animals upon which they preyed. By slow degrees, by many generations of men, labouring through many centuries, great things have been achieved. The fen has been banked and drained, and the heath brought under culture, so that the whole expanse is now covered by green pastures and rich root crops, and year after year the autumnal sun is reflected from broad fields waving with golden grain. Nor has the moral been behind the material progress. From the castled hill of Belvoir, to the rocks of Newark and Nottingham, and the crowned promontory of Lincoln, the land bristles with the works of man. The constructive taste and skill of many generations, and their deep religious feeling, are represented by a rich variety of ecclesiastical architecture, from the rude and primitive tower of Barton to the lordly spires of Louth and Newark, and the glorious lanthorn of Boston; churches and schools, mansion-houses and granges, “tower and village, dome and farm,” are unmistakable evidences of peace, prosperity, and civilisation. There, too, are to be seen, not sparingly scattered, the sunken arch and ruined aisle, the ivy-covered remains and richly-carved fragments of many religious houses, making pleasant the study of hoar antiquity, and reminding us that there was a time when each was a centre of gospel truth, and of an early and beneficial civilisation, the abode of men who did good work in their day, and founded by those who— “Loved the Church so well, and gave so largely to it, They thought it should have canopied their bones Till Domesday.”