The home of the Glandores on Dublin Bay is a unique place, perched on rising ground, shaded by fine old timber. Originally an ecclesiastical establishment, it was turned into a fortress by Sir Amorey Crosbie in 1177, and has been altered and gutted, and rebuilt, with here a wing and here a bay, and there a winding staircase, or mysterious recess, to suit the whim of each succeeding owner, till it has swelled into a stunted honeycomb of meandering suites of rooms, whose geography puzzles a stranger on his first visit there. The only portions of it which remain intact, are (as may be seen by the great thickness of the walls) the hall, a long, low, narrow space, panelled in black oak and ceiled in squares; the huge kitchen, where meat might be roasted for an army; and the dungeons below ground. The remaining rooms (many of them like monkish cells) are of every shape and pattern, alike only in having heavy casement frames set with diamond panes, enormous obstinate doors, which creak and moan, declining to close or open unless violently coerced, and worm-eaten floors that slope in every freak of crooked line except the normal horizontal one. Indeed, the varied levels of the bedroom floor (there is but one storey) are so wildly erratic, that a visitor, who wakes for the first time in one of the pigeonholes that open one on the other, like the alleys of a rabbit warren, clings instinctively to his bedclothes as people do at sea, and, on second thoughts, is seized with a new panic lest the house be about to fall--an idle fear, as my lady is fond of showing; for the cyclopean rafters, that were laid in their places by the crumbled monks, are hard and black as iron, so seasoned by sea-air that they will possibly stand good so long as Ireland remains above the water. A gloomier abode than this it is scarce possible to picture; for the window-sashes are of exceeding clumsiness, the ornamentation of a ponderous flamboyancy in which all styles are twisted, without regard for canons, into curls and scrolls; and yet there is a blunt cosiness about the ensemble which seems to say, 'Here at least you are safe. If Dublin Bay were full of hostile ships, the adjacent land teeming with the enemy in arms, they might batter on for ever. They might beat at our portals till the last trump should summon them to more important business, but our panels would never budge.