It has stopped raining at last, and Eustace, who is again the kindest and most considerate of men, has taken me all over the castle and the grounds, or at least a great part. St. Salvat's is even more romantically situated than I had thought; and with its towers and battlements hidden in deep woods, it makes one think of castles, like that of Otranto, which one reads of in novels; nay, I was the more reminded of the latter work of fiction (which Eustace believes to be from the pen of the accomplished Mr. Walpole, whom we knew in Paris), that there are, let into the stonework on either side of the porch, huge heads of warriors, filleted and crowned with laurel, which though purporting to be those of the Emperors Augustus and Trajan, yet look as if they might fit into some gigantic helmet such as we read of in that admirable tale. From the house, which has been built at various times (Eustace is of opinion mainly in the time of the famous Cardinal Wolsey, as the architecture, it appears, is similar to that of His Majesty's palace at Hampton Court), into the old castle; from the house, as I say, the gardens descend in great terraces and steps into the woods and to the sea. The gardens are indeed very much neglected, and will require no doubt, a considerable expenditure of labour; but I am secretly charmed by their wild luxuriance: a great vine and a pear tree hang about the mullioned windows almost unpruned, and the box and bay trees have grown into thickets in the extraordinary kindliness of this warm, moist climate. There is in the middle of the terraces, a pond all overgrown with lilies, and with a broken leaden statue of a nymph. Here, when he was a child, Eustace was wont to watch for the transformation into a fairy of a great water snake which was said to have lived in that pond for centuries; but I well remember his awakening my compassion by telling me how, one day, his brother Thomas, wishing to displease him, trapped the poor harmless creature and cruelly skinned it alive. "That is the place of my poor water snake," Eustace said to-day; and it was the first time since our coming, that he has alluded to his own or his family's past. Poor Eustace! I am deeply touched by the evident painful memories awakened by return to St. Salvat's, which have over-clouded his reserved and sensitive nature, in a manner I had not noticed (thank Heaven) since our marriage. But to return to the castle, or rather its grounds. What chiefly delights my romantic temper are the woods in which it is hidden, and its singular position, on an utterly isolated little bay of this wild and dangerous coast. You go down the terraces into a narrow ravine, lined with every manner of fern, and full of venerable trees; past the little church of which our Uncle Hubert is the incumbent, alongside some ruined buildings, once the quarters of the Brandlings' troopers, across a field full of yellow bog flowers, and on to a high wall.