There is Warwick Castle,--a written history, no doubt, to scholars, a mine of wealth to antiquaries and architects; but how incomplete would my associations be with the spot, were you banished from the picture, my sturdy friend, fit type of the female retainers of the household of the King-Maker, who, stationed within the ivied approach to the castle, presided at the brazen porridge-pot, once holding food enough to satisfy ten score of men, now empty, save for the volume of sound which stuns the ear when you strike it with your ponderous iron bar! Can I ever forget the scene of laughter and riot, when you installed me within the capacious vessel, dubbed me "Countess Guy, of the Porridge-Pot," and, the rest of my party having been induced to accept the hospitalities of the place, and mount my triumphal car, declared your intention to light a fire beneath and have the finest stew in all England? The castle is a stern place, perhaps; but how can I ever think it grim, with such a jolly old flatterer as you stationed at its portal? And here, in my blundering way, I have stumbled on the secret spring of my whole subject; so I may as well make a merit of confession, and acknowledge frankly that the trap in which these wary guides entangled my affections was generally neither more nor less than a net of silken flattery. Your good guide, your dear guide, your pet guide, whom Neighbor So-and-so, going abroad, must look up immediately on his arrival, this invaluable creature, depend upon it, is an arrant flatterer. He does not go out of his way for you; he does not tell it you to your face; but, somehow or other, (if he knows his vocation,) he makes you believe, that, of all the travellers he ever escorted, (and he has been a travellers' escort from his infancy,) you are the first, the only one, in whose behalf duty became a privilege. Do you suppose I put faith in Michel, when, on my second Alpine excursion, this companion of the previous day's peril placed himself in close proximity to my mule, took the bridle with an air of satisfaction, and whispered with an insinuating smile, "I go with _you_ to-day; see, there is another guide for Mademoiselle"? He was mistaken. It was my young friend whom he was, on this occasion, destined to escort over the mountain. He was as devoted to her as if she had been the apple of his eye. Whether I followed next in the file, brought up the rear, or was dashed over the precipice, I doubt if he looked behind him to discover. Was I fool enough, then, to trust his professions? I acknowledge the weakness. I was but a novice, he a practised courtier in the guise of a mountaineer. To make a clean breast of it, I even suspect that his self-gratulatory whisper is still ringing in my ear, for I find that Mademoiselle and I are rivals in our devotion to Michel.