AUTHORITIES:--Camden.--Stow.--Blome.--Leland.--Grafton.--Hall.--Life of the Black Prince.--do. Richard the Second.--Archæologia.--Gentleman’s Mag.--Hasted.--Parliamentary Surveys.--Lambard.--Lysons.--Kilburne.--Graphic Illustrator.--Collins’s Peerage.--Buckler.--Notices of Eltham.--MS. Visit to Eltham, March, 1842.--Royal Halls. For an admirable description of Greenwich Park and its vicinity, the reader is referred to Mr. Miller’s “Lady Jane Grey,”--“Banks of the Thames,” etc. etc. [Illustration: ROCHESTER CASTLE.] [Illustration] THE CASTLE OF ROCHESTER. Long have I loved to catch the simple chime Of minstrel-harps, and spell the fabling rhyme; To view the festive rites, the knightly play, That deck’d heroic Albion’s elder day; To mark the mouldering Halls of Barons bold, And the rough Castles, cast in giant mould; With Gothic manners Gothic arts explore, And muse on the magnificence of yore.--WARTON. “<g>As we</g> descended the hill towards Rochester, how solemn the appearance of the <g>Castle</g>, with its square ghastly walls, and their hollow eyes rising over the right bank of the Medway, grey and massive and floorless--nothing remaining but the shell!” Such was the memorandum of her visit to this scene, left by the author of the Mysteries of Udolpho, as she descended Strood Hill, and gazed upon the magnificent ruin to which this portion of our work is to be directed. Viewed from this point--the hill above named--the Castle appears to great advantage. Soaring in lofty pre-eminence over the surrounding buildings, and even the Cathedral, it conveys to the spectator’s mind a deep impression of what it must have been in the palmy days of chivalry, when mailed warriors lined its ramparts, when joust and tourney animated its courts, and banners floated from its towers. In its present condition it bears that resemblance to its former self which a skeleton bears to the living body. The framework is there, but the life is fled,--the light is extinguished; and in the full glare of day, like the wreck of mortality, it assumes only a more melancholy aspect. But still, the interest connected with this landmark of antiquity is increased, rather than diminished, by contemplation. Fancy repeoples its courts, rebuilds its towers, restores its original order and dimensions, till we enjoy the picture which imagination thus embodies, and seem for the time, as if we were transported into romantic ages and took a part in those historic scenes of which its walls were once the theatre. At every one of those loop-holes and unlatticed casements, we seem to discern the warlike forms that once animated the building, and hurled defiance on the assailants. We hear the sound of revelry in the hall, the clang of arms in the ‘bayle,’ and the rattle of the portcullis as it drops from the lofty archway, and fastens its iron teeth in the pavement.--But we need