“Majestic Raglan! harvests wave Where thundering hosts their watchword gave; When cavaliers, with downcast eye, Struck the last flag of loyalty!” <g>The Cellars.</g>--These subterranean receptacles are of vast extent; and, in massive strength and proportions--like a crypt under a cathedral--are worthy of the noble edifice that covers them. In times of danger, and particularly during the siege, they appear to have served the manifold purposes of cellars, storehouses, larders, magazines, and muniments of war, with provisions for a numerous garrison and household. At the north-eastern part of the court, the buildings were nearly all mutilated, or thrown down by the enemy’s batteries, which, from a rising ground in the line of his approach, played with destructive force upon this portion of the walls. Fragments, however, still remain to show the predominant features of the Castle--its strength and beauty. From this point, we are told, communication with the citadel was secured by means of a sumptuous arched bridge, with a gate to correspond. But of these no distinct vestiges are left. The “sumptuous bridge” is replaced by a rustic structure of wood; the moat it spans is half filled with decayed vegetables and debris; and the water, that formerly enclosed the Keep like a wall of crystal, is now covered with a sluggish green surface, that exhibits a very different kind of life. In other parts of the moat, however, it is deep and transparent, mostly so at the south corner, where masses of verdure--with a particularly old and very picturesque tree, as shown in the illustration--are reflected as if in a mirror. This is probably the most interesting point of view in the whole Castle. Of a still summer evening, about sunset, the outline of the gray towers and battlements, with all their contrasted features of light and shade, beauty and decay--here fringed with wood, and there displaying honourable scars--sleeps on the face of the water like an inverted picture. The scene, with all its singular accompaniments, has then a dreaminess of romance about it, similar to that which the Fata Morgana conjures up on the Straits of Messina--but with this important difference, that the scenery here, however romantic, is real and substantial; that all we behold is the work of Art, over which Nature has only thrown her splendid illusion of cloud, sunshine, and exuberant vegetation.