For the education and discipline of those military aspirants, the grand palæstra was the tilt-yard. For the feudal tournament--descriptions of which are handed down to us by contemporaneous authors--no substitute is left in these times. Nothing could have been more animated and dazzling, when celebrated with all those details of martial pomp and ceremony--indispensable to such exhibitions--than a pageant, in which all who aspired to distinction were required to evince, in action, the pure and elevating principles of love, loyalty, and religion. For these, and many other reasons, impartial taste, as Gibbon observes, must prefer a Gothic tournament to the Olympic games of classic antiquity. Instead of the naked spectacles which corrupted the manners of the Greeks, the pompous decoration of the lists was crowned with the presence of chaste and highborn beauty, from whose fair hands the conqueror received the prize of his dexterity and courage.[298]--And with this flattering [Illustration] contrast between the demoralizing festivals of Greece, and the high tone of refinement which characterised those of our Gothic forefathers, we pass on to such other points in the history of Raglan Castle as have been selected for illustration. In the woodcut introduced in the preceding page, the view is taken from the old <g>Bowling-green</g>--erroneously supposed to have been the Tilt-yard. Directly opposite, in the centre, is the Donjon, or Tower of Gwent, so often described or otherwise referred to in these pages. On the left, where a massive gateway is seen, is the entrance to the <g>Fountain Court</g>, from which, as formerly noticed, a noble staircase conducts to the State apartments occupying the south side of the Castle. These are now in a state of utter dilapidation; but the framework itself affords abundant evidence--so far as architectural design and elaborate ornament can assist us in such a conclusion--of their original splendour. [Illustration: The royal apartments.] “But now th’ unsightly brier grows, Where once, in gilded bower, The Queen of Beauty trained the rose-- Herself a fairer flower. And damp the hearth, and cold the bed, Where he who wore the crown, With anxious heart, and aching head, In slumber laid him down! But brief the slumber, long the night-- For <g>Naseby’s</g> fatal day, And sorrow’s still increasing weight, Had scared his sleep away!” There is a tradition, that the Bowling-green was King Charles’s favourite walk during his visit. It commands a varied and extensive prospect; the vegetation is vigorous; and the grassy carpet, though not in courtly trim, is still uninjured by plough or spade; and to sentimental tourists it seems the very spot--aided by the adjoining ruins--where, in the mirror of fancy, pictures of the olden day, the hues of domestic life as it passed in the fifteenth century, may be seen faithfully reflected.