Nevertheless, in former times, the town, it would appear, must have been a place of some importance. Rising up the slopes of the hills, from the brink of the harbour, its narrow, tortuous, ill-lighted, unswept, and dilapidated-looking streets reached the summit of the high ground, where a number of superior houses were to be found, somewhat stately in appearance, antique in form, and cold and formal in aspect, except, indeed, where a cheerful little garden interposed, blushing with china-astres, dahlias, and other autumnal flowers. Yet even these could not give it an air of life, or if they did at all, it was an air of vegetable life. There was no movement, there was no activity in it. It seemed as if everybody in the place was dead, except a few men who had come in to bury the rest. Beyond these houses of the better classes, as rich people are called, were some poorer dwellings, descending the slope on the opposite side of the ridge; and beyond these again, came the ancient walls of the town, built and perfected when Barhampton was a place of strength. The town had not, indeed, been dismantled even yet, but it had been disarmed; and now, instead of large cannon, and soldiers 'bearded like pard,' the broad ramparts displayed the nursery-maids and the little children of the citizens flirting with apprentices, or peeping out of empty embrasures; or, on the Sunday, the great mass of the inhabitants of the town walking in gay attire, enjoying the fine air, and gazing over the wide prospect. Round about, nearly in the shape of a horse-shoe, from one point of the harbour to the other, enclosing the whole city, if it could be so called, within their area, swept those old walls, time-worn, and lichen-covered, and loaded with snapdragon. No mason's trowel, no busy chisel, had been employed upon them for more than two centuries, and the hard knocks of Oliver Cromwell's cannon had left traces still unobliterated even by the equalizing hand of time.