Figure this to yourself;--behold the whole of this magical scene at one glance;--connect with it all its associations;--think that here nine centuries of haughty power, of triumphant victory and destructive overthrow, of bloody deeds and wild greatness,--perhaps too of gentle love and noble magnanimity,--have left, in part, their visible traces, and where _they_ are not, their vague romantic memory;--and then judge with what feelings I could place myself in the situation of the man to whom such recollections are daily suggested by these objects,--recollections which, to him, have all the sanctity of kindred and blood;--the man who still inhabits the very dwelling of that first possessor of the fortress of Warwick, that half-fabulous Guy, who lived a thousand years ago, and whose corroded armour, together with a hundred weapons of renowned ancestors, is preserved in the antique hall. Is there a human being so unpoetical as not to feel that the glories of such memorials, even to this very day, throw a lustre around the feeblest representative of such a race? To make my description in some degree clear, I annex a ground-plan, which may help your imagination. You must imagine the river at a great depth below the castle-plain, and not visible from the point I have been describing. The first sight of it you catch is from the castle windows, together with the noble park, whose lines of wood blend on every side with the horizon. You ascend from the court to the dwelling-rooms by only a few steps, first through a passage, and thence into the hall, on each side of which extend the entertaining-rooms in an unbroken line of three hundred and forty feet. Although almost 'de plein-pied' with the court, these rooms are more than fifty feet above the Avon, which flows on the other side. From eight to fourteen feet thickness of wall forms, in each window-recess, a complete closet, with the most beautiful varied view over the river, wildly foaming below, and further on flowing through the park in soft windings, till lost in the dim distance. Had I till now, from the first sight of the castle, advanced from surprise to surprise,--all this was surpassed, though in another way, by what awaited me in the interior. I fancied myself transported back into by-gone ages as I entered the gigantic baronial hall,--a perfect picture of Walter Scott's;--the walls panelled with carved cedar; hung with every kind of knightly accoutrement; spacious enough to feast trains of vassals,--and saw before me a marble chimney-piece under which I could perfectly well walk with my hat on, and stand by the fire, which blazed like a funeral pile from a strange antique iron grate in the form of a basket, three hundred years old. On the side, true to ancient custom, was a stack of oak logs piled up upon a stand of cedar, which was placed on the stone floor partially covered by 'hautelisse' carpets. A man-servant dressed in brown, whose dress, with his gold knee-bands,