that blows freely upon us from the great moorland wastes stretching away to the western horizon. It is a romantic country that lays around us, and though the cultivated area must be infinitely greater than in the fighting days when these battlements were finished, yet I suppose the Vale [Illustration: RICHMOND FROM THE WEST FROM this point of view, a great stretch of fertile and richly wooded country is seen. The mediæval-looking town, perched on its rocky height above one of the deep windings of the Swale, plainly shows how its name of the Rich Mount suggested itself. The castle keep shows most prominently, but to the left of it can be seen the Grey Friar’s Tower and those of the two churches.] of Mowbray which we gaze upon to the east must have been green, and to some extent fertile, when that Conan who was Duke of Brittany and also Earl of Richmond looked out over the innumerable manors that were his Yorkshire possessions. I can imagine his eye glancing down on a far more thrilling scene than the green three-sided courtyard enclosed by a crumbling gray wall, though to him the buildings, the men, and every detail that filled the great space, were no doubt quite prosaic. It did not thrill him to see a man-at-arms cleaning weapons, when the man and his clothes, and even the sword, were as modern and everyday as the soldier’s wife and child that we can see ourselves, but how much would we not give for a half an hour of his vision, or even a part of a second, with a good camera in our hands? Instead of wasting time on vain thoughts of this character, it would perhaps be wiser to go down and examine the actual remains of these times that have survived all the intervening centuries. In the lower part of what is called Robin Hood’s Tower is the Chapel of St. Nicholas, with arcaded walls of early Norman date, and a long and narrow slit forming the east window. More interesting than this is the Norman hall at the south-east angle of the walls. It was possibly used as the banqueting-room of the castle, and is remarkable as being one of the best preserved of the Norman halls forming separate buildings that are to be found in this country. The hall is roofless, but the corbels remain in a perfect state, and the windows on each side are well preserved. The builder was probably Earl Conan, for the keep has details of much the same character. It is generally called Scolland’s Hall, after the Lord of Bedale of that name, who was a sewer or dapifer to the first Earl Alan of Richmond. Scolland was one of the tenants of the Earl, and under the feudal system of tenure he took part in the regular guarding of the castle. There is probably much Norman work in various parts of the crumbling curtain walls, and at the south-west corner a Norman turret is still to be seen.