It was built originally as a stronghold, to keep the fiery and oft-times rebellious citizens of London in check, and was afterward occupied alternately, or at the same time, as a prison or palace. Many a terrible drama has been enacted within the ancient walls, many a broken heart has wasted away within the solid stone in its gloomy dungeons, and many a noble head has parted company with its body, under its cold shadow, and there is any quantity of "human interest," as the dramatists say, connected with it. There is a strong flavor of murder all through it, there is cruelty written upon every stone, and treachery and death on every inch of the cold, paved floors. If a king desired to put quietly out of the way a dangerous rival, or if he lusted after a woman, or wanted anything that was especially unlawful and damnable, he could not have been better fixed for the business than with this fortress, provided he had a sufficient number of servitors to do his bidding faithfully. And that sort of material was very plenty, in those days, for kings who had the means of rewarding them. The devil himself could not have fitted up a better arrangement if he had given his whole mind to the matter, and his ability in this direction is unquestioned. There are dungeons where an unfortunate's cries could never be heard; there are cells so strong that escape was simply impossible, even without the watchful care of the soldiery with which it was filled, and in short over each of its gates might well be written, "Who enters here leaves hope behind." It is a wonderful but an intensely disagreeable place. These old places are not the most cheerful in the world, but still I like them. A ride behind a tandem team through the green lanes of Hampstead, with the beautiful hedges on either hand, and the quaint old houses with their steep red-tiled roofs, and their low rooms and curious little windows that look more like eyes than windows, the broad fields, grass green, (grass is greener in England than America,) with the beautiful sleek cattle feeding peacefully, is a more pleasant thing, for it is a singular as well as delightful mixture of to-day and yesterday. The fields and cattle are of to-day, the houses are of a long ago yesterday, but there is added what the Tower has not, the sun, which is of yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow, shining down, and lighting up the quiet glories that surround you. This is not depressing. The houses fit the atmosphere--in good sooth I cannot imagine such houses in any other atmosphere, and certainly the atmosphere would not be complete without the houses. Everything adapts itself to everything else. A pale face would be as much out of place in an American rum shop as a strawberry patch in an alkaline desert. Rum requires something lurid--the quiet, soft, hazy English atmosphere exactly fits the soft brown and the subdued red that almost narrowly escapes being a brown of the houses. [Sidenote: THE CHEERFULNESS OF THE TOWER.]