The castle ruin bears so many traces of the destruction of successive sieges and consequent restorations that as it now stands it makes an architectural and archæological puzzle which we felt quite unable to struggle with. In general plan it is not unlike other mediæval strongholds, with yard and keep, watch-towers and gates, banquet-hall and chapel, and with extensive outworks intended to protect the little town of Dürrenstein, at once its weakness and its strength. Utterly neglected by the owner, whoever he may be, the perfection of its masonry and the wonderful quality of the mortar have alone prevented it from becoming long since an ugly mass of worthless rubbish. Most of the later constructions have, indeed, fallen down, or have served so long as convenient quarries that they have almost disappeared. We did not find without some difficulty the traces of the grand old stairway that led from the lower enclosure on the town side up into the pile of buildings at the top and the older part of the castle. Scrambling up a moraine of small stones and mortar, an unsightly avalanche, where the noble flight of steps once mounted the ledge, we came to an irregular open space, now roofless, but with doorways almost perfect and well-preserved window penetrations. From this passages lead into towers on the edge of the precipice, and into a small vaulted chapel, where rows of Byzantine saints cover the walls with dim visions of red and yellow, their halos now but circlets of rough holes where jewels were once embedded in the mortar, and their rigid countenances disfigured by the weathering of centuries of storms and frosts that have fought nature’s battle on this bleak and dizzy crag. The northern wall of the open space just alluded to is a solid ledge of rock hewn square and true, and in this wall is an opening like a doorway, but bearing no traces of hinges or of any other contrivance to close it, which leads into a spacious room cut out of the hard stone. If this was the place where Richard Cœur de Lion was confined, not only could no minstrel song ever have reached his ears, but no sound of the world outside the castle less startling than the crash of thunder ever have broken the hateful quiet of this rock dungeon. The summit of the ledge is reached by a narrow stairway, casually twisting and turning as the inequalities of the surface dictated to the builder, and bears traces of a much-worn passageway and of huge floor-beams. This was once enclosed by walls of great height and exceptional solidity. From the ordinary indications of construction it is proper to assume that here was the original building, enlarged and altered a good deal since the twelfth century, but still preserving much of its old shape. Portions of huge towers and jagged edges of apartment walls, where immense pieces were blown out and down into the chasm below when the Swedes destroyed this stronghold in the Thirty Years’ War, now