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A FEUDAL PLEASURE-BOUSE 265 yard. It had been originally two stories in height, but the second story remained over the entrance only. It was pierced externally on the ground floor with small square-headed windows about eighteen inches in width, and also with a line of loop-holes. The upper windows were of a very different character, the two that remained having graceful pointed arches, and their height and width being nine feet by five. The entrance was much like the entrance of an ordinary mediaeval castle—a vaulted passage fronted by a ponderous archway, which was still ornamented with the arms of its original owner. Within the scene was curious. In the middle of the court, which was shady and green with orange trees, was a marble fountain, surrounded by Gothic arches and roofed over with a low stone cupola. Eound two of the four sides ran cloisters with similar arches, singularly slender and graceful, enriched with mouldings and built of carefully hewn stones. On a third side were the stables, and on the fourth were two chapels. Of these chapels one was still in use, and I discovered on entering it a very singular thing. On this side of the castle was a low bank of rock, which formed a wall of some fifteen feet in height : against this rock the chapel of which I speak was built ; and the chancel was formed, not out of masonry, but out of a crooked cave, which averted itself from the nave at an angle. Over both of the chapels there had once been an upper story, the floor of which must.

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