country level, and we soon came in sight of the castle. Castle, indeed,
it was, with its pointed Norman towers, its massive walls, and broad
moat,--memorials of other days,--and already gray with age before the
first roof-tree was laid in the land which its owner had helped to build
up to a great nation. On a hill-side its appearance would have been
grand. As it was, it was impressive, and particularly as first seen
from the road. The portcullis was gone, but the arched gateway still
remained, flanked by towers that looked sombre and stern, even amidst
the deep green of the ivy which covered the left tower almost to the
battlements. I was afterwards told that the ivy itself had a special
significance,--having been planted by Charles Fox, during a visit to La
Grange not long before his death. And Fox, it will be remembered, had
exerted all his eloquence to induce the English Government to demand the
liberation of Lafayette from Olmütz,--an act which called down upon him
at the time the bitterest invectives of party rhetoric, but which the
historian of England now records as a bright page in the life of one of
her greatest men. Ah, how different would our record be, if we could
always follow our instinct of immortality, and in all our actions look
thoughtfully forward to the judgment of the future!

Passing under the massive arch, I found myself in the castle court.
Three sides of the edifice were still standing, darkened, indeed, and
distained by the winds and rains of centuries, but with an air of modern
comfort and neatness about the doors and windows that seemed more in
keeping than the moat and towers with the habits of the present day.
The other curtain had been thrown down years before,--how or why nobody
could tell me, but not improbably in some of the domestic wars which
fill and defile the annals of mediaeval Europe. In those days the loss
of it must have been a serious one; but for the modern occupant it was a
real gain,--letting in the air and sunlight, and opening a pleasant view