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MEMORIES OF KENILWORTH.

To treat of Kenilworth seems to amount to presumption in the face of Sir Walter Scott's beautifully woven web of truth and fiction, of which Kenilworth is at once the scene and the name. But he spoke of only one short, though brilliant, epoch in its eventful story; and closely as that grand old castle is associated in the minds of the lovers of history and romance with the haughty Earl of Leicester and his stately queen and guest, there is many another tale besides, and many another royal name connected with it; and many a doughtier deed of arms has roused the echoes of the stronghold than the jousts and tourneys of the tilt-yard, which formed part of the 'princely pleasures of Kenilworth,' in the times of Robert Dudley.

Few who now visit the ruins of the castle can help asking themselves what those noble walls have seen, what they have enclosed, and whom they have resisted; and many are the secrets which they have

kept but too well; for there have been mysteries which shall never be disclosed, and the beginning of many a story has found there an end, known but to very few besides the victim himself!

But, setting aside that which tradition darkly hints at, the broad page of authentic history unfolds much of the deepest interest to those who gaze on those massive walls; and while the solid masonry of Cæsar's tower invokes a feeling of reverence, the lighter grace of Lancaster's building--whose endurance proves its strength-forms a midway step between the sternness of the earlier period and the now perishing and crumbling structure of the Earl of Leicester-the latest built, yet doomed to earliest decay.

There is a wonderful majesty about the most ancient part of the castle-that called Cæsar's tower; and the perfect plainness and rigidity of the architecture would almost authorise the belief, which some entertain, that it dates from the time of the Romans. It is built of the rich red-coloured stone of the country, and the lines of the stone-work are now almost as sharp and clear as if newly hewn; the depth of the windows shows the thickness of the walls, which cannot be otherwise examined, as there is now no means of getting into the interior of this part, though it appears to be little more than a shell; and imagination is free to people its deep dungeons with forgotten skeletons and rust-worn fetters. This lies to the north, and, facing the west, rises the most beautiful part of all

-Lancaster's building-of which much remains; though far less grand and gloomy than Cæsar's tower, it speaks of strength, for its walls have stood the storms of five hundred years, and yet the tall windows of the banqueting-hall remain standing out against the western sky, while parts of their original tracery form dark lines against the sunset. This hall was eighty-six feet long and forty-five wide. On the south are more picturesque walls, of the same red stone, worn in places to a rich yellow, and supported on the outside with graceful buttresses, and decorated with carved stone-work. In the inner side of this range of the building is a ruined oratory, which was probably circular when in its perfect shape, and now clothed inside and out with the thickest ivy, whose stem is so large that at first sight it might be taken for a pillar of the building. On the south-east lie Leicester's buildings, plain in style, and, in the stone mullions of their windows, which unfortunately are fast giving way and crumbling to ruin, adhering to the picturesque taste of the Elizabethan age in which they were erected. To the north stands the gate-house, constructed at the same time by the Earl of Leicester, and forming the principal, if not the only entrance through the castle walls, which surrounded a space of about six acres, and were guarded at intervals by towers: two of these were also built by Leicester, at the end of the tilt-yard, and were called the Battery tower, and Mortimer's tower. Beyond them, southwards,