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KENILWORTH.

Is there any Englishman, or any reader in the world, who is not familiar with Kenilworth? The glorious romance of Sir Walter Scott has made its glories and its shames familiar to all lands. At the mere mention of its name, the stately grandeurs of Elizabeth's visit pass before us; we see her surrounded by all those immortal men who made her court and England famous for evermore. There, in front of them all, smiling beneath the graciousness of his Queen, is the courtly, criminal, ambitious, and unhappy Dudley, the lord of this glorious pile, and also of one poor simple, loving heart, which beats for him alone, and which through his evil passions was soon destined never to beat more. Amy Robsart, the only uninvited guest at these splendours and pageantries of her lord and husband, holds now the largest space in our memories; so potent is the power of romance, so perpetual the influence of the poet. Its history has made it one of the most attractive spots in our land; and the genius of the great northern writer has added one more glory to its long and noble list.

We had been having a few days' ramble in War

wick's sylvan county; we had wandered over the noble grounds and through the richly-adorned rooms of Warwick Castle; had strolled about the renowned Guy's Cliff, with its beautiful cedar avenue, and the poetic Avon slowly meandering along; we had "done" the splendours of Leamington, and enjoyed the attractions of Jephson's Gardens. We had "hung with grooms and porters on the bridge, watching the three tall spires," at Coventry; and we agreed to close this series of visits by making one to the Castle of Kenilworth, so famous in its days of pride, but perhaps still more famous in its days of humility and ruin. With us, on rambling matters, to resolve is to do; so we set off on one bright smiling morning to ramble over this ruin of the past.

The walk is a beautiful one. Trees line both sides of the road nearly all the way; and you pass pleasant spots of land richly and finely wooded. Other counties far surpass Warwickshire in the more noble aspects of landscape, but few are more magnificently wooded, and few are richer in agricultural produce. The ramble from Leamington to Kenilworth is not one of a very diversified kind, but it is of a character not easily forgotten. The hedges were loaded with some of the finest blackberries we ever saw, and we often stopped to gather a few of this humble but luscious berry. "The dark red haws and hips of scarlet" were frequently met with, and the first deep tint of autumn was reflected from myriads of leaves as the sun played with them as in joy. Thus going leisurely on, talking of many things, we lengthened

out the comparatively short journey to a goodly ramble,—as all such journeys should be.

The town of Kenilworth is a dull, straggling, unattractive enough place. We were not detained long in looking at the buildings; for, save a few quaint old houses, there is little that would detain any one. So we very quickly set off for the ruins which had caused us to come to Kenilworth.

The Castle, which is now so venerable a ruin, is Isaid to have been erected on the site of an ancient Saxon one. Henry III. granted it to Simon de Montfort, who is renowned as the leader of the Commons in their opposition to royal encroachments on their liberties, and as the father of modern Parliaments. In consequence of his so-called rebellion, the King besieged the castle, and after six months' labour the royal forces were successful. This was in 1266. The victor King gave it to his son Edmund. While this Prince held it, it was, in 1278, the scene of a grand tournament, at which "Rogers Mortimer was the challenger, and the ladies wore silk mantles;" the latter being a novelty in those days. Sadder events than jousts and tournaments, and courtly meetings, early marked the chronicles of the Castle. It was here that, in 1327, Edward II. signed his abdication of the throne of his father. The celebrated John of Gaunt -Shakspere's John of Gaunt-was also a possessor of the Castle, and through him it again came to the Queen Elizabeth gave it to her especial favourite, the Earl of Leicester, who, in 1575, feasted and, as we should now say, fêted Her Majesty

crown.

for seventeen days. The matchless splendours of that time, and the then condition of the Castle, the reader will find so vividly portrayed by Kenilworth's poet, that we now only refer to his pages. Its antiquity and its associations were no preservative against the attacks of the Puritans; and Cromwell battered down its walls, as he did so many others of the " strongholds of the Royalists."

It is now a beautiful thing to ramble through these ruins, and attempt to delineate to your mind's eye what the place once was. There is the grand old Cæsar's Tower, sixteen feet thick, still strong in its ruins. The Lancaster buildings still serve by their present strength to reveal their former grandeur. The main hall, with the still beautiful windows so rich in ornament, and so full of the poetry of architecture, tells us what the room was in which the stately virgin Queen and her lavish host led the lordly dance in that famous and fatal 1575. This hall is some sixteen feet long, and forty-five feet wide, and must have been a magnificent room. Two other towers also show the great original strength of the place, and bear respectively the names of Mortimer and Walter. These and the parts of the walls which still remain are densely covered with the ruin-loving ivy, which grows in rich luxuriance in this "dainty spot." The gatehouse has an object of peculiar attraction, in a large sculptured mantel-piece of which the connoisseurs speak in terms of great rapture. The extent of the Castle and grounds was once seven acres; while the park and chase were twenty miles in circuit. "The

like," says an old writer, "for strength, state, and pleasure, not being within the realm of England."

Such was the place, now a heap of ruins; but such ruins! It is glorious to walk through its now deserted chambers; to tread its solitary courts; to clamber up its much and deeply worn tower stairs; to follow the fine tracery of its still partially remaining windows; to call up to memory the many men and women now famous in song and story, who trod these same rooms, clomb these same stairs, admired this same tracery, rejoiced in the security which these mighty walls and strong towers afforded them. Alas! "who can withstand his fate? "T is not so now : the walls are crumbled, the towers fallen, the chambers destroyed; and the curious visitor, the light-winged bird, and the varied world of insects, are the only tenants of this once noble pile, in which the fate of kings has not only been told, but acted.

The view from the loftiest accessible point of the Castle is magnificent. Warwickshire appears to great advantage when thus beheld. Great is the variety of her scenery, here rich fields of golden grain, waiting for the reaper's sickle; here green meadows full of pastoral beauty; here clumps of glorious and autumn-tinted trees; and there the Avon flowing vigorously through the fat land which her own wealth contributes so much to enrich and adorn. It is a fine county; and nowhere is it more beautiful than round Warwick, Stoneleigh, Stratford, and Kenilworth. The pleasant little uplands and the gentle knolls have a charm which grander scenery often