This Brilliant, This Suggestive Warden Of Carcas-
Sonne Marched Us About For An Hour, Haranguing, Ex-
Plaining, Illustrating, As He
Went; it was a complete
little lecture, such as might have been delivered at
the Lowell Institute, on the manger
In which a first-
rate _place forte_ used to be attacked and defended
Our peregrinations made it very clear that Carcassone
was impregnable; it is impossible to imagine, without
having seen them, such refinements of immurement,
such ingenuities of resistance. We passed along the
battlements and _chemins de ronde_, ascended and de-
scended towers, crawled under arches, peered out of
loop-holes, lowered ourselves into dungeons, halted in
all sorts of tight places, while the purpose of some-
thing or other was described to us. It was very
curious, very interesting; above all, it was very pic-
torial, and involved perpetual peeps into the little
crooked, crumbling, sunny, grassy, empty Cite. In
places, as you stand upon it, the great towered and
embattled enceinte produces an illusion; it looks as
if it were still equipped and defended. One vivid
challenge, at any rate, it flings down before you; it
calls upon you to make up your mind on the matter
of restoration. For myself, I have no hesitation; I
prefer in every case the ruined, however ruined, to
the reconstructed, however splendid. What is left is
more precious than what is added: the one is history,
the other is fiction; and I like the former the better of
the two, - it is so much more romantic.
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