There Are Always Black Passages And Corners, And Walls Twenty Feet Thick; And There Is Always Some High Place To Climb Up To For The Sake Of A "Magnificent" View. The Views, Too, Are Apt To Get Muddled.

These dense gate-towers of Philippe le Bel struck me, however, as peculiarly wicked and grim.

Their capacity is of the largest, and they contain over so many devilish little dungeons, lighted by the narrowest slit in the pro- digious wall, where it comes over one with a good deal of vividness and still more horror that wretched human beings ever lay there rotting in the dark. The dungeons of Villeneuve made a particular impression on me, - greater than any, except those of Loches, which must surely be the most grewsome in Europe. I hasten to add that every dark hole at Villeneuve is called a dungeon; and I believe it is well established that in this manner, in almost all old castles and towers, the sensibilities of the modern tourist are un- scrupulously played upon. There were plenty of black holes in the Middle Ages that were not dungeons, but household receptacles of various kinds; and many a tear dropped in pity for the groaning captive has really been addressed to the spirits of the larder and the faggot-nook. For all this, there are some very bad corners in the towers of Villeneuve, so that I was not wide of the mark when I began to think again, as I had often thought before, of the stoutness of the human composition in the Middle Ages, and the tranquillity of nerve of people to whom the groaning captive and the blackness of a "living tomb" were familiar ideas, which did not at all interfere with their happiness or their sanity.

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