THE CASTLE-BUILDER
We know a great deal about this extraordinary woman, for among her activities was the writing, at tremendous length, about herself and her ancestors; and in those pages she dwells with an amusing complacency upon the early beauties of her face, her form, and mind.
COUNTESS PILLAR.
It was in 1652 that she so thoroughly repaired Brougham Castle, making it afterwards her principal residence; but the day of castles was done, and, as she really must have foreseen, her works were left, after her death, to decay. Her only daughter had married the Earl of Thanet, who in 1728 caused the most part of Brougham Castle to be demolished, and the materials sold. And here it stands to-day, a roofless shell.
“Thys made Roger” are the words boldly carved over the gateway; telling us that the first Lord Clifford was the great builder of the castle. His grandson added largely to it; and a mighty place it must have been. Cliffords of Brougham and a dozen other strongholds dared with impunity what smaller men would have been ruined to attempt the tenth part of; and the messengers of Kings, sent with formidable sealed documents, have been set down to dine at Brougham Castle upon the wax and parchment of the commands they brought, and have made a hearty, but involuntary, meal upon those unappetising materials under the grim eyes of my lord, without wine to wash them down or condiment to flavour them withal.
YANWATH HALL.
And now the scene is merely the subject for an artist; and a beautiful subject, too. The old ruins stand in an ideal situation, in an undulating grassy meadow, sloping towards the sparkling Eamont, framed in with trees, and with distant mountains closing in the scene.