The Oratory.
It is desirable to add a word or two concerning “Guy’s Cave” and the “Statue of Guy” at Guy’s Cliff, to which the visitor ought by all means to “wend his way.” Indeed, the town of Warwick, and the whole of the neighbourhood by which it is surrounded, is one grand assemblage of interesting objects, of which the mind cannot tire or become satiated. To all we have described—the towers, the lodges, the several apartments of the castle, and to the gardens and grounds—the publicly is freely, graciously, and generously admitted: a boon for which we are sure every visitor will be grateful.
One of the few remaining “antiques” that yet endure to the town we have selected for engraving—the East Gate; but, as will be seen, the base only can be considered ancient; it has been “transmogrified,” yet is still striking and interesting. The Earl of Leicester’s Hospital, founded by Robert Dudley in 1586, is a singularly beautiful and perfect specimen of the half-timber houses; it escaped the great fire that nearly destroyed the town in 1694. There are not many other ancient edifices in the venerable town.
Warwick: the East Gate.
Thus, it will be readily understood that a day at Warwick supplies a rare treat; not only to the antiquary, and the historian, but to the lover of nature. The best views of the Castle are obtained from the opposite side of the Avon, near a narrow stream crossed by a bridge, which is part of the main road;[36] of the old bridge there are some remains, rendered highly picturesque by ivy and lichens that grow in profusion there, and near the old mill, the date of which is coeval with that of the Castle. Superb trees grow in the immediate grounds, huge chestnuts and gigantic cedars, that have sheltered the stout earls time out of mind: the walls are grey with age; but it is a sober livery that well suits the stronghold of the bold barons, and suggests the tranquillity of repose after the fever of battles, sieges, and deeds that cannot fail to be summoned from history as one looks from the filled-up moat to the towers and battlements that still smile or frown upon the environing town they controlled or protected.
It demands but little imagination to carry the visitor of to-day back through long-past centuries, from the moment we enter the picturesque yet gloomy passage cut through the rock, covered with ivy, lichens, and wild flowers in rich abundance, and pass under the portcullis that yet frowns above the porter’s lodge: the whole seems so little changed by time, that one might wait for the king-maker and his mighty host to issue through the gateway, and watch the red rose or the white rose on the helmets of attendant knights; by no great stretch of fancy one might see the trembling Gaveston, the petted minion of a weak monarch, dragged forth to death: a hundred events or incidents are associated with these courts and towers, inseparably linked with British history; and it is impossible to resist a feeling of reverence approaching awe while pacing peacefully among them.
The “frowning keep,” nearly hidden by the green foliage of surrounding trees, may be accepted as an emblem of the Castle; where tranquillity and peace are in the stead of fierceness and broil. Warwick, while it has lost little of its grandeur, has obtained much of grace from time; Time which
“Moulders into beauty many a tower,
That when it frowned with all its battlements
Was only terrible.”