life. Not only was the castle pillaged by the soldiers, who speedily demolished and destroyed the rich furniture that had adorned it since the days of Sir Christopher Hatton, but orders were sent down by the Parliament to destroy it by gunpowder.

In vain, however, did the destroyers labour. The strong and massive walls withstood even that trial; and for months after its surrender, the walls of Corfe defied the efforts that were made to destroy them by gunpowder.

The massive ivy-mantled towers that are still in existence testify to the original strength of the fortress.

The heroine of Corfe, Lady Bankes, lived long enough to witness Charles the Second's restoration; and Cromwell restored to her her jointure, of which she had been deprived by the Parliament on giving up Corfe Castle. She died in 1661. Her son was knighted by Charles the Second; and though he was returned to Parliament in 1660 for Corfe Castle, he wisely preferred the pleasures of a country life to the artificial atmosphere of the Court.

Married to an heiress, and enabled to recover at the Restoration the greater portion of his estates, he lived long enough to build himself a fine house, after the designs of Inigo Jones. But this fine edifice, though adorned by the pencil and brush of Vandyke and Lely, was not Corfe Castle.

The ruins still exist, but I have nothing more to tell you about it. My story ends with its surrender, and with the death of its heroine, Lady Bankes, to whose descendants the ruins still, I believe,

belong.

CHAPTER V.

CHEPSTOW CASTLE.

HOPE that what I have told you in another chapter about Conway, may have inspired some interest in your minds about Wales and the Welsh, and that therefore you will not dislike hearing this evening about another Welsh castle.

Perhaps, however, it is scarcely right to call it a Welsh castle, since Monmouthshire is now an English county; but in the days of old, Chepstow was in Wales.

Beautiful scenery is said to have a good influence on the temper and spirits. If that is so, it were well to visit Monmouthshire, one of the loveliest counties in the kingdom.

Our ancestors seem to have thought the same of it, for its ancient name was Gwent, which by many

good authorities in such matters is supposed to be derived from the word 'Gwen,' signifying the 'fair' or 'beautiful' in Celtic language.

Gwen, the goddess of smiles, was the Celtic Venus; and the term 'Gwen' may well be applied to Monmouthshire, so rich in scenery, and watered both by the rivers Severn and Wye. Its present name, both in Welsh and English, is taken from the natural position of its principal town, ' at the mouth of the Mon,' Monmouth; and in Welsh it is called Shir-von-Wye.

It is in Monmouthshire, yet close to the borders of Gloucestershire, that Chepstow Castle is situated. Its ruins occupy a prominent position, overlooking from the bold rock on which they are situated, the Wye, the mouth of the Severn, the Bristol Channel, and a large tract of both Gloucestershire and Monmouthshire. Its natural advantages, standing as it does at the mouth of a navigable river, fully account for its erection. When and by whom it was erected, is, I believe, very uncertain, although some traditions assign the original structure to Julius Cæsar; whilst others maintain that the Saxons built the original fortress out of the ruins

of Caerwent, a Roman city and camp about four miles from Chepstow,-Caer meaning, in Welsh, an enclosed station or fort, and 'went' being derived from 'Gwyn,' or white. The camp at Caerwent was judiciously formed by the Romans on a gentle eminence, with a small river at its base, and commanding views of the principal roads of Gwent, or Monmouthshire.

I believe that some remains of a Roman wall are still to be found at Caerwent; while within the camp, principally near its centre, the foundations of old buildings have been traced. As late as the

year 1777, the servants of a gentleman named Lewis, of Chepstow, discovered a tessellated pavement two feet below the surface of the earth, which the proprietor covered over for preservation. However, in 1801, an antiquarian tells us, it was so hidden with weeds as not to be visible; and from an interesting book that he wrote, and which I have read in order to tell you all this, I shall read you an account of the pavement as it appeared when first discovered (for it is very amusing, as well as interesting, to us to know what kind of pavements the Romans possessed, and to compare them with