CHAPTER XII.
I found them winding of Marcello's corpse.
And there was such a solemn melody,
'Twixt doleful songs, tears, and sad elegies,—
Such as old grandames, watching by the dead,
Are wont to outwear the night with.——
Old Play.
The mode of entering the great tower of Conningsburgh Castle is very peculiar, and partakes
of the rude simplicity of the early times in which
it was erected. A flight of steps, so deep and
narrow as to be almost precipitous, leads up to
a low portal in the south side of the tower, by
which the adventurous antiquary may still, or at
least could a few years since, gain access to a
small stair within the thickness of the main wall
of the tower, which leads up to the third storey
of the building,—the two lower being dungeons
or vaults, which neither receive air nor light,
