The Castle of Coucy, near Laon. 485 Nothing can be grander than the conception of this tower, nothing more complete than the execution of its details. All is gigantesque, as though for a race above the ordinary stature of man, and the walls wuthin were overlaid with a fine cement, and painted with care. The design of the sculpture is bold and masculine, as becomes a military building but all is in excellent taste, and admirably executed. The walls of the keep are tied with chain-courses of timber, laid in mortar, in the centre of the work, as was the custom in France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The timber is exposed below some of the loops. In the upper floors were embedded radiating ties, also of wood. Two lines of square putlog-holes are seen on the exterior of the keep. They ascend in a spiral, or a right-handed screw, and indicate the manner in which the building was constructed. Horizontal beams, projecting from the upper row, carried the inclined plane or roadway up w^hich the materials were dragged, and these were sup- ported by struts, the feet of which rested in the lower row. There remains to be described only the chemise, or work designed to cover the base of the keep from the operations of the miner. It has been seen that the base of the keep was solid, and that it stood in a paved fosse, about 20 feet broad, with vertical sides. The exterior side, or counterscarp, of this fosse was a wall, about 8 feet thick, which divided it from the main exterior ditch of the w^ard, and rose to the level of the first floor of the keep, say 30 feet. The ordinary ascent to its rampart walk was by a stair within the wall, commencing on the right near the keep entrance. It was also reached from the first floor of the keep by a slight bridge, such as w^as employed at Rochester, and probably in one or two places in the Tower of London. There was also an access from the other end of the wall, from the rooms over the great gateway. Outside of and at the base of the salient half of this wall was built against it, at the level of the bottom of the exterior ditch, a covered way or gallery, intended to act as a countermine, and still more completely to frustrate attempts against the keep. The gallery is entered from either end, and in its centre rises a sort of buttress against the wall, in which was contained a wooden stair, by which the people on the rampart could communicate with those in the gallery. In the gallery also was a well, for the use of the kitchens, and in the substance of the wall a garderobe. From the bottom of the keep ditch issued a postern, defended by gate, portcullis, and machicolation, the two latter connected with a small chamber in the wall ; from this a wooden bridge led, in the ditch, to a postern in the west and outer wall of the outer ward. The castle and town, being of one date and from one design, may be regarded as representing a thirteenth-century fortress of the first class, and of the strongest character, in which the internal arrangements, though palatial, were made completely subordinate to the military character and security of the place. The great
