It is a romantic country that lies around us, and though the
cultivated area must be infinitely greater than in the fighting days
when these battlements were finished, yet I suppose the Vale of Mowbray
which we gaze upon to the east must have been green, and to some extent
fertile, when that Conan who was Duke of Brittany and also Earl of
Richmond looked out over the innumerable manors that were his Yorkshire
possessions. I can imagine his eye glancing down on a far more
thrilling scene than the green three-sided courtyard enclosed by a
crumbling grey wall, though to him the buildings, the men, and every
detail that filled the great space, were no doubt quite prosaic. It did
not thrill him to see a man-at-arms cleaning weapons, when the man and
his clothes, and even the sword, were as modern and everyday as the
soldier's wife and child that we can see ourselves, but how much would
we not give for a half-an-hour of his vision, or even a part of a
second, with a good camera in our hands?
In the lower part of what is called Robin Hood's Tower is the Chapel of
St.
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