The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Art Of Landscape Architecture
"Where there are genuine old castles (or manor houses) which have been in the possession of the family for a long time (not new buildings in imitation of an old style) I am of the opinion that their ancient character should be preserved when they are enlarged or made more comfortable, even if a much finer building might be erected on the spot. The memory of a bygone time, the majesty of years, also count for something, and it is a real misfortune that our pasteboard age has destroyed so many of these relics."
"The English have not yet been guilty of this folly, and nowhere else are family possessions more religiously and more proudly preserved. We also find there many estates of mere bourgeois families which for more than six centuries have passed from father to son, and with so little change in general that, for instance, in Malahide in Ireland, the family seat of the Talbots, even the woodwork and the furniture of entire apartments date back to those early years. And who can behold the splendours of majestic Warwick Castle, with its colossal tower a thousand years old, or the royal seat of the Duke of Northumberland, without feeling penetrated with romantic awe, and without delighting in the match- less beauty of these grand piles?"
An extract from Prince Pucklcr's Tour of England gives a wonderful idea of Warwick Castle from the landscape critic's point of view:
"It was an enchanted palace decked in the most charming garb of poetry, and surrounded by all the majesty of history, the sight of which still fills me with delighted astonishment." Again he writes: "Going on, you lose sight of the castle for a while, and soon find yourself before a high embattled wall, built of large blocks of stone, covered by Time with moss and creeping plants. Lofty iron gates slowly unfold to admit you in a deep hollow way blasted in the rock, the stone walls of which are tapestried with the most luxuriant vegetation. The carriage rolls with a dull heavy sound along the smooth rock, which old oaks darkly overshadow. Suddenly at a turn of the way, the castle starts from the wood into broad daylight, resting on a soft grassy slope; and the large arch of the entrance dwindles to the size of an insignificant doorway between the two enormous towers, at the foot of which you stand." "Let your fancy conjure up a space about twice the size of the Coliseum at Rome, and let it transport you into a forest of romantic luxuriance. You now overlook the large court surrounded by mossy trees and majestic buildings, which, though of every variety of form, combine to create one sublime and connected whole, whose lines, now shooting upwards, now falling off into the blue air, with the continually changing beauty of the green earth beneath, produce, not symmetry indeed, but that higher harmony elsewhere proper to nature's own works alone."
