. . .d ecclesiastical, in truly[102] astonishing numbers: and of these, in addition to the cathedrals and the greater churches, there still exist many noble castellated relics, some of them in a proximate degree retaining the leading features of their original arrangement, form, and appearance. At the same time, even in the case of the most perfect of the existing castles, many changes of grave importance have been introduced as century has succeeded to century; so that now, whenever any one early castle is examined with a view to trace out and to determine both what it was at the first, and in what order and with what motives certain palpable alterations and innovations have followed one another, it always is highly satisfactory to feel that an unquestionable general uniformity of plan and arrangement in all the early castles enables each one of them that is still in being, in some degree at any rate, to illustrate and explain every other. As a matter of course, whenever the a. . . Read More