''SHAM CASTLE" 



249 



very impressive indeed — at a distance. If, however, 

 you know it to be a Sham Castle (which, l)y the way, 

 is the name of it), romance immediately flies, abashed. 

 There it stands, on its wind-swept heights, naked 

 and unashamed ; a frontage with nothing behind it ; 

 an empty mask, with crossbow slits from which 

 arrows never were discharged, and battlements scarce 

 more substantial than the pasteboard turrets that 





'//"'""'y'/y^ryA. 



'SHAM CASTLE. 



furnish the stage in romantic drama. If hypocrisy 

 be indeed the homage that Vice pays to Virtue; 

 then, by parallel reasoning, here is homage of the 

 most flattering kind paid to Gothicism by an age 

 that above all things prided itself on the way it 

 fulfilled its classic ideals. It w^as a common failing 

 of the time ; and possibly, if attention had been 



