So it seems to me.
All I can find in Arundel that pleases me lies in the little town
itself, and in the old church of which one half, the chancel, has been
closed to all who do not hold the Duke's written permission to enter
it--as though the house of God, even though it be the property of a
Catholic duke, were not by nature as it were free to all. And so there
is a kind of sorrowfulness about Arundel that spoils my pleasure in it,
yes, even in the very noble remains of the old Castle that are hidden
away within the sham Gothic affair of 1791. Even in the beautiful old
church, of which one half is closed, even in the steep little town
which might have been as gay as Rye, I felt, overwhelmed by the new
Castle and the new church, neither of which has any antiquity,
tradition, or beauty.
[Illustration: ARUNDEL CASTLE]
The old Castle, with its great circular Norman keep within the huge
sham "fortress" of the eighteenth century, beneath which the town lies
like one afraid to ask for mercy, should not be left unvisited, for it
was probably built by that Roger de Montgomery, who led the Breton
centre at Hastings, and has thus nearly a thousand years of history
behind it, to say nothing of three sieges, that of 1102, when it was
surrendered to Henry I.
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