99.—Richborough. General View, from the East.details

It is not a lofty castle of the middle ages, such as we sometimes look upon, with tower and bastion crumbling into picturesque ruin; but here, on the north side, is a long line of wall, without a single aperture, devoid alike of loophole or battlement, and seemingly standing there only to support the broad masses of ivy which spread over its surface in singular luxuriance. We take boat at a little ferry-house, at a place called Saltpans. Leland, when he went to Richborough three hundred years ago, found a hermit there; and he says, “I had antiquities of the heremite, the which is an industrious man.” So say we of the ferry-man. He has small copper coins in abundance, which tell what people have been hereabout. He rows us down the little river for about three-quarters of a mile, and we are under the walls of Richborough Castle (Fig. 99). This is indeed a mighty monument of ages that are gone. (p. 30)