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76 THE SUNDERED STREAMS
no thought of conformity, of harmony, of convenience.
. It was rather a congeries of Castles than one unanimous
1 edifice. From far off it was seen as a single fabric;
within its walls the daunted visitor could gain comfort
li from noticing its many discordancies, the innumerable
i violent breaks in the continuity of its development.
-l 2 There was no complete rhythm in the building’s design ;
7 part clashed with part, and in the jarring conflict of
tastes and periods the enchantment which distance had
. lent was shattered by the sudden onslaughts of criti-
5 ; cism. Here jutted out a Georgian wing, solid and
stiff, but ill-attuned to the austere majesty of the great
3 ! Drum Tower. There, a Duke of the eighteenth cen-
, tury, a friend of Pope and Lady Mary, had erected a
’ Chinese pagoda, that perked impertinently up with
, its fantastic, saucy eaves among the stalwart turrets
4 that had frowned on Edward of York, and given vain
‘ shelter to Marguerite of Anjou. Then, again, another
. Duke, contemporary of George the Glorious, had
[;;g",l’ appended to the Elizabethan front of the Castle a
small but accurate copy of the Brighton Pavilion. Its
wriggling cupolas, its fluted minarets, shone white
with plaster, and its main plantation of bulbs, like
gigantic onions, bulged and swelled beneath an oriel
p whence the Virgin Queen had watched a masque.
Each inhabited portion of the Castle, too, was of
a style violently and even deliberately discordant with
the severe and uninhabitable splendours of the Drum
1 Tower and the old Keep. These contained huge,
gloomy rooms, with infinitesimal windows, that looked
’ out, for the most part, on sunless little courtyards,
; mere wells of darkness, made by the addition of new
buildings to the old. Here, in these big, stark halls,
were mouldering arrangements of armour, or acres of
dingy pictures, bloated Flemish boors, dubious angular
, Madonnas, riotous female nudities, all hidden from the
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