Scene of gold, and silver, and scroll work, and chiseled arch, and mosaic.

Here were heard the carousals of the Round Table; from those very stables the caparisoned horses came prancing out for the tournament; through that gateway strong, weak, heroic, mean, splendid, Queen Elizabeth advanced to the castle, while the waters of the lake gleamed under torchlights, and the battlements were aflame with rockets; and cornet, and hautboy, and trumpet poured their music on the air; and goddesses glided out from the groves to meet her; and from turret to foundation Kenilworth trembled under a cannonade, and for seventeen days, at a cost of five thousand dollars a day, the festival was kept.

Four hundred servants standing in costly livery; sham battles between knights on horseback; jugglers tumbling on the grass; thirteen bears baited for the amusement of the guests; three hundred and twenty hogsheads of beer consumed, till all Europe applauded, denounced and stood amazed.
Where is the glory now?
What has become of the velvet?
Who wears the jewels?
Would Amy Robsart have so longed to get into the castle had she known its coming ruin?
Where are those who were waited on, and those who waited?
What has become of Elizabeth, the visitor, and Robert Dudley, the visited?
Cromwell's men dashed upon the scene; they drained the lakes; they befouled the banquet hall; they dismantled the towers; they turned the castle into a tomb, on whose scarred and riven sides ambition and cruelty and lust may well read their doom.

"So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord; but let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might.".