the midday sun
This was Cashel Byron 's first professional engagement . Wiltstoken Castle was a square building with circular bastions at the corners , each bastion terminating skyward in a Turkish minaret . The southwest face was the front , and was pierced by a Moorish arch fitted with glass doors , which could be secured on occasion by gates of fantastically hammered iron . The arch was enshrined by a Palladian portico , which rose to the roof , and was surmounted by an open pediment , in the cleft of which stood a black-marble figure of an Egyptian , erect , and gazing steadfastly at the midday sun . On the ground beneath was an Italian terrace with two great stone elephants at the ends of the balustrade . The windows on the upper story were , like the entrance , Moorish ; but the principal ones below were square bays , mullioned . The castle was considered grand by the illiterate ; but architects and readers of books on architecture condemned it as a nondescript mixture of styles in the worst possible taste .