A VISIT TO WINDSOR
If the beauty of England were only superficial it would produce only a
superficial effect. It would cause a passing pleasure and would be
forgotten. It certainly would not--as now in fact it does--inspire a
deep, joyous, serene and grateful contentment, and linger in the mind, a
gracious and beneficent remembrance. The conquering and lasting potency
of it resides not alone in loveliness of expression but in loveliness of
character. Having first greatly blessed the British islands with the
natural advantages of position, climate, soil, and products, nature has
wrought their development and adornment as a necessary consequence of
the spirit of their inhabitants. The picturesque variety and pastoral
repose of the English landscape spring, in a considerable measure, from
the imaginative taste and the affectionate gentleness of the English
people. The state of the country, like its social constitution, flows
from principles within, which are constantly suggested, and it steadily
comforts and nourishes the mind with a sense of kindly feeling, moral
rectitude, solidity, and permanence.
Illustration: "Windsor Castle."
Thus in the peculiar beauty of England the ideal is made the actual--is
expressed in things more than in words, and in things by which words are
transcended. Milton's "L'Allegro," fine as it is, is not so fine as the
scenery--the crystallised, embodied poetry--out of which it arose. All
the delicious rural verse that has been written in England is only the
excess and superflux of her own poetic opulence: it has rippled from the
hearts of her poets just as the fragrance floats away from her hawthorn
hedges. At every step of his progress the pilgrim through English scenes
is impressed with this sovereign excellence of the accomplished fact, as
contrasted with any words that can be said in its celebration.
Among representative scenes that are eloquent with this instructive
meaning,--scenes easily and pleasurably accessible to the traveller in
what Dickens expressively called "the green, English summer
weather,"--is the region of Windsor. The chief features of it have often
been described; the charm that it exercises can only be suggested. To
see Windsor, moreover, is to comprehend as at a glance the old feudal
system, and to feel in a profound and special way the pomp of English
character and history. More than this: it is to rise to the ennobling
serenity that always accompanies broad, retrospective contemplation of
the current of human affairs. In this quaint, decorous town--nestled at
the base of that mighty and magnificent castle which has been the home
of princes for more than five hundred years--the imaginative mind
wanders over vast tracts of the past and beholds as in a mirror the
pageants of chivalry, the coronations of kings, the strife of sects, the
battles of armies, the schemes of statesmen, the decay of transient
systems, the growth of a rational civilisation, and the everlasting
march of thought. Every prospect of the region intensifies this
sentiment of contemplative grandeur. As you look from the castle walls
your gaze takes in miles and miles of blooming country, sprinkled over
with little hamlets, wherein the utmost stateliness of learning and rank
is gracefully commingled with all that is lovely and soothing in rural
life. Not far away rise the "antique towers" of Eton--
"Where grateful science still adores
Her Henry's holy shade."
It was in Windsor Castle that her Henry was born; and there he often
held his court; and it is in St. George's chapel that his ashes repose.
In the dim distance stands the church of Stoke-Pogis, about which Gray
used to wander,
"Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade."
You recognise now a deeper significance than ever before in the "solemn
stillness" of the incomparable Elegy. The luminous twilight mood of that
immortal poem--its pensive reverie and solemn passion--is inherent in
the scene; and you feel that it was there, and there only, that the
genius of its exceptional author--austerely gentle and severely pure,
and thus in perfect harmony with its surroundings--could have been moved
to that sublime strain of inspiration and eloquence. Near at hand, in
the midst of your reverie, the mellow organ sounds from the chapel of
St. George, where, under "fretted vault" and over "long-drawn aisle,"
depend the ghostly, mouldering banners of ancient knights--as still as
the bones of the dead-and-gone monarchs that crumble in the crypt below.
Illustration: "St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle."
In this church are many of the old kings and nobles of England. The
handsome and gallant Edward the Fourth here found his grave; and near it
is that of the accomplished Hastings--his faithful friend, to the last
and after. Here lies the dust of the stalwart, impetuous, and savage
Henry the Eighth, and here, at midnight, by the light of torches, they
laid beneath the pavement the mangled body of Charles the First. As you
stand on Windsor ramparts, pondering thus upon the storied past and the
evanescence of "all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave," your eyes
rest dreamily on green fields far below, through which, under tall elms,
the brimming and sparkling river flows on without a sound, and in which
a few figures, dwarfed by distance, flit here and there, in seeming
aimless idleness; while, warned homeward by impending sunset, the
chattering birds circle and float around the lofty towers of the castle;
and delicate perfumes of seringa and jasmine are wafted up from dusky,
unknown depths at the base of its ivied steep. At such an hour I stood
on those ramparts and saw the shy villages and rich meadows of fertile
Berkshire, all red and golden with sunset light; and at such an hour I
stood in the lonely cloisters of St. George's chapel, and heard the
distant organ sob, and saw the sunlight fade up the gray walls, and felt
and knew the sanctity of silence. Age and death have made this church
illustrious; but the spot itself has its own innate charm of mystical
repose.
"No use of lanterns; and in one place lay
Feathers and dust to-day and yesterday."
Illustration: "Windsor Forest and Park."
The drive from the front of Windsor Castle is through a broad and
stately avenue, three miles in length, straight as an arrow and level as
a standing pool; and this white highway through the green and fragrant
sod is sumptuously embowered, from end to end, with double rows of
magnificent elms and oaks. The Windsor avenue, like the splendid
chestnut grove at Bushey Park, long famous among the pageants of rural
England, has often been described. It is after leaving this that the
rambler comes upon the rarer beauties of Windsor Park and Forest. From
the far end of the avenue--where, in a superb position, the equestrian
statue of King George the Third rises on its massive pedestal of natural
rock,--the road winds away, through shaded dell and verdant glade, past
great gnarled beeches and under boughs of elm, and yew, and oak, till
its silver thread is lost in the distant woods. At intervals a sinuous
pathway strays off to some secluded lodge, half hidden in foliage--the
property of the Crown, and the rustic residence of a scion of the royal
race. In one of those retreats dwelt poor old George the Third, in the
days of his mental darkness; and the memory of the agonising king seems
still to cast a shadow on the mysterious and melancholy house. They show
you, under glass, in one of the lodge gardens, an enormous grapevine,
owned by the Queen--a vine which, from its single stalwart trunk,
spreads its teeming branches, laterally, more than a hundred feet in
each direction. So come use and thrift, hand in hand with romance! Many
an aged oak is passed, in your progress, round which, "at still
midnight," Herne the Hunter might yet take his ghostly prowl, shaking
his chain "in a most hideous and dreadful manner." The wreck of the
veritable Herne's Oak, it is said, was rooted out, together with other
ancient and decayed trees, in the time of George the Third, and in
somewhat too literal fulfilment of his Majesty's misinterpreted command.
Illustration: "The Curfew Tower."
This great park is fourteen miles in circumference and contains nearly
four thousand acres, and many of the youngest trees that adorn it are
more than one hundred and fifty years old. Far in its heart you stroll
by Virginia Water--an artificial lake, but faultless in its gentle
beauty--and perceive it so deep and so breezy that a full-rigged
ship-of-war, with armament, can navigate its wind-swept, curling
billows. This lake was made by that sanguinary Duke of Cumberland who
led the English forces at Culloden. In the dim groves that fringe its
margin are many nests wherein pheasants are bred, to fall by the royal
shot and to supply the royal table: those you may contemplate but not
approach. At a point in your walk, sequestered and lonely, they have set
up and skilfully disposed the fragments of a genuine ruined temple,
brought from the remote East--relic perchance of "Tadmor's marble
waste," and certainly a most solemn memorial of the morning twilight of
time. Broken arch, storm-stained pillar, and shattered column are here
shrouded with moss and ivy; and should you chance to see them as the
evening shadows deepen and the evening wind sighs mournfully in the
grass your fancy will not fail to drink in the perfect illusion that one
of the stateliest structures of antiquity has slowly crumbled where now
its fragments remain.
"Quaint" is a descriptive epithet that has been much abused, but it may,
with absolute propriety, be applied to Windsor. The devious little
streets there visible, and the carved and timber-crossed buildings,
often of great age, are uncommonly rich in the expressiveness of
imaginative character. The emotions and the fancy, equally with the
sense of necessity and the instinct of use, have exercised their
influence and uttered their spirit in the shaping and adornment of the
town. While it constantly feeds the eye--with that pleasing irregularity
of lines and forms which is so delicious and refreshing--it quite as
constantly nurtures the sense of romance that ought to play so large a
part in our lives, redeeming us from the tyranny of the commonplace and
intensifying all the high feelings and noble aspirations that are
possible to human nature. England contains many places like Windsor;
some that blend in even richer amplitude the elements of quaintness,
loveliness, and magnificence. The meaning of them all is the same: that
romance, beauty, and gentleness are forever vital; that their forces are
within our souls, and ready and eager to find their way into our
thoughts, actions, and circumstances, and to brighten for every one of
us the face of every day; that they ought neither to be relegated to the
distant and the past nor kept for our books and day-dreams alone;
but--in a calmer and higher mood than is usual in this age of universal
mediocrity, critical scepticism, and miscellaneous tumult--should be
permitted to flow forth into our architecture, adornments, and customs,
to hallow and preserve our antiquities, to soften our manners, to give
us tranquillity, patience, and tolerance, to make our country loveable
for our own hearts, and so to enable us to bequeath it, sure of love and
reverence, to succeeding ages.
Illustration: "The Sign of the Swan."