successive inheritors of this great living pile of buildings more than
they have ever acknowledged; for it is really the only baronial castle
that has survived the destruction or decay of all the other monuments
of the feudal ages of the same order. We should not know what they were
in their day and generation were it not for this. It helps our fancy
to fill up the vast breaks in the walls of Kenilworth, Dudley, and
Chepstow; to reconstruct their banqueting-halls, their drawing-rooms,
galleries, crypts, and kitchens, and to reproduce them entire in their
first and fullest grandeur. By the light of Warwick we can not only
rebuild and roof the broken walls of these old castles, but bring into
the vista of the imagination their interior embellishments, their
carved cornices and wainscoting, their luxurious furniture, tapestry,
paintings, and other works of art. Thus, Warwick represents to us in
its living being and form of to-day the hundreds of castles that were
planted over the island in the first century after the Conquest. Schamyl
in his native costume and dignity could not represent better at St.
Petersburg the leaders of the Circassian race and country than does this
grand home and fortress of the Warwicks the embattled citadels of the
old English knights.
Warwick Castle, the fortress of one of the stoutest and grimmest of the
old English fighting knights, did not put on the armor of nature to
help out its own. It did not take advantage of perpendicular rocks or
river-sides like Stirling, Edinburgh, or Chepstow. At first thought one
might fancy the founders of it selected the location more for fishing
than fighting. And now, in these quiet sunny days of peace, with its
venerable mane of cedar-trees, it looks like a grand old lion lying down
with its paw tenderly over a tired lamb. Or, it basks its broad side on
the bank of the Avon, which photographs its walls and towers and turrets
every bright day in the centuries. The castle is all intact and entire,
with no part clean gone or going to ruin. Inside and out, from end to
end, it is the harmonious growth of many ages, and registers them
in distinctive illustrations. It shows what can be done by a dozen
generations of wealthy men, inheriting an estate that doubles in income
every half-century. Here each branch of the wide-spreading family tree
has hung in festooned clusters the foliage of its life, genius, and
taste. Each has contributed its contingent to the magnificent whole to
be handed down to a posterity which should cherish and adorn the
heirloom of illustrious ancestors, and send it down the line of the
future with added wealth and beauty.
With such an anchorage to moor a family name and estate to, there is no
wonder that both should attach their being, life, and treasures to it
with a proud ambition of perpetuity. The name holds on as everlastingly
as the estate. For the poorest man on earth must have some distant
relation, and the richest man's son would take the name of the twentieth
cousin to inherit the title and castle of Warwick. However thin and
attenuated may be the line of blood relationship between these families,
the favored heir to this baronial rank and wealth gathers within his
coronet all the memories and distinctions and even relationships of his
predecessors all the way back to the Conquest. He is the heir of all of
them; Saxon, Dane, and Norman converge into his _status_ and blend in
his being....
The great body of the castle itself, viewed detached from its grand
surrounding walls and towers, presents no very salient features. It is
a long range of buildings, with a straight front on the river. It never
had the imposing or varied frontage of Dudley Castle in its day, or the
palace halls that flanked the great tower of Kenilworth. But in its
large straight suite of lofty apartments you have a museum of objects
illustrating the tastes, habits, fashions, luxuries, and arts of all the
ages and generations which those massive walls have seen. Passing from
end to end, you may gauge English history for seven centuries with an
observing glance through these objects. Here the white-winged dove of
Peace has made her nest in the rusty and battered helmet of grim-visaged
war.
On entering the Great Hall one is deeply impressed with its capacious
faculty of hospitable entertainment. Truly, if tables were ever spread
from end to end, a regiment of guests must have sat down to the banquet.
It is sixty-two feet in length by forty in breadth, and the roofage of
it is lofty and done in elaborate Gothic, rich in carving and other
ornament. Here are the coronets and shields of all the earls back to
Henry de Newburgh, who seem to look down upon the company below through
their cognizances, as if represented in and countenancing all the
generous hospitalities their living heir is disposed to give. The walls
are wainscoted with the brave old English oak, far advanced in its
seeming transformation into ebony. All you ever read in romance or
veritable history about walls hung with armor of crusaders and other
knightly raiders, interspersed with spoils of the chase, is here
realized in full; and you see that even Sir Walter Scott has not
exaggerated the fact in this respect. Conspicuous on the genealogical
tree of these weapons and outfittings for war is the helmet usually
worn, says the loyal guide-book, by the usurper Cromwell. Here, too, is
the doublet in which Lord Brooke was killed at Lichfield, in 1643.
Three great Gothic windows are set out in deep recesses, as if to
embrace and welcome the first and last light of the day, and to soften
and diffuse it, a tinted smile, over the spacious apartment and its
embellishments. But if the outside world smiles inward through these
great windows so graciously, their outward vision opens upon a scene of
exquisite beauty, which few can be found to equal. Here a vista deploys
before the view full of all the attractions that nature and art can give
to a landscape. What a pier-glass is to the richest drawing-room, the
gentle and classic Avon is to this variegated scenery, as a portion of
it, and as a reflecting medium of all its other features. It meanders
through the landscape as a limpid hem to lawn, field, grove, garden, and
forest, now flashing a silver radiance, now one of gold, upon the robe
it adorns, just as the sun's rays vary in their fall and flood. Right
before the face and eyes of the castle, the river forms a great brooch
of emerald, or a little green island, which may be taken for its coat
of arms, or _cognizance_, much older and nobler than any hung up in
the Great Hall. Then the soft and level river, looking half asleep, or
checking its flow in the presence of these human antiquities, just below
them arises and stands on its feet, showing a stature one hundred feet
high in a cascade that sings a kind of lullaby to the by-gone ages whose
spirits haunt the castle.
It was in these grounds that, in 1846, I saw for the first time a real
cedar of Lebanon, and I never shall forget the impression it made upon
me. Here they stood, grand and venerable, with their long low arms
extended as if pronouncing "a benediction after prayer" upon the green
lawn that mirrored their august entourage. Here they stood, singing the
same old song they sang to David on Mount Lebanon. It was a mere fancy;
but I listened to the soughing murmur with the thought that they were
reciting to each other some of his best psalms of praise and
thanksgiving.
From the Great Hall you have a vista of state rooms on one side, and
private or family rooms on the other, extending in a straight line for
three hundred and thirty-three feet. All these apartments, large and
small, are adorned and enriched with specimens of high art and high
labor, collected by all the families that have owned and occupied the
estate. In some respects each room, if not the museum, is the mirror, of
its age. Armor and articles of luxurious or antique furniture divide
with pictures of the same dates the admiration of the visitor. Here is
the celebrated painting of Charles I. by Vandyke, for which Sir Joshua
Reynolds offered to pay five hundred guineas in his time. How much it
would bring under the hammer to-day those who know the existing _furore_
for the old masters may easily estimate. And all the old masters are
here, represented each in several of the pictures that made their fame.
In fact, a national gallery of paintings, of creditable number and
variety, might be filled from the treasures of art exhibited in these
splendid apartments. Here figure Rubens, Rembrandt, Vandyke, Salvator
Rosa, Guido, Murillo, David, and other great artists of different ages,
schools, and countries.
Then, as the framework of all these pictures, you see the artistry of
the chisel, or carved work in wood and stone of contemporary schools in
that department. Then the garnered treasures collected by these various
branches of the family, purchased in different centuries and countries,
are arranged in happy taste and harmony with the pictorial adornments.
Wardrobes, cabinets, tables, and all the articles of luxurious furniture
found in palaces, English or Continental, modern or ancient, are here in
all their variety and curious workmanship.
The "Kenilworth Buffet," a work which attracted so much admiration in
the Great Exhibition of 1851, is a masterpiece of design and execution.
It is Kenilworth and its romantic history, with the principal acts and
actors of its Elizabethan drama, carved in oak from a tree that stood a
green, tall sentinel of nature at the time to witness the festive
scenes. Even Elizabeth's meeting with Amy Robsart, and her interview
with Leicester after the exposure of his faithlessness, are done to the
life by the carver's chisel.
Two objects connected with Warwick Castle every one, young or old, who
visits it, will remember perhaps most distinctively. They are the
"Guy's porridge-pot" and the great marble Vase. Both are of prodigious
capacity, the very Gog and Magog of all hollow-ware. The Irishman who
called the donkey the father of all rabbits would call this large
porridge-pot the father of all kettles. Its history cannot be got out
of it by the grave and solemn thumpings that the old woman gives its
massive sides. So it is ascribed to the great Guy's time and to his
personal use. As ornithologists deduce the size and habits of some
prehistoric bird by a single foot-track in petrified clay, so the size,
strength, and other capacities of that legendary giant are deduced from
the size of this remarkable pot. The analogy might seem reasonable to
many simple-minded people. Surely no man could be less than eight feet
and a half high who needed such a kettle for cooking for himself and
family, even if his children were nearly as large as himself. And this
is the size accorded to that prehistoric hero. He was one of those
amphibious beings who, like King Arthur, have lived in the misty
border-land of history, half substance and half shadow, but projecting
a full human outline upon the spectrum of by-gone centuries.
The history of the Great Vase is more ancient and uncertain still. It is
of white marble, executed in the purest Grecian order of conception and
art. It is truly a mighty goblet, with two handles of intertwisted
vine-branches and wreathed and crowned with the tendrils, leaves, and
clusters of the vineyard. It was fished up from the bottom of a lake
near Tivoli by the British ambassador then at Naples, from whom it
passed into the hands of the father of the present earl, who conveyed it
to England and placed it in its present position.
The high and solid walls that enclose the castle and their great towers
impress you with the realities of the ages they represent. Erected
before gunpowder had been brought into the field of battle, they still
look as if the builders anticipated its introduction and power, and they
would stand a heavy battering now, old as they are, by common cannon. In
a word, Warwick Castle is a structure which must grow more and more
interesting from decade to decade. It is the only feudal palace left
intact in England. It was ranked among the very best of them when they
were all alive and strong over the land. It is associated with a name
that stands among the first in the Norman aristocracy. Its location in
itself is deeply interesting. Shakespeare breathed an inspiration upon
the little Avon that laves its foundations, and gave to its name an
immortality more vital and beautiful than the Tiber's. All these aspects
and associations are becoming more and more widely appreciated; and the
footfall of visitors from distant countries crossing the threshold will
grow more and more frequent as the readers of English history and
romance increase in both hemispheres.
WINDSOR FOREST AND CASTLE.
ANONYMOUS.
[It is to the author of "English Forests and Forest-Trees," who
fails to give his name on the title-page of a work whose
authorship is amply worthy of acknowledgment, that we owe our
present selection. Among the various historic forests of
England, that of Windsor ranks high, and the adjoining castle
was the seat of many interesting episodes of English history.
The selection we give is mainly confined to the scenery and
traditions of the forest.]
Windsor forest and castle are dear to all Englishmen. Few palaces have
grouped around them so many associations, both legendary, historical,
and poetical, from the time of Arthur and the knights of his Round Table
to those of the royal house of Hanover. The castle has been the abode of
royalty from the time of the Saxon kings. It was while King John lived
at Windsor that the barons obtained from him the Magna Charta. Cromwell
has held his courts within its walls, and Charles I. lies buried in its
chapel. A Scottish king has been a captive here, and here have been
celebrated some of the most splendid pageants and courtly ceremonies
recorded in history. The forest, though it can scarcely be said now to
exist, has also some "legends of woe and dread," and other associations.
The forest was once of enormous extent, comprehending a circumference
of one hundred and twenty miles.... In the lapse of time, however,
it dwindled away; for we find that in the reign of James I. its
circumference was estimated by Norden at only seventy-seven miles and a
half, exclusive of the liberties extending into Bucks. At this period
there were fifteen walks within it, each under the charge of a head
keeper, and the whole contained upward of three thousand head of deer.
This extent was somewhat diminished in later years; for in a subsequent
map, by Roque, the circuit is given as fifty-six miles.
In the year 1813 an act of Parliament was passed for its enclosure. The
portion which had been previously enclosed, known as Windsor Great Park,
was of small extent compared with the whole range of the forest. The
area of the park was less than four thousand acres, of which two
thousand were under cultivation; while the open unenclosed forest
amounted to twenty-four thousand acres. Scarce a vestige of the forest
is now left, except what has been apportioned to the crown, adjoining
the Great Park.
The view from Windsor Castle is one of the finest in England. A vast
panorama extending as far as the eye can reach. All flat,--the faint
blue horizontal line, scarcely discernible from the clouds, so distant
is it, as straight as the boundary of a calm sea,--and yet how
infinitely varied! What would such an expanse of land be in any other
country? A mere drugget compared to this Field of Cloth of Gold. A
lovely river, to which the hackneyed illustration of molten gold might
well be applied from the silent roll of its glittering waters, as if
impeded by their own rich weight; now flashing like a strip of the sun's
self through broad meadows whose green is scarcely less dazzling, now
lost in shady nooks of wonderful and refreshing coolness. Trees of
every sort and growth, singly, in clumps, in rows, everywhere. Little
bright-looking villages, with their white spires or gray towers, dotted
all over the scene. Everything is in perfect harmony. The gentle murmur
of human life, reaching us from the distance, is no more injurious to
the effect than the rustling of trees or the chirping of the birds....
Our first homage is to Nature. The influence of the beautiful is
predominant over all others. We think only of the scene before us, and
must thoroughly enjoy it for its own sake before we can bestow a thought
on a single association connected with it. We forget all about the walls
we are standing on. We do not even reflect that the golden river is our
old friend the Thames. It never strikes us that that expanse of green
out there to the right, so thickly planted with massive elms and
chestnuts, is a very celebrated place called the Home Park of Windsor,
or indeed that it is called anything else--or anything at all. We are
(metaphorically speaking) rolling in that grass with a republican
contempt for its patrician connections, and picking out the best of
those trees with an ungrateful heedlessness of what royal hand may have
planted them there for our gratification.
[The author proceeds to describe some notable places
surrounding. To the left, across the river, is Eton College;
immediately facing is the town of Slough, where the Herschells
made their residence; to the right is Stoke Poges, the scene of
Gray's "Elegy"; to the extreme right is Runnymede, where King
John signed Magna Charta; and nearer at hand is the village of
Datchet, the scene of Falstaff's ducking, in the "Merry Wives
of Windsor."]
And now, reader, it is high time we turned our attention to the forest
side of the question.
By the forest we must be distinctly understood to mean, not merely the
dense collection of wood to which the term is usually applied, but that
aspect of nature generally wherein the wild and unchecked growth of
forest-trees forms the principal feature. The so-called Windsor Forest
has almost entirely disappeared, a few insignificant plantations alone
retaining the title. The Great Park, however,--indeed, the whole country
south of the castle for several miles,--presents every variety of the
class of scenery which it is our business to treat.
Our way into the Great Park lies along the celebrated avenue known as
the Long Walk. This is no less than three miles in length, extending in
a perfectly straight line from the castle, in a direction almost due
south, to Snow Hill, a natural elevation surmounted by an equestrian
statue of George III.
We have two good miles before us ere we can meet with an outlet that
will enable us to ramble among the trees to our hearts' content.
The Long Walk, however, is a very fine sight, in spite of its dire
straightness. A splendid road, three miles long, bordered by double
rows of giant elms, is not without interest. The regularity is not
unpleasing, because not overstrained. The trees, once pressed into the
service of order, have been allowed to grow their own way, instead of
being clipped and cropped as they would be under similar circumstances
in some countries,--France, to wit. Here we have Nature with her hair
combed merely; there we should find her with her head shaved. The
monotony of the perspective is nicely broken by the undulations of
the ground. It is pleasant to turn occasionally into the aisle-like
sidewalks, and look up at the cool green roof of trellis-work formed
by the interlacing trees. Besides, the castle, as we look back at it
receding from us, begins to recover something of its original character:
Edward III. and William of Wykeham are resuming the ascendancy. The
gradually deepening stillness, too, is exactly what we could wish. The
rooks, hovering over us eternally, afford very agreeable companionship;
and we consider their quiet, though apparently cynical, observations
very much to the purpose indeed.
Ere we proceed far on our way, an object of once agreeable, now
melancholy, interest attracts our attention. This is the famous Herne's
Oak, which stands in the enclosure known as the Little Park, to our
left. It is contended by some authorities that the veritable Herne's Oak
was cut down by some orders of George III., delivered in a mistake as to
its identity. Others, with a natural reluctance to believe so sagacious
a monarch capable of such a blunder, maintain that the rumor originated
in the fact of his majesty causing some similar trees in the vicinity to
be cleared away, that the oak itself might occupy a more prominent
position.
The agreeable interest attached to this famous tree is well known. It is
supposed (though there has been much controversy as to its authenticity)
to be the identical tree immortalized by the mention of Shakespeare as
the scene of Herne the Hunter's unamiable exploits:
"There is an old tale goes, that Herne the Hunter,
Sometime a keeper here in Windsor forest,
Doth all the winter time, at still midnight,
Walk round about an oak, with great ragged horns;
And then he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle;
And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain
In a most hideous and dreadful manner."
The interest we have alluded to of a melancholy description is of a more
recent date, and is derived from the tantalizing fact that _Herne's Oak
is no longer visible to the public_, the portion of the park in which it
stands having been recently enclosed as an addition to the private
grounds of the Duchess of Kent's residence at Frogmore.
We tried hard once to tempt an inflexible gate-keeper to let us
in,--just to have a look at it. It was of no use. We assured him we
should do no harm, and (as the most delicate means of suggesting a
recompense) offered to pay the expenses of any trustworthy person he
might choose to send to look after us. He was adamant,--no strangers
were allowed in. We appealed to his feelings,--like Rolla and the
sentinel,--asked him (in terms we considered adapted to his mental
cultivation) how he would like to be a poet wrecked in sight of
inspiration. His expressed opinion was that we were making fun of him.
He was not, however, a bad fellow; his sternness was a matter of duty,
not constitution. He was touched by our disappointment, and sought to
console us by the assurance that we had lost nothing; "that there was
nothing to be seen in the tree; that it was about the ugliest he ever
see in the whole park; and as for Herne the Hunter, it was nothing but a
pack of old woman's rubbage."
However, neither our niggardly exclusion from the sight of the old tree,
nor the materialist consolations of our friend the gate-keeper, can
efface the impression on our mind of the grim forest-fiend haunting the
old park like a family spectre.
There is no satisfactory legend of Herne the Hunter. Vague tradition
states that he was a keeper in the forest in Elizabeth's reign, who,
having committed some crime which occasioned his dismissal, hung himself
on the tree. This is a view of the case we cannot think of taking. The
idea of a discharged flunkey committing suicide on a mere sentimental
consideration of wages and perquisites is a sorry foundation for the
magnificent "demon business" indicated by Shakespeare. Our notion is of
something far more weird and fiendish,--a story of fearful crimes and
unhallowed compacts; something in the nightmare German ballad style....
It is a long lane that has no turning; we mean the Long Walk is. Passing
through a handsome pair of lodge-gates, we emerge fairly into the Great
Park.
Now we are in the Forest.
When we inform our reader that our first impulse is to run as fast as
our legs can carry us, he will doubtless require an explanation.
Assuming that it is a fine day we have chosen for our ramble, in the
first place we are surrounded by a bright and rarefied atmosphere, whose
inhalation, to quote a lamented writer, is a process something between
breathing and drinking. The scene has changed, as if by magic. The
barrier we have just passed would seem to be a fairy circle, shutting
out all matters pertaining to human life. Castles and towns are things
we must have dreamt of somewhere long ago. We are in a vast solitude of
grassy mounds and giant trees, in all their native luxuriance, spreading
as far as the eye can reach. The stillness would be appalling but for
the clamor of a million birds. We have heard of a native of Piccadilly,
who, spending a night in the country for the only time in his life,
declared that he had been unable to sleep, the confounded birds made
such a noise. If we had a grudge against that native (and doubtless if
we knew him we should not be long in forming one, as we certainly should
not like him), and had it in our power to punish him in our own way, we
should condemn him to sling a hammock on one of the trees in Windsor
Great Park, and roost there for a week; for the birds in Windsor Great
Park are the noisiest in the world.
These are the combined causes of an effect similar to that of
laughing-gas, or something to drink, leading to gymnastic results such
as we have indicated....