IV. here amused themselves with little playthings. That Chinese fishing-temple, which the genius of incongruity stuck up here in the very prettiest nook of this water, is out of place in these solitudes. The baby brig which the Sailor King built to guard this miniature sea, is another inharmonious toy. And last of all, the ruins! Grecian capitals on Egyptian shafts; the spoils of the Nile and the Ilyssus huddled together in a forced companionship! Real ruins, removed from the sites to which they belong, are the worst species of exotics. The tale which they tell of their old grandeur is quite out of harmony with their modern appropriation. We can look with an antiquarian pleasure upon a capital in a cabinet; but a shaft or two perched up in a modern pleasure-ground produce a ludicrous struggle between the feeling of the true and the artificial, and a sort of pitiable scorn of the petty vanity of the living, which snatches the ruins of the dead from the hallowed spot where time or the barbarian had crumbled them into nothingness, to administer to a sense of what is pretty and merely picturesque. A real ruin is a solemn thing, when it stands upon the site where it has defied the elements for centuries in its pomp and glory; but a mock ruin-a fiction of plaster and paint, or a collection of fragments brought over sea, to be joined together in something like an imitation of their awful decay, are baubles. Thames at Chertsey. The Duke wanted occupation | lect Virginia Water before George IV. and William in this his solitude. Tradition says that some of his amusements were not of the most creditable kind, and that a paltry Chinese temple, which still stands at the head of the lake, was not wholly dedicated to "Contemplation, heavenly maid!" The royal "butcher," however, was not entirely sensual or cruel. His vices were, probably, as much exaggerated by political hostility and popular scandal as his personal appearance. He was a large, unwieldy man. Horace Walpole, who calls him 'Nolkejumskoi,' describes his visit to Strawberry Hill, by saying, "I should have figured him like Gulliver cutting down some of the largest oaks in Windsor Forest, to make joint-stools in order to straddle over the battlements, and peep in at the windows of Lilliput." We would think pleasantly of the memory of Duke William of Cumberland; for this beautiful Virginia Water was unquestionably his creation. He had the merit of seeing the genius of Paul Sandby, whom he patronized as a draughtsman when Sandby was a mere boy. Sandby was the landscapegardener of Virginia Water. He had large materials to deal with, and he used them with a bold and masterly hand. The name of the place was an ambitious one. The little lake and the gentle fir-clad banks have no real associations with the boundless forests where the first adventurers of the Anglo-Saxon stock carried the power of civilization. We receive the name simply as expressive of silence and solitude, amidst woods and waters. If we surrender ourselves to the genial influences of nature, we may find as deep enjoyment on the margin of this artificial lake and the "alleys green" of these woods, as the wandering traveller experiences on the banks of the Potomac, or in the passes of the Appalachian hills. After all, we may dislike the Chinese temple and the mock ruins, because they have been set up here since the holiday days of our youth, when Virginia Water appeared to us the very perfection of romantic scenery. In those days we used to enter these precincts at Bishopgate. We were accustomed to wander "Great princes have great playthings." We recol- down a long and close plantation of pines, where the A more rabbit ran across with scarcely a fear of man. wild and open country succeeded; and we then followed the path, through many a "bosky bourn," till we arrived at a rustic bridge, which crossed the lake at a narrow neck, where the little stream was gradually Jost amongst the underwood. A scene of almost unrivalled beauty here burst upon the view. For nearly a mile a verdant walk led along, amidst the choicest evergreens, by the side of a magnificent breadth of water. The opposite shore was rich with the heather bloom; and plantations of the most graceful treesthe beech, the ash, and the weeping-birch (" the lady of the woods")-broke the line of the wide lake, and carried the imagination on, in the belief that some mighty river lay beyond that screening wood. The cascade was at length reached: we are now approaching this cascade by the south bank of the lake, instead of from the north. A walk of a quarter of a mile from the ruins brings us to this wonder of our boyhood. How small it looks, after a twenty years' absence! Is it the same? Has not its scale been contracted? Is not the volume of water diminished? Surely the fall was much higher! Old Cobbett has explained all this in words of strong common sense, which read like poetry :-" After living within a few hundreds of yards of Westminster Hall, and the Abbey Church, and the Bridge, and looking from my own windows into St. James's Park, all other buildings and spots appear mean and insignificant. I went to-day to see the house I formerly occupied. How small! It is always thus the words large and small are carried about with us in our minds, and we forget real dimensions. The idea, such as it was received, remains during our absence from the object. When I returned to England, in 1800, after an absence from the country parts of it of sixteen years, the trees, the hedges, even the parks and woods, seemed so small! It made me laugh to hear little gutters, that I could jump over, called rivers! The Thames was but a creek!' But when, in about a month after my arrival in London, I went to Farnham, the place of my birth, what was my surprise! Everything was become so pitiably small!" : Perhaps if we were to stay for a few months in the neighbourhood of Paul Sandby's pet cascade, and visit it daily, we might come once more to think it a truly noble object, and worthy to be lauded in better verse than we bestowed upon it in the days of our young inexperience: A wild and solemn scene in the green woods- Faint image of the loud and mighty falls A voice more dreary than the whirlwind's roar, Of fathomless wilds where man had never walk'd. Thy song is varied with the varying clime, The pretty little inn, the Wheatsheaf,' on the high road from Egham to Bagshot, has access to the grounds of Virginia Water. The days of rigid exclusion passed away when William IV. came to the throne. Nearly opposite the inn is a considerable eminence, on the summit of which was a lofty clock-tower, built by William of Cumberland. At the time of the Forest Inclosure, the hill and its ruined clock-tower were sold to some lucky individual, who turned the barren spot to small profitable account till he mounted a large telescope which commanded the lake. Profane eyes could then look upon the gay boats that flitted over the water, where a lesser Cleopatra might say— į "My music playing far off, I will betray This was not to be looked upon by the vulgar, though out of ear-shot; so the tower became again the royal property, at the cost of a few paltry thousands. Passing round the west of the hill, we may wander in a wild country towards Chertsey: us. "There the last numbers flow'd from Cowley's tongue." But our course is to Cooper's Hill, to which a walk of a mile or so, across Englefield Green, will conduct However the prospect here may be exceeded by scenes of wider extent or more striking grandeur, certainly the locale of the earliest descriptive poem of our language is calculated to produce the warmest feelings of admiration, both for its actual beauty and its unrivalled associations. From an elevation of several hundred feet you look down upon a narrow fertile valley, through which the Thames winds with surpassing loveliness. Who does not recollect the charming lines with which Denham describes the "silver river?"— "Oh! could I flow like thee, and make thy stream Immediately at your feet is the plain of Runnemede, What where the contest between John and the Barons was decided; and in the centre of the river is the little fishing island, where tradition says that Magna Charta was signed. At the extremity of the valley is Windsor Castle, rising up in all the pomp of its massive towers. We must recollect the scene as Windsor was. ever Sir Jeffrey Wyattville may have done for its internal improvement, and for its adaptation to the purposes of a modern residence without sacrificing all its character of antiquity, we fear that he has destroyed its picturesque effect in the distant landscape. Its old characteristic feature was that of a series of turrets rising above the general elevation. By raising the intermediate roofs, without giving a proportionate height to the towers, the whole line has become square and unbroken. This was, perhaps, an unavoidable fault; but it is a fault. Denham, in his famous poem, " contracts the space" that lies between Cooper's Hill and the great themes of his song. St. Paul's sometimes is looming through the distance the Paul's of Wren, "Preserv'd from ruin by the best of kings." The epithet is one of the no-meaning commonplaces for which a courtly poet may be forgiven, especially when he can so justly philosophise upon what lies beneath the "sacred pile:" "Under his proud survey the city lies, Where state and wealth, the business and the crowd, Where, with like haste, through several ways they run, From London he turns to Windsor, at the western extremity of the valley. Its "majestic towers" are here associated with the "noble names" of heroes and of kings, "to whom It gave a cradle, or to whom a tomb." Saint Anne's hill lies before him, "whose top of late A chapel crown'd, till, in the common fate, This was the Abbey of Chertsey. Of the abbey no trace is left; but the memory of Cowley is fresh. The chapel on the hill is gone, but the traveller stops to look upon the quiet cottage where Charles Fox found a happiness which pleasure or ambition could not give. The poet, descending from the hill, surveys It would appear from Denham's description of the woods that overhang the plain between the hill and the river, and of the royal huntings here beheld, that the Forest stretched uninterruptedly to the edge of this table-land. From the chase he makes a rapid transition to the great historical event of the locality: "This, a more innocent and happy chase Than when of old, but in the self-same place, To lawless power, here turn'd, and stood at bay." We can Runnemede -or Runingmede, as the Charter has it, -was, according to Matthew of Westminster, a place where treaties concerning the peace of the kingdom had been often made. The name distinctly signifies a place of council. Rune-med is an Anglo-Saxon compound, meaning the Council Meadow. never forget that Council Meadow, for it entered into our first visions of liberty. Runnemede was our Marathon. Very beautiful is that narrow slip of meadow on the edge of the Thames, with gentle hills bounding it for a mile or so. It is a valley of fertility. Is this a fitting place to be the cradle of English freedom? Ought we not, to make our associations harmonious, to have something bolder and sterner than this quiet mead, and that still water, with its island cottage? Poetry tells us that "rocky ramparts" are "The rough abodes of want and liberty.” But the liberty of England was nurtured in her pros or merchant, or villain, shall be unreasonably fined for a small offence, the first shall not be deprived of his tenement, the second of his merchandise, the third of his implements of husbandry," exhibited a state far more advanced than that of the "want and liberty" of the poet, where the iron race of the mountain cliffs "Insult the plenty of the vales below." Runnemede is a fitting place for the cradle of English liberty. Denham somewhat tamely speaks of the plain at his feet: "Here was that Charter seal'd, wherein the Crown Our liberty was not so won. It was wrested from kings, and not given by them; and the love we bestow upon those who are the central point of our liberty is the homage of reason to security. That security has made the Thames "the world's exchange;" that security has raised up the great city which lies "like a mist" beyond Cooper's Hill; that security has caused the towers of Windsor to rise up in new splendour, instead of crumbling into ruin, like many a stronghold of feudal oppression. Our prosperity is the child of our free institutions; and the child has gone forward, strengthening and succouring the parent. Yet the iron men who won this charter of liberties dreamt not of the day when a greater power than their own-the power of the merchants and the villains-would rise up to keep what they had sworn to win upon the altar of St. Edmundsbury. The Fitz-Walter, and De Roos, and De Clare, and De Percy, and De Mandeville, and De Vescy, and De Mowbray, and De Montacute, and De Beauchamp-those great proge nitors of our English nobility-compelled the despot to put his seal to the Charter of Runnemede. But another order of men, whom they of the pointed shield and the mascled armour would have despised as slaves, have kept, and will keep, God willing, what they won on the 15th of June, in the year of grace 1215. The thing has rooted into our English earth like the Ankerwyke Yew on the opposite bank of the Thames, which is still vigorous, though held to be older than the great day of Runnemede. Returning from the narrow road which leads from Englefield Green to the brow of Cooper's Hill, we pass westward on to Bishopgate Heath-a land of villas. Here dwelt a greater poet than he who aspired to flow like the Thames-the wild and mysterious boy-the premature philosopher-the lover of huma nity, who was gradually throwing off the heavy weight of the unintelligible world, to abide in hope and peace, when death gave its own tranquillity. Percy Byshe Shelley has associated these woodland solitudes with his personal history. Mrs. Shelley records that, "In the summer of 1815, after a tour along the southern coast of Devonshire, and a visit to Clifton, he rented a house on Bishopgate Heath, on the borders of Windsor Forest, where he enjoyed several months of comparative health and tranquil happiness. The later summer months were warm and dry. Accompanied by a few friends, he visited the source of the Thames, making the voyage in a wherry from Windsor to Cricklade. His beautiful stanzas in the churchyard of Lechlade were written on that occasion. 'Alastor' was composed on his return. He spent his days under the oak-shades of Windsor Great Park; and the mag nificent woodland was a fitting study to various descriptions of forest scenery we poem." Let us take a passage of this compare it with the reality about us : "More dark And dark the shades accumulate the oak Most solemn domes within, and far below, Starr'd with ten thousand blossoms, flow around Fold their beams round the hearts of those that love, Hume inspire the | the old regal fortress under the Norman kings, and As shapes in the weird clouds. Soft mossy bowers In the woods between Bishopgate Heath and Windsor much of this gorgeous description may be realized. There are thickets which the sun's rays scarcely pierce ; deep dells, where the seldom-startled deer browses in safety; glades, where the distant castle is seen in apparent continuity, as if there were no middle ground between the breadths of foliage and the old gray towers; sunny lawns, where one may dream through a summer's afternoon, beneath the shadowy beech, and hear no sound but that indescribable buzz with which every lover of the woods is familiar. Here have we lingered in happy days, when there was no remorse in apparent idleness; for the mind was educating itself without books, or thinking only of books as materials for romance. History itself was then the most brilliant of romances; and the "distant prospect" of Windsor had historical associations enough to satisfy the most imaginative. Every nook of the old castle, untouched by modern improvement, was then familiar to us. We used to speculate upon the condition of "The barons and knights wore their chain armour, with their visors down, and with their pages carrying their shields; the bishops and abbots wore their pontifical dresses, and were attended by their acolytes and cross-bearers; the king wore his royal robes and his golden crown: the costume of the piece was varied, splendid, and exceedingly picturesque. In this respect there is scarcely a better period in our history than the reign of King John. The locality was in many respects different from what it now is: the parks and |