of the ditch of the old Western fortress being gradually
cleared away; and we may hope to see a new town
arise, at no very distant day, more in harmony with
the Castle-at any rate, less obstructive and deforming.
When Swift visited Windsor in the reign of Anne, he
wrote: "Windsor is a delicious situation, but the town
is scoundrel." (Journal to Stella.)
But not only was
the town "scoundrel," but within the Castle-walls
were many
wretched deformities, some of which still
remain. Look at that miserable lath-and-plaster gate-
way, close under the little projecting chapel at the
south-west angle of Saint George's. Ought that to
remain another hour? The paltry tenements at the
north-west have been recently pulled down; and the
effect is marvellous. Our engraving is now a real
unobstructed view. A year ago such a view would
have been imaginary.

Dodd's Hill. From the Castle several paths diverged in a south-easterly direction towards the dairy at Frogmore; and one of these went close by a little dell, in which long rank grass and fern, and low thorns, grew in great profusion. When the newly-discovered world of Shakspere first opened on our boyish vision, we saw in this little dell the identical spot where Anne Page and her troop of fairies "couched in a pit hard by Herne's Oak, with obscured lights :" for here, tradition said, was the site of Herne's Oak. Tradition had variations in its song. The oak was standing-the oak was cut down. It is unnecessary here to go into that controversy. There is an oak close by the spot we are now describing, which Mr. Jesse affirms to be Herne's Oak. It is of little consequence now whether the oak were cut down by order of George III., or whether the blasted trunk which still stands in the avenue, be Shakspere's tree: it is of small import The interior of Saint George's Chapel has been renow-for the whole locality is changed. The path to cently the object of judicious improvement, arising out Datchet was made through this spot some thirty years of the more accurate taste of our day in minute points ago; subsequently, the romantic little dell was filled of ecclesiastical architecture. When, some seventy or up with the rubbish of the Castle in the time of George eighty years ago, George III. rescued this chapel from IV.; and now a trim flower-garden stands in the place the neglect of a century, it is remarkable how much was of the old pit and its ancient thorns. We are glad to effected in harmony with the general character of the know that this path to Datchet is to be wholly shut up. building. The organ-screen, for example, which was We admit, without hesitation, that the Queen and her then erected, though defective in some particulars, is family have the fullest right to the privacy which the not incongruous. Of the painted windows then prohumblest citizen desires; but we think it was a very duced in the historical style, we are scarcely competent questionable experiment to convert a free path into a to speak: they were amongst the wonders of our sunken ditch. It is proposed that the road to Old boyhood; and although we may doubt their strict proWindsor by Frogmore shall be shut up, and cross the priety, we should not patiently endure their destrucLong Walk some half mile from the town. Frogmore, tion to make way for modern imitative ornaments of and the Long Walk, and the Crown properties lying stained glass-saints, kings, and bishops, row upon between them, will then be the natural and proper row. The west window has recently been thoroughly domain of the Castle. The road to Datchet will be refitted. It was formed, at the great reparation of the carried across the Lower Park, beneath the North Chapel, out of glass collected from various parts of the Terrace. We shall then, we trust, have an undisturbed building. Much, however, of the old glass was carried view of the Castle; and we may still cherish our Shak- off; some may still be found in the fine Church of sperian associations; for this part of the Park was Saint Cross, at Winchester. This window is now formerly known as "Datchet Mead;" and there, made perfect and secure. The changes in the choir among the whitsters," was Falstaff "slighted into are also most judicious; and the clustered columns, the river," where "the shore was shelvy and shallow." cleansed of their atrocious whitewash, are now as Let us pass up the High-street of Windsor to the fresh as when they came from under the tool of the point where four streets unite-the old site of a market- sculptor. Pleasant is it to know that this wonderful cross. The whole south front of the Castle is now building is duly appreciated; that no miserable penury before us, and the general effect is truly imposing. will condemn it to neglect such as it experienced Through a gateway with two towers, erected by Henry through the greater part of the eighteenth century; VIII., we enter the Lower Quadrangle. Saint George's that no modern finery deforms its ancient beauty; that Chapel-that exquisite gem of our florid architecture-whatever is done is in the spirit of a judicious reverence

is immediately before us. To the west of the gateway we see that improvement has been at work. A row of houses, known as the lower foundation for the Military Knights, has been pulled down. What is to replace these houses is not quite apparent. If a terrace, it is unfortunate that the houses in the town perk up their garrets and chimneys, and shut out the noble view of the green hills of the Great Park. We can scarcely expect that the whole of this quarter of the town should be removed. It is some satisfaction to behold the paltry tenements that stood on the edge

for what is permanent in the past.

To the east of St. George's Chapel is the Royal Dormitory-a building erected by Wolsey for his own tomb; desecrated and neglected for more than a century, and then applied to the purpose of a mausoleum by George III. The interior has been completely repaired only within a few years. The royal tombs were long beneath a floor of rubbish. We pass on, and look down into the garden in the moat of the Round Tower, out of which the mound rises, with the great keep towering up in the old feudal grandeur. In

the low wall of the Terrace opposite the moated garden | the Titian and Aretin' of Titian; the

is an arch through which we see Eton and the distant country. The effect is magical.

To form some adequate notion of the vastness of the Castle itself, we ought to look down upon its roofs from the leads of the Round Tower. The interior of the Tower is not now exhibited. The panorama of the country around Windsor is very remarkable, from its extent and variety. But these bird's-eye prospects are anything but picturesque.

The State Apartments! It is a matter of congratulation that these are now shown without payment. Tickets must, however, be procured either at London or Windsor before the stranger is admitted. This may be well; for those who make a journey to Windsor for the purpose of seeing the Castle will not think much of calling at a London printseller's for a ticket. But if a stranger arriving from London without a ticket should apply at the proper office at Windsor, he would be refused; if he come from any other region than the metropolis, he is admitted. Surely this is an absurd and mischievous regulation, of which foreigners especially have a right to complain. Better was the old shilling fee for all comers than such perplexing rules, which can have no object but the partial exclusion, perhaps, of those who, being the greatest strangers, and therefore the most anxious to be gratified, are shut out by a natural inadvertence. However, when the ticket is presented, there is that politeness from the attendants which well befits the atmosphere of a palace. The visitor inscribes his name in a book ;he is shown his proper entrance; he is waited upon by a man of some intelligence, not to hurry him along, nor to disgust by his ignorant jargon, but to name the objects of curiosity, quietly and unobtrusively. How different are those objects now from those of a quarter of a century ago! Then were to be seen the State beds, whose faded hangings had been carefully preserved from periods when silk and velvet were the exclusive possessions of the high born; chairs of ebony, whose weight compelled the sitter to remain in the place of the seat; and tables of silver, fine to look upon, but worthless to use. Then we cast up our eyes, through many an interminable length of King's Presence Chambers, and King's Audience Chambers, and Queen's Presence Chambers, and Queen's Audience Chambers, and State Bed-rooms, and Guard-rooms, and Ball-rooms, and Banquetingrooms,-upon ceiling after ceiling, where Charles II. and his queen were humbly invited to their banquets by Jupiter and Neptune, and Mercury and Bacchus. Truly his Majesty was a fit companion for the scoundrels of the Mythology! But there were better things than these to be seen-ay, better things than even king Charles's Beauties, which are now banished, to make the Londoners, who go in thousands to Hampton Court, wonder that such bold meretricious hussies could ever be called "Beauties." There were the 'Misers' of Quentin Matsys;-the Cleopatra' and 'Venus' of Guido (now in the National Gallery);

Silence' of

Annibal Caracci. The State Apartments now shown are few in number. They consist of 'The Queen's Audience Chamber,' with one of Verrio's ceilings, and magnificent hangings of Gobelin tapestry: and The Queen's Presence Chamber,' with a similar ceiling, and a continuation of the same tapestry-the story of Queen Esther and Mordecai. The Vandyke Room is alone worth a pilgrimage to Windsor. The noble portraits which fill this room used to be scattered about the Castle. Brought together, they not only show us the greatness of the painter, but they fill the mind with the memory of that unhappy prince, whose fate seemed written in his pensive face-he, to whom Windsor was the last prison ere he walked to the scaffold out of the window of Whitehall. Here is one of the three grand pictures of Charles I., with his equerry, D'Epernon-of which the Middle Temple Hall and Warwick Castle can also boast. Here is the celebrated head, in three points of view, painted for Bernini the sculptor; several portraits of Queen Henrietta; and that noble composition of Charles's children, with their great mastiff. What a head, too, is that of Vandyke, by himself! Shall any one look at these pictures, and doubt whether Portrait be a high department of Art? We proceed through what is called the State Ante-room' to the Grand Staircase,' and so to the Grand Vestibule,' and 'the Waterloo Chamber.' The Staircase, the Vestibule, and the Waterloo-room, are amongst the most conspicuous of Sir Jeffry Wyatville's improvements, and have been already mentioned in the general notice of these improvements. Of Sir Thomas Lawrence's collection of portraits in the Waterloo Chamber it would be easier to speak in terms of enthusiasm if we had not so recently been gazing upon the noble groups by Vandyke. With some striking exceptions, the portraits of Lawrence want solidity and grandeur. There are few heroic heads amongst them. Pius VII. is, perhaps, the finest of the series; George Canning, the most disappointing, because unlike him in "the social hour." However, it was a fine idea to bring together the portraits of the men who were more or less agents in the pacification of Europe, after the final defeat of the arch-impostor of the Revolution; and no one living in the time of Lawrence could have carried out the plan with any approach to his success. From the Waterloo-room we go to the Ball-room,' glittering with burnished gold, and bright with 'Gobelin tapestry,' and thence to 'Saint George's Hall'-an oblong room, 200 feet in length. This is the great Banqueting-room, when the sovereign holds high festival. The Guard Chamber' closes the apartments upon which the crowd may look-with shield, and banner, and complete mail. The pedestal of Nelson's bust, formed out of a block of the mainmast of 'The Victory,' is worth all the swords and pikes which gleam on these walls.

In the days before George III. occupied the Castle, the State Apartments exhibited to the public were of

"To the witty, all clear mirrors;
To the foolish, their dark errors;
To the loving sprite

A secure delight;

To the jealous, his own false terrors."

Here walked his successor, in solitary gloom; great in misfortune-a loveable man when danger surrounded him on every side-a true king when a fated prisoner. Here the uncrowned mighty one who struck him down, kept state with his 'Ironsides.' The restored Stuart here brought his French tastes in building, and turned the old fortress-palace into an incongruous Versailles. Anne here spent her summer months sometimes

much greater extent than the present suite. They ranged from the gallery called after Queen Elizabeth, at the west of the Upper Quadrangle, to St. George's Hall on the east; and included most of the rooms looking on the North Terrace and into the Great Square. No doubt these apartments were the actual dwelling-rooms of former sovereigns. The want of passages, by which each room could have an independent approach, was not regarded in the old days of cumbrous state. It was not only in some of the larger rooms-perhaps in her own Gallery-that Elizabeth listened to the 'Merry Wives of Windsor;' but in some of the smaller chambers the learned queen sate translating Horace's Art of Poetry;' and anon descended by a private staircase to pace with stately step" hunting in a chaise with one horse, which she drives the Northern Terrace which she had raised. Here James I. fidgeted about in his trunk-hose, and solaced the hot evenings of the dog-days of 1621 with the learned slang of Ben Jonson's masque of 'The Gipsies Metamorphosed,' and looked knowingly about him as the new language, which contained such words as "gentry coves" and "rum morts," required explanation. It is pleasant to think that these chambers once rang with the delicious lyric of the same masque :

herself, and drives furiously, like Jehu,"-and sometimes, according to the same authority, the Dean of St. Patrick, having a drawing-room," but so few company that the queen sent for us into the bed-chamber, where we made our bows, and stood about twenty of us round the room, while she looked at us round, with her fan in her mouth, and once a minute said about three words to some that were nearest her, and then she was told dinner was ready, and went out." The first two Georges left Windsor to decay. The third had the good taste to know where an English king should have his chief palace; but the Castle was deemed uninhabitable for a growing family: so the king lived for years in a whitewashed house at the foot of his palace,