CHAPTER V
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
