WINDSOR CASTLE
The situation is superb. The castle stands high above the river, which here curves, so as to show off its irregular outlines to the greatest advantage. They rise in a series of rough levels to the mighty Round Tower, the crown of the whole, which is massive enough to dominate, but not sufficiently high to dwarf the rest. Turrets, battlements, and smaller towers serve only to emphasize the dignity of this central keep. It was built in the time of Edward III., and strangely enough, though altered and heightened in that worst period of architectural taste, the reign of George IV., it was not spoiled; and even to a child proclaims something of the grandeur one naturally associates with it.
As seen from the bridge the whole of the north range can be followed by the eye, from the Prince of Wales's Tower, facing the east terrace, to the Curfew Tower on the west. Intermediately there are the State apartments, and the Norman gateway, over which is the Library. These overlook the north terrace—open to the public at all hours from sunrise to sunset.
The view from this terrace is very fine, stretching away to Maidenhead, and at times, on days of cloud and shadow, the light-coloured walls of Clieveden stand out suddenly, caught by a passing gleam, amid a forest of green trees. We can look down on the whole of Eton—the church with its tall spire; the buttresses and pinnacles of the chapel standing up white against an indigo background; the red and blue roofs piled this way and that; and the green playing fields girdled by the swift river. It was on the castle terrace that George III. used to walk with all his family, except the erring eldest, when he took those tiresome parades which Miss Burney describes with so much life-like detail.
The Chapel cannot be seen from the river, as it is in the lower ward behind the canons' houses, and is not sufficiently high to rise well above them.
It would be of little use to attempt to tell stories of Windsor, for its history belongs to the history of England and not to the river Thames; yet there is one memory which may be noted. Young James Stuart of Scotland had been sent by his father, Robert III., to France after the death of his elder brother, the wild Duke of Rothesay, nominally for education, but in reality for safe keeping. The boy was captured by the English while on the sea and brought as a prisoner to England. He was then only about ten or twelve years old. He was treated with every consideration, and educated so worthily that he became afterwards one of the best of all the Scottish kings. He was at first in the Tower and elsewhere, but when he reached young manhood he was brought to Windsor, where he had apartments allotted to him. Though he was allowed to follow the chase and pursue the amusements of his time, he was yet a prisoner, and the sad opening stanzas of his great poem, the Kingis Quair, speak the melancholy he often felt. This poem was composed at Windsor, and its pensiveness changes after the day when, looking down from his window in the castle, the youth saw walking in the garden Joan Beaufort, whom he afterwards made his wife:
And therewith cast I down mine eye again,
Where as I saw, walking under the tower,
The fairest or the freshest young flower
That ever I saw methought before that hour.