A gentle eminence, the Castle Hill springs from the bosom of a typical English scene.
WINDSOR CASTLE.
Crowning a verdant ridge, the Norman keep looks northward on a wide and wooded level, stretching over many shires, tawny with corn and rye, bright with abundant pasture, and the red and white of kine and sheep, while here again the landscape is embrowned with groves and parks. The stream curves softly past your feet, unconscious of the capital, unruffled by the tide. Beyond the river bank lie open meadows, out of which start up the pinnacles of Eton College, the Plantagenet school and cloister, whence for twenty-one reigns the youth of England have been trained for court and camp, the staff, the mitre, and the marble chair. Free from these pinnacles, the eye is caught by darksome clump, and antique tower, and distant height; each darksome clump a haunted wood, each antique tower an elegy in stone, each distant height a storied and romantic hill. That darksome clump is Burnham wood; this antique tower is Stoke; yon distant heights are Hampstead Heath and Richmond Park. Nearer to the eye stand Farnham Royal, Upton park, and Langley Marsh; the homes of famous men, the sceneries of great events.
Swing round to east or south, and still the eye falls lovingly on household spots. There, beyond Datchet ferry, stood the lodge of Edward the Confessor, and around his dwelling spread the hunting-grounds of Alfred and other Saxon kings. Yon islet in the Thames is Magna Charta Island; while the open field, below the reach, is Runnymede.
The heights all round the Norman keep are capped with fame—one hallowed by a saint, another crowned with song. Here is St. Leonard’s hill; and yonder, rising over Runnymede, is Cooper’s hill. Saints, poets, kings and queens, divide the royalties in almost equal shares. St. George is hardly more a presence in the place than Chaucer and Shakespeare. Sanctity and poetry are everywhere about us; in the royal chapel, by the river-side, among the forest oaks, and even in the tavern yards. Chaucer and Shakespeare have a part in Windsor hardly less pronounced than that of Edward and Victoria, that of St. Leonard and St. George.
Windsor was river born and river named. The stream is winding, serpentine; the bank by which it rolls was called the “winding shore.” The fact, common to all countries, gives a name which is common to all languages. Snakes, dragons, serpentines, are names of winding rivers in every latitude. There is a Snake river in Utah, another Snake river in Oregon; there is a Drach river in France, another Drach river in Switzerland. The straits between Paria and Trinidad is the Dragon’s Mouth; the outfall of Lake Chiriqui is also the Dragon’s Mouth. In the Morea, in Majorca, in Ionia, there are Dragons. There is a Serpent islet off the Danube, and a Serpentaria in Sardinia. We have a modern Serpentine in Hyde Park!
Windsor, born of that winding shore-line, found in after days her natural patron in St. George.
With one exception, all the Castle builders were men and women of English birth and English taste; Henry Beauclerc, Henry of Winchester, Edward of Windsor, Edward of York, Henry the Seventh, Queen Elizabeth, George the Fourth, and Queen Victoria; and these English builders stamped an English spirit on every portion of the pile—excepting on the Norman keep.
Ages before the Normans came to Windsor, a Saxon hunting-lodge had been erected in the forest; not on the bleak and isolated crest of hill, but by the river margin, on “the winding shore.” This Saxon lodge lay hidden in the depths of ancient woods, away from any public road and bridge. The King’s highway ran north, the Devil’s Causeway to the south. The nearest ford was three miles up the stream, the nearest bridge was five miles down the stream. A bridle-path, such as may still be found in Spain or Sicily, led to that Saxon lodge; but here this path was lost among the ferns and underwoods. No track led on to other places. Free to the chase, yet severed from the world, that hunting-lodge was like a nest. Old oaks and elms grew round about as screens. Deep glades, with here and there a bubbling spring, extended league on league, as far as Chertsey bridge and Guildford down. This forest knew no tenants save the hart and boar, the chough and crow. An air of privacy, and poetry, and romance, hung about this ancient forest lodge.