In the year 1813 an act of Parliament was passed for its enclosure. The portion which had been previously enclosed, known as Windsor Great Park, was of small extent compared with the whole range of the forest. The area of the park was less than four thousand acres, of which two thousand were under cultivation; while the open unenclosed forest amounted to twenty-four thousand acres. Scarce a vestige of the forest is now left, except what has been apportioned to the crown, adjoining the Great Park.
The view from Windsor Castle is one of the finest in England. A vast panorama extending as far as the eye can reach. All flat,—the faint blue horizontal line, scarcely discernible from the clouds, so distant is it, as straight as the boundary of a calm sea,—and yet how infinitely varied! What would such an expanse of land be in any other country? A mere drugget compared to this Field of Cloth of Gold. A lovely river, to which the hackneyed illustration of molten gold might well be applied from the silent roll of its glittering waters, as if impeded by their own rich weight; now flashing like a strip of the sun’s self through broad meadows whose green is scarcely less dazzling, now lost in shady nooks of wonderful and refreshing coolness. Trees of every sort and growth, singly, in clumps, in rows, everywhere. Little bright-looking villages, with their white spires or gray towers, dotted all over the scene. Everything is in perfect harmony. The gentle murmur of human life, reaching us from the distance, is no more injurious to the effect than the rustling of trees or the chirping of the birds....
Our first homage is to Nature. The influence of the beautiful is predominant over all others. We think only of the scene before us, and must thoroughly enjoy it for its own sake before we can bestow a thought on a single association connected with it. We forget all about the walls we are standing on. We do not even reflect that the golden river is our old friend the Thames. It never strikes us that that expanse of green out there to the right, so thickly planted with massive elms and chestnuts, is a very celebrated place called the Home Park of Windsor, or indeed that it is called anything else—or anything at all. We are (metaphorically speaking) rolling in that grass with a republican contempt for its patrician connections, and picking out the best of those trees with an ungrateful heedlessness of what royal hand may have planted them there for our gratification.
[The author proceeds to describe some notable places surrounding. To the left, across the river, is Eton College; immediately facing is the town of Slough, where the Herschells made their residence; to the right is Stoke Poges, the scene of Gray’s “Elegy”; to the extreme right is Runnymede, where King John signed Magna Charta; and nearer at hand is the village of Datchet, the scene of Falstaff’s ducking, in the “Merry Wives of Windsor.”]
And now, reader, it is high time we turned our attention to the forest side of the question.
By the forest we must be distinctly understood to mean, not merely the dense collection of wood to which the term is usually applied, but that aspect of nature generally wherein the wild and unchecked growth of forest-trees forms the principal feature. The so-called Windsor Forest has almost entirely disappeared, a few insignificant plantations alone retaining the title. The Great Park, however,—indeed, the whole country south of the castle for several miles,—presents every variety of the class of scenery which it is our business to treat.
Our way into the Great Park lies along the celebrated avenue known as the Long Walk. This is no less than three miles in length, extending in a perfectly straight line from the castle, in a direction almost due south, to Snow Hill, a natural elevation surmounted by an equestrian statue of George III.
We have two good miles before us ere we can meet with an outlet that will enable us to ramble among the trees to our hearts’ content. The Long Walk, however, is a very fine sight, in spite of its dire straightness. A splendid road, three miles long, bordered by double rows of giant elms, is not without interest. The regularity is not unpleasing, because not overstrained. The trees, once pressed into the service of order, have been allowed to grow their own way, instead of being clipped and cropped as they would be under similar circumstances in some countries,—France, to wit. Here we have Nature with her hair combed merely; there we should find her with her head shaved. The monotony of the perspective is nicely broken by the undulations of the ground. It is pleasant to turn occasionally into the aisle-like sidewalks, and look up at the cool green roof of trellis-work formed by the interlacing trees. Besides, the castle, as we look back at it receding from us, begins to recover something of its original character: Edward III. and William of Wykeham are resuming the ascendancy. The gradually deepening stillness, too, is exactly what we could wish. The rooks, hovering over us eternally, afford very agreeable companionship; and we consider their quiet, though apparently cynical, observations very much to the purpose indeed.
Ere we proceed far on our way, an object of once agreeable, now melancholy, interest attracts our attention. This is the famous Herne’s Oak, which stands in the enclosure known as the Little Park, to our left. It is contended by some authorities that the veritable Herne’s Oak was cut down by some orders of George III., delivered in a mistake as to its identity. Others, with a natural reluctance to believe so sagacious a monarch capable of such a blunder, maintain that the rumor originated in the fact of his majesty causing some similar trees in the vicinity to be cleared away, that the oak itself might occupy a more prominent position.