"* his matchless "Lives." There they are sitting in the library, looking into old black-letter books, or, after an abstemious repast, having a quaint and quiet chat about angling or higher themes, as on a summer evening they look out of the window on the green field and the noble trees. And early on a spring morning, there they go, attired in angler's gear, with rods and lines, and landingnets and worm-cans, and all the other appurtenances of the gentle craft, to the river-side down to Black Pots, where they fish and listen to the birds and wisely and lovingly talk together. Eton College was founded by the pious munificence of Henry VI. The charter of foundation is dated 1441, and the school is designated "the Kynge's College, of our Lady by Etone, besyde Wyndesore." We shall not weary the reader with extracts from the documents, nor from the builder's accounts, with entries about sand and chalk, flints and bushels of oyster-shells, timber and stone; nor describe how the work went on, how provost and fellows were chosen, and how they met and worshipped in the building before it was finished, and how alıns-houses were built, and the boys were at length gathered; but we cannot resist the temptation to insert the following little bit out of an old MS. : “When King Henry met some of the students in Windsor Castle, whither they sometimes used to go to visit the king's servants, whom they knew, on ascertaining who they were, he admonished them to follow the path of *In the Windsor Parish Register, under date 1636, we find, "Bapt. William, son of Mr. Isaac Walton, and Rachel his wife." Walton married Rachel Ford in 1626, and had three children, two of them boys, who both died. Biographers say they were born in the angler's house, Chancery-lane, a few doors from Fleet-street. It is plain from this entry that one was born in Windsor, where it would seem at the time Walton was a resident, perhaps that he might he near Sir Henry and angle in the pleasant river Thames. virtue, and besides his words, would give them money to win over their good will, saying to them, 'Be good boys, be gentle and docile, and servants of the Lord.'" There is the walk to Datchet, carried across the lower Home Park through a noble avenue, haunted by memories of the fat knight, who, in the muddy ditch at Datchet Mead, was shot out of the basket "hissing hot," into the water, "where, with a kind of alacrity in sinking, he had been drowned, but that the shore was shelvy and shallow." And there are green lanes from Datchet to Upton, passing by a fairy-looking cottage with a goodly lawn and a pool of water, and drooping willows in front. And there is Upton Church, once ruinous but now restored, with its ivyclad steeple, which vies with Stoke in its claim to the allusion by Gray of the "ivy-mantled tower, where the owl does unto the moon complain." Crossing by what is now Upton Park, we pause by an old-fashioned straggling brick house, above which the famous telescope, aspiring to the heavens, used to indicate the abode of the great astronomer Herschell. And going somewhat a-field on the other side Slough, one may ride to Stoke church-yard, and think of Gray and his mother. Close by there is the mansion of Mr. Granville Penn, with a piece of the tree under which his ancestor, the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania, formed his treaty with the Indians. The estate has now passed into the hands of Mr. Labouchere. Farther on, you reach Burnham Common and Beeches, one of the noblest collections of trees in England, where Burke used to meditate, and which Gray thus describes :-" "I have at the distance of half a mile, through a green lane, a forest (the vulgar call it a common), all my own; at least as good as so, for I spy no living thing in it but myself. It is a chaos. of mountains and precipices; mountains, it is true, that do not ascend much above the clouds, nor are the declivities quite so amazing as Dover Cliff; but just such hills as people who love their necks as well as I do may venture to climb, and crags that give the eye as much pleasure as if they were more dangerous. Both vale and hill are covered with most venerable beeches, and other very reverend vegetables, that, like most other ancient people, are always dreaming out their old stories to the winds; "And as they bow their hoary tops, relate In murmuring sounds the dark decrees of fate; Cling to each leaf, and swarm on every bough.' "At the foot of one of these I squats me, (il penseroso), and there I grow to the trunk for a whole morning; the timorous hare and sportive squirrel gambol around me, like Adam in Paradise before he had an Eve; but I think he did not use to read Virgil,' as I commonly do there." Stoke Pogis is worthy of being visited for its own rural beauty, as well as for its memorials of Gray. The picturesque church, with its "ivy-mantled tower," and the churchyard, with its "yew-trees' shade," its "rugged elms," and the quiet tombs, beneath which "the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep." remain much as they were when the poet wrote the Elegy. The "shapeless sculptures" are there, upon which his eyes may have rested, and many a holy text is still strewn around, "To teach the rustic moralist to die."* On a slight eminence, commanding a fine view of Windsor and Eton, a monument was erected in 1799, in memory of "the great lyric and elegiac poet," the inscription bearing that "he died in 1771, and lies unnoticed in The Author has here made use of some passages in a paper contributed by him some time ago to "The Leisure Hour." the churchyard adjoining, under the tombstone on which he piously and affectionately recorded the interment of his aunt and lamented mother." In that tomb " sleep the remains of Dorothy Gray, widow, the careful, tender mother of many children, one of whom alone had the misfortune to survive her." A more recent inscription under the adjoining window runs thus :-"Opposite to this stone, in the same tomb upon which he has so feelingly recorded his grief at the loss of a beloved parent, are deposited the remains of the author of the Elegy." "Hark, how the sacred calm that breathes around, NOTE ON THE SALLYPORT NEAR THE In an early part of the book notice is taken of a subterranean passage lately discovered. I beg to subjoin a fuller account of it, furnished by my friend, Mr. Turnbull, clerk of the works at Windsor Castle. "This passage is below the basement floor of the castle, a little to the east of the York Tower, and extends from about twelve feet of the front wall of the corridor towards the south, and terminates in what was anciently the castle ditch. "The length of the passage as it now exists is one hundred feet. There is about twenty feet of this passage which has rubble walls with stone-pointed arch, and two semicircular doorways with splayed and moulded arches, one of which has still the iron hooks for the door; the remainder of the passage is cut through the solid chalk rock; the width is about five feet, and height from six to eight feet, and the floor of the passage is twenty-two feet below the ground level of the Quadrangle.” 76 17 45 33 50 23 13 11 Armour, suit of Arthur, King Ashmole, the Historian of the Garter during the reign of Astrological studies-horoscope of Edward III. . Astrology-skill of Henry V. in that science BANQUET in St. George's Hall Banquet in the fifteenth century described Barons Bear, White, kept in Tower of London "Black Book," or Register of the Garter 51, 54 40 45 2, 44 Blenheim, Victory of 140 Bramber, Lord of, and his wife 7 Brandon, Charles, Duke of Suffolk 76 Bray, Sir Reginald, architect of St. George's Chapel 52, 201 Burdon, William, the painter. 24 Burford House, residence of Eleanor Gwyn CARLTON'S, Sir Dudley, description of James I. at Windsor Castle : Additions of Henry III. . Appearance of, in the reigns of the Norman Sovereigns 130 93 9 14 22 |