ich 200
were covered with water. At that time the park was over grown with fern
and rushes, and abounded in bogs and swamps, which in many places were
dangerous and almost impassable. It contained about three thousand head
of deer in bad condition. The park has since been thoroughly drained,
smoothed, and new planted in parts; and two farms have been introduced
upon it, under the direction of Mr. Kent, at which the Flemish and
Norfolk modes of husbandry have been successfully practised.

Boasting every variety of forest scenery, and commanding from its knolls
and acclivities magnificent views of the castle, the great park is
traversed, in all directions, by green drives threading its long
vistas, or crossing its open glades, laid out by George the Fourth.
Amid the groves at the back of Spring Hill, in a charmingly sequestered
situation, stands a small private chapel, built in the Gothic style, and
which was used as a place of devotion by George the Fourth during the
progress of the improvements at the castle, and is sometimes attended by
the present queen.

Not the least of the attractions of the park is Virginia Water, with
its bright and beautiful expanse, its cincture of green banks, soft and
smooth as velvet, its screen of noble woods, its Chinese fishing-temple,
its frigates, its ruins, its cascade, cave, and Druidical temple, its
obelisk and bridges, with numberless beauties besides, which it would be
superfluous to describe here. This artificial mere covers pretty nearly
the same surface of ground as that occupied by the great lake of olden
times.

Windsor forest once comprehended a circumference of a hundred and twenty
miles, and comprised part of Buckinghamshire, a considerable portion
of Surrey, and the whole south-east side of Berkshire, as far as
Hungerford. On the Surrey side it included Chobham and Chertsey, and
extended along the side of the Wey, which marked its limits as far as
Guildford. In the reign of James the First, when it was surveyed by
Norden, its circuit was estimated at seventy-seven miles and a half,
exclusive of the liberties extending into Buckinghamshire. There were
fifteen walks within it, each under the charge of a head keeper, and the
whole contained upwards of three thousand head of deer. It is now almost
wholly enclosed.

V.

The Last Great Epoch in the History of the Castle.

A prince of consummate taste and fine conceptions, George the Fourth
meditated, and, wh