n the courts and halls of peerless Windsor? Where does the summer
sun shine so brightly as upon its stately gardens and broad terraces,
its matchless parks, its silver belting river and its circumference of
proud and regal towers? Nowhere in the world. At all seasons Windsor is
magnificent: whether, in winter, she looks upon her garnitures of woods
stripped of their foliage--her river covered with ice--or the wide
expanse of country around her sheeted with snow--or, in autumn, gazes
on the same scene--a world of golden-tinted leaves, brown meadows, or
glowing cornfields. But summer is her season of beauty--June is the
month when her woods are fullest and greenest; when her groves are
shadiest; her avenues most delicious; when her river sparkles like a
diamond zone; when town and village, mansion and cot, church and tower,
hill and vale, the distant capital itself--all within view--are seen to
the highest advantage. At such a season it is impossible to behold from
afar the heights of Windsor, crowned, like the Phrygian goddess, by
a castled diadem, and backed by lordly woods, and withhold a burst of
enthusiasm and delight. And it is equally impossible, at such a season,
to stand on the grand northern terrace, and gaze first at the proud
pile enshrining the sovereign mistress of the land, and then gaze on the
unequalled prospect spread out before it, embracing in its wide range
every kind of beauty that the country can boast, and not be struck
with the thought that the perfect and majestic castle--"In state
as wholesome as in state 'tis fit Worthy the owner, and the owner
it,"--together with the wide, and smiling, and populous district
around it, form an apt representation of the British sovereign and her
dominions. There stands the castle, dating back as far as the Conquest,
and boasting since its foundation a succession of royal inmates, while
at its foot lies a region of unequalled fertility and beauty-full of
happy homes, and loving, loyal hearts--a miniature of the old country
and its inhabitants. What though the smiling landscape may he darkened
by a passing cloud!--what though a momentary gloom may gather round
the august brow of the proud pile!--the cloud will speedily vanish, the
gloom disperse, and the bright and sunny scene look yet brighter and
sunnier from the contrast.

It was the chance of the writer of these lines upon one occasion to
behold his sovereign under circumstances which he esteems singularly
for