a Charta. On either
hand, as we thread the Long Walk, open glades that serve as so many
emerald-paved courts to the monarchs of the grove, some of them older
than the whole Norman dynasty, with Saxon summers recorded in their
hearts. One of them, thirty-eight feet round, is called after the
Conqueror. Among these we shall not find the most noted of Windsor
trees. It was in the Home Park, on the farther or northern side of the
castle, that the fairies were used to perform their

--dance of custom round about the oak
Of Herne the hunter.

Whether the genuine oak was cut down at the close of the last century,
or was preserved, carefully fenced in and labeled, in an utterly
leafless and shattered state, to our generation, is a moot point.
Certain it is that the most ardent Shakespearean must abandon the hope
of securing for a bookmark to his _Merry Wives of Windsor_ one of the
leaves that rustled, while "Windsor bell struck twelve," over the head
of fat Jack. He has the satisfaction, however, of looking up at the
identical bell-tower of the sixteenth century, and may make tryst with
his imagination to await its midnight chime. Then he may cross the
graceful iron bridge--modern enough, unhappily--to Datchet, and
ascertain by actual experiment whether the temperature of the Thames
has changed since the dumping into it of Falstaff, "hissing hot."

[Illustration: STAINES CHURCH.]

Back at the castle, we must "do" it, after the set fashion. Reminders
meet us at the threshold that it is in form a real place of defence,
contemplative of wars and rumors of wars, and not a mere dwelling by
any means in original design. A roadway, crooked and raked by frowning
embrasures, leads up from the peaceful town to the particularly
inhospitable-looking twin towers of Henry VIII.'s gateway, in their
turn commanded by the round tower on the right, in full panoply of
artificial scarp and ditch. Sentinels in the scarlet livery that
has flamed on so many battlefields of all the islands and continents
assist in proving that things did not always go so easy with majesty
as they do now. But two centuries and more have elapsed since
there happened any justification for this frown of stone, steel and
feathers; Rupert's futile demonstration on it in 1642 having been
Windsor's last taste of war, its sternest office after that having
been the safe-keeping of Charles I., who here spent his "sorrowful and
last Christmas." Once inside the gate, vi