Bob Taylor's Magazine, Vol. I, No. 2, May 1905Various
History
Bob Taylor's Magazine, Vol. I, No. 2, May 1905
Various
Agriculture -- Southern States -- Periodicals; Southern States -- Periodicals
It is well known that Victoria decided to convert this chapel into a
memorial for the Prince Consort after his death. No expense was spared,
and when it was completed in 1874, its interior rivaled the most splendid
ecclesiastical structures in the world.
The fourteen windows, with panels beneath thirteen of them, are dreams
of art. The windows contain portraits and arms of various kings, queens
and princes, and some symbolical figures. The panels beneath picture
scenes from the Old and New Testaments, suggestive of various virtues and
religious truths. The chapel contains in the center, besides the Prince’s
cenotaph, the tombs of the Dukes of Albany and Clarence.
The Round Tower is the most picturesque feature of the castle. Nothing
is so interesting as a tower. Not a modern tower—a mere imitation—but
a real tower, with dungeons, where prisoners have clanked their chains
in despair, with great halls where knights in armor foregathered, with
secret passages and musty mysteries in every corner—a tower that has
lived on to see this age of civilization superimposed upon its own rough,
ready and bloody past.
[Illustration:
VICTORIA TOWER AND SOUTH SIDE.
]
The tower is over three hundred feet in circumference and is built on the
top of a high mound in a most commanding situation. It is reached, after
one passes through the Norman Gate, by a long flight of steps, which
is continued up through the structure till the base of the turret is
reached. This flight is commanded by a cannon placed at the head of the
stairs. The turret, a good-sized tower itself, is built upon the top of
the old tower of George III. Within the turret, the stairs wind around a
massive bell, brought from Sevastopol.
Finally the top is reached, three hundred and twenty-five feet from the
ground, and we walk round the ample promenade—the turret is twenty-five
feet wide—dumb in the presence of the loveliness before us. How beautiful
is an English landscape, with its living green, threaded here and there
by the silver sparkle of a stream. West and south we looked out over
Windsor forest and parks, while in the north Eton College was plainly
visible with the inevitable cricketers, dressed in white flannel, moving
to and fro over the matchless sward, or facing the “crease,” which is, I
believe, the “correct” name for the “pitcher’s box.”
How much history and mystery might not the walls of this old tower, built
by Edward III, teach us, could they but speak! This tower once contained
the great round table of the Knights of the Garter and was the home of
the constable-governors, who were responsible for the safe keeping of the
state prisoners, among the most famous of whom have been John, of France,
and David, of Scotland.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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