The hideous top, totally inappropriate in style, was put up by Salvin in 1863, when the ancient bell tower of picturesque and suitable appearance was demolished. The operations carried out at that date were, of course, dignified by the name of “restoration”; as a matter of fact the unwieldy addition to the tower had not a vestige of archæological authority. It is much to be hoped that some day the ancient appearance of the tower will be restored, for the huge, ugly, and inappropriate slated roof constitutes an eyesore from almost every point of vantage from which the Castle can be viewed. Within quite recent years there could be seen, looming through an embrasure, the muzzle of an old cannon, which, according to a local legend, had been placed there by Cromwell in order to guard against any hostile move from the direction of Eton. During a recent visit to Windsor the writer was quite unable to locate either cannon or embrasure; presumably both have gone. This old curfew tower--the oldest part of the Castle, and said to have been built in the days of the Conqueror himself--has been peculiarly unfortunate. When Salvin constructed his abominable top he had the decency to leave the rest of the external structure alone, and in the writer’s Eton days, thirty years ago, almost all the old stonework and quaint little windows, cunningly contrived for bowmen to shoot through, remained as they had been built. Since then there have been two or three reparations; no doubt the decay of the stone made some renovations necessary. In the last of these, however, during which the whole of the exterior was refaced with an entirely different kind of stone, the original design of the tower, which, like all the work of the Normans, was very simple, has been tampered with, the result being that its ancient charm has been completely impaired. So is it that in this country, in spite of much meaningless gush and prattle of education and appreciation of art, almost every fine monument is by degrees vulgarised and destroyed. The curfew tower, it should be added, was one of the few parts of the Castle left untouched by George IV. in the very comprehensive remodelling of the whole stately pile by Wyattville. FOOTNOTES: [4] See page 204. [5] Mr. Tucker in _Eton of Old_. [6] See pages 38-40. [7] See page 5. [8] See _The Architectural History of the University of Cambridge and of the Colleges of Cambridge and Eton_, by the late Robert Willis, M.A., F.R.S., edited and brought up to date by the late John Willis Clark, M.A., Cambridge, at the University Press, 1886. VII COLLEGE