Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 17, No. 098, February, 1876Various
History
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 17, No. 098, February, 1876
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
The task of reform is by no means complete. There is room and call
for further concessions in favor of the masses. These embryo statesmen
have work blocked out for them in the future, and this is a good place
for them to adjust to it the focus of their bright young optics.
[Illustration: ETON COLLEGE AND CHAPEL.]
The monarchical idea is certainly predominant in our present
surroundings. The Thames flows from the castle and the school under
two handsome erections named the Victoria and Albert bridges; and
when, turning our back upon Staines, just below Runnymede, with its
boundary-stone marking the limit of the jurisdiction of plebeian
London's fierce democracy, and inscribed "God preserve the City of
London, 1280," we strike west into the Great Park, we soon come plump
on George III, a great deal larger than life. The "best farmer that
ever brushed dew from lawn" is clad in antique costume with toga and
buskins. Bestriding a stout horse, without stirrups and with no bridle
to speak of, the old gentleman looks calmly into the distance while
his steed is in the act of stepping over a perpendicular precipice.
This preposterous effort of the glyptic art has the one merit of
serving as a finger-board. The old king points us to his palace, three
miles off, at the end of the famous Long Walk. He did not himself care
to live at the castle, but liked to make his home at an obscure lodge
in the park, the same from which, on his first attack of insanity, he
set out in charge of two of his household on that melancholy ride
to the retreat of Kew, more convenient in those days for medical
attendance from London, and to which he returned a few months later
restored for the time. Shortly after his recovery he undertook to
throw up one of the windows of the lodge, but found it nailed down. He
asked the cause, and was told, with inconsiderate bluntness, that
it had been done during his illness to prevent his doing himself an
injury. The perfect calmness and silence with which he received this
explanation was a sufficient evidence of his recovery.
[Illustration: ETON COLLEGE, FROM NORTH TERRACE, WINDSOR.]
Bidding the old man a final farewell, we accept the direction of
his brazen hand and take up the line of march, wherein all traveling
America has preceded us, to the point wherefrom we glanced off so
suddenly in obedience to the summons of Magna 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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