"Laugh this sport o'er by a country fire; Sir John and all." We fill in fancy some street in Windsor with those quaint old gabled houses, set in fair gardens, in one of which Master Page, in another Master Ford, lived; and can reconstruct the "Garter" Inn;[5] we see the fields near Windsor in which the mock duel does not come off, and we can imagine to ourselves the farmhouse near Frogmore at which pretty Mistress Anne Page was feasting. We can follow the basket of washing to the "whitsters in Datchet Mead," and can almost recognise the muddy ditch by the Thames into which the unchaste knight was thrown. As regards the question whether the date of the play be the time of the wild Prince and Poins, or the contemporary day of great Elizabeth, one little passage makes the point clear. When Falstaff wants to use the chimney as a hiding-place, Mrs. Page says, that they always use to discharge their birding-pieces up the chimney. Now, in the days of Henry IV., there were no "birding-pieces," while the part country gentleman, part opulent burgher of Elizabeth's time, especially in such a place as Windsor, would possess a fowling-piece. The old characters of Pistol, Bardolph, Nym, are only used because they seem to be the natural hangers-on of Falstaff; and we may safely assume that we are reading, or seeing, a comedy of manners belonging to Shakspeare's own day. Did the Queen, Shakspeare, and the Court ride by that oak of Herne the hunter, who was "Sometime a keeper here in Windsor forest"? Round that oak, in Windsor Park, occurred the last revenge of the merry wives, after which foul old Sir John is bidden to "Serve God, and leave your desires, and fairies will not pinse you." We may enjoy a most delightful time of fair fancies in Windsor forest while we think of those "Spirits, which by mine art I have from their confines call'd to enact My present fancies;" and the charming crowd of characters in the dear _Merry Wives_ fade like an insubstantial vision, as we unwillingly leave our ramble in the park, and saunter down, with imaginations sweetly and subtly stirred, to our waiting boat. It is good to leave Windsor with minds filled with creations of our Shakspeare in his sweetest and his gentlest mood. /H. Schütz Wilson/. [Illustration: PROCESSION OF THE BOATS, ETON.] CHAPTER VII. WINDSOR TO HAMPTON COURT.