This first though not foremost of Surrey heights is surrounded by fair and famous scenes to inspire the Denhams of our generation. Below it, on the Berkshire edge, lies Beaumont, once home of Warren Hastings, now a Roman Catholic Eton. Behind it opens Englefield Green, a village of much gentility, which has housed many well-known persons, from Louis Napoleon to the late R. H. Hutton of the _Spectator_; and it is clearly the "Dinglefield" of Mrs. Oliphant's _Neighbours on the Green_. Near this, at the Bishops Gate of Windsor Park, is the hamlet where Shelley wrote his _Alastor_, and did not let his views of Church or State be charmed by the sight of Windsor Castle that here rises royally into prospect. Windsor Park is mainly in Berkshire; yet, keeping down the woods and rhododendron walks on the east side, we should come upon Virginia Water, overflowing at one end into Surrey, which may claim a share of the royal demesne, and a large one of the wider bounds once known as Windsor Forest. From the Thames slope of Cooper's Hill, where "Denham's Seat" makes a view-point across the river, expands a wider landscape over the flat fields of Bucks and Middlesex, watered by the branching Colne. The spire to the north marks a village known on maps as Wyrardisbury, but to men as Wraysbury; then a mile beyond, across the railway, comes Horton, home of Milton's youth. But the scene of greatest fame lies in the foreground, at our feet, for this wide riverside meadow, degraded to a race-course as it has been, is Runnymede, on which King John was forced to sign the first great charter [Illustration: WINDSOR CASTLE FROM COOPER'S HILL, NEAR EGHAM.] of our liberties. Some would have that historic stage to be Magna Charta island off the west end of the mede, where a stone is shown as the table of signing; but no Surrey patriot can allow such a pretension on the part of Buckinghamshire, while it may be that the king had his quarters at the Benedictine Nunnery of Ankerwyke on the other bank, if not at the old house in Staines pretending to that honour. It is remarkable what a number of places in many parts of England claim to have housed or lodged a so unpopular and worthless sovereign.