The present Castle Hall was erected by a Winchester monarch--Henry III., Henry of Winchester. Here again the sense of the historic past swells and surges round you. It is almost a revelation in history to walk round it and follow out in detail the memories of those whose history is personally connected with it, their names and arms all emblazoned in the stained glass which fills the lights on either side. Local feeling has been just recently somewhat deeply stirred by the removal within the Hall of Gilbert’s well-known bronze statue of Queen Victoria, formerly placed in the Abbey grounds--a removal which has evoked a very unfortunate controversy, and as to the wisdom of which considerable cleavage of opinion exists. But whatever view be taken of this, as to the impressiveness of the great Hall, within and without, or the story it has to tell, no two opinions can be held. The grand interior with its splendid columns speaks of great assemblies within its walls; of Parliaments such as the one held here as early as 1265, within a year of the death of the great De Montfort, the ‘inventor,’ so to speak, of the representative assembly; of State ceremonial displays such as when Henry V. received the French ambassadors here, a few days only before the Agincourt expedition sailed--as when Henry VII. celebrated the birth of his first-born, Arthur of Winchester, Prince of Wales, and as when Henry VIII. received and fêted the great Emperor Charles V., the Charlemagne of his day; of State Trials such as that which unjustly condemned Sir Walter Raleigh; of the Bloody Assize and the horror of the judicial murder of Dame Alicia Lisle; while the most characteristic touch perhaps of all is given by the quaint relic hanging on the western wall, the so-called King Arthur’s Round Table. A curious relic indeed this latter, and an ancient one, possibly 700 years old. We shall hardly accept it, as Henry VIII. and his royal Spanish guest did, as the actual table at which King Arthur and his knights used to seat themselves, even though we may read their names--Sir Launcelot, Sir Galahallt, Sir Bedivere, Sir Kay--inscribed upon its margin. Rather does it recall to us those quaintly attractive, uncritical mediaeval days, when historical perspective was unknown, that glorious age when “Once upon a time” almost satisfied the yearnings of the historical instinct. Yet one may question whether we are really better off, because for us King Arthur’s Round Table has no existence and Arthur himself is lost in the strange background of Moving faces and of waving hands, that weird labyrinth where history and legend, myth and romance, are so strangely and inextricably interwoven; and one turns away baffled and reluctant from many and many an old-world story, and many and many an old-world relic such as this, with the sense of something like a lost inheritance. So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.