Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/124

, and every second man carrying a lighted wax taper. The van was headed by the poor knights and the pages. Then came judges, bishops, privy councillors, and peers. Dukes bore the pall, marquises supported the canopy over the coffin. The national banners were borne by noblemen. The Duke of York followed the coffin, and with him came the Dukes of Clarence, Sussex, and Gloucester, and Prince Leopold. There was thrill of awe when the coffin passed into the vault, and the handful of dust fell and reechoed on the coffin lid. The herald then read the titles of the new king. Le Roi est mort; vive le Roi!

When George the Fourth grew tired of Brighton and afraid of his subjects, he went to live at the royal lodge at the end of the Long Walk. Only a fragment of the lodge now exists, but there at Virginia Water you can still see the Chinese temple, from the gallery of which he used daily to try to amuse himself by angling. He often drove about Windsor Park in his pony-phaeton, or was wheeled in a chair round the improvements at the castle. His last anxiety was about a new dining-room. He maintained his seclusion to the last. His thirty miles of avenues were sacred to himself. If he had even to cross the Frogmore road, some of his suite were sent forward to watch the gates, and observe if the roads were free from danger. The first gentleman in Europe was a miserable man.

From the ruins of the royal cottage, the crow flits back to the terrace. It was here old King George used to show himself, with a simplicity that won the Windsor people. Miss Burney describes one particularly pretty scene. The little Princess Amelia, so beloved by the king, was of the party, "just turned of three years old, in a robe coat covered with fine muslin, a dressed close cap, white gloves, and fan, walking alone and fast, highly delighted at the Windsor uniforms, and turning from side to side to see everybody as they passed, for the terracers always stood up against the walls, to make a clear passage for the royal family."

A flight across the Home Park brings the crow to a bald old oak with a railing round it, in a line with an avenue of elms, and not far from the footpath. That is a sacred tree (if, indeed, the real haunted tree was not accidentally cut down, as some suppose, by George the Third in 1796). Here, most people think that Herne the Hunter used on winter midnights to pace, with rugged horns on his head, shaking his chains, and casting a murrain on cattle. And here Falstaff came disguised, to be fooled, mocked, and pinched, by the mischievous fairies in green. There used to be an old house in Windsor at the foot of the Hundred Steps, supposed to have been the house which Shakespeare sketched as that of Mrs. Page.

Who can now tell the crow as he hovers over the Garter Tower, or flits round the Devil's and King John's Towers, where the first Windsor Castle stood? Some say the castle now in dreamland, stood two miles east of Windsor on the banks of the Thames, where the ancient palace of Edward the Confessor had been before. Here one day at dinner, Earl Goodwin submitted voluntarily to the ordeal of bread. "So may I swallow safe this morsel of bread that I hold in my hand," he said, "as I am guiltless of my brother Alfred's death." He then took the bread, which instantly choked him (so the legend goes on) and being drawn from the table, was conveyed to Winchester and there buried. A blind woodcutter once came here to beseech the sainted king to restore his sight. The king replied, "By our Lady! I shall be grateful if you, through my means, shall choose to take pity upon a wretched creature," and laying his hand on the blind man's eyes, instantly (it is said) restored their sight; the woodman exclaiming, "I see you, O king! I see you, O king!" This absurd custom of "touching" for diseases, continued until Queen Anne's time: to whom Dr. Johnson, when a child, was taken for that purpose. In this same palace in the rough old times, Harold and Tosti, his jealous and choleric brother, fought before King Edward the Confessor. As Harold was about to pledge the king, Tosti seized him by the hair. Harold resenting this—not unnaturally—leaped on Tosti and threw him violently to the ground, but the soldiers parted them. Tosti afterwards joined the Norwegians, invaded Northumberland, and was slain by his brother at Banford Bridge, near York, just as William had landed to render the victory useless.

That same iron-handed Conqueror took a fancy to Windlesdora (the town by the winding river), and first built hunting-lodges in the vales, so as to feast in comfort on the deer he slew; then, exchanging some lands in Essex for it, he acquired the hill above the river, and built a castle there. All English kings have delighted in this palace. Henry the First was married here. Here Henry the Second, bewailing his undutiful children, caused to be painted on a wall, an old eagle with its young ones scratching it, and one pecking out its eyes. "This," he said, "betokens my four sons, which cease not to pursue my death, especially my youngest son, John." From these walls that same John rode sullenly, to his great mortification at Runnymede.

Edward the Third was born here, and from the royal seat derived his appellation of Edward of Windsor. At the foot of the slopes, was the tournament ground, where Edward used to cross spears with Chandos and Manny, and display his shield with the white swan and the defiant motto,

There is no story connected with Windsor Castle more touching than that of the death-bed of Edward's noble-hearted Queen Philippa—the most gentle queen, the most liberal and courteous that ever was, the chroniclers say. When she felt her end approaching, she called to the king, and extending her right hand from under the bed-clothes, placed it in the right hand of the king, who was sorrowful at his heart. Then she said: "Sir, we have in peace, joy, and great prosperity, used all our time