Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/75

72 truth, the monarch has not the pleasure of property in Windsor Castle that almost every American citizen has in the roof that shelters him. “I congratulate your majesty on the possession of so beautiful a palace,” said some foreign prince to whom Victoria was showing it. “It is not mine, but the country's,” she replied. And so it is, and all within it. She may not give away a picture, or even a footstool.

We went into St George's chapel, which is included in the pile of buildings. We saw there the beautiful effect produced by the sun shining through the painted windows, throwing all the colours of the rainbow on the white marble pillars and pavement. The royal family are buried in the vaults of this chapel. There is an elaborate monument in wretched taste in one corner, to the Princess Charlotte. We trod on a tablet in the pavement that told us that beneath it were lying the remains of Henry VIII. and Jane Seymour! It is such memorials as these that we arc continually meeting, which, as honest uncle Stephen says, “give one feelings.”

Lady B. had said to me in a note, “if you attend service in St. George's chapel, observe the waving of the banners to the music. It seems like a strange sympathy with the tones of the organ before one reflects on the cause.” We did attend the service, and realized the poetic idea. The banner of every knight of the garter, from the beginning of the institution, is hung in the choir.

This was the third time we had been present, since we came to England, at worship in the