However disappointed a foreign monarch, on his first visit to England, may be with the drab hideousness of Buckingham Palace, he cannot but confess that in Windsor Castle we have a dwelling meet even for the King of England. Both architecturally and by reason of its age, Windsor is a truly royal palace. Its history is linked with that of our kings until its very stones proclaim the annals of our country. Ages ago, Edward the Confessor took a fancy to this quiet place by the Thames, and he gave it to his beloved monks of Westminster. William I. saw what a splendid shooting lodge might be built in the midst of the wild and open country abounding in game, and after having first one shooting lodge and then another in the neighbourhood, he acquired the high outstanding boss or knob of chalk on which the castle stands, and built thereon a residence for himself. His son, Henry I., altered it greatly; and succeeding kings and queens have rarely been content to leave it without an alteration or addition as their mark. Windsor has ever been a favourite with royalty. It has held its own while Westminster and Whitehall and Greenwich utterly vanished; while the Tower and Hampton have ceased to be royal dwellings; and it is still pre-eminently the royal castle. Certain kings, such as William III., have sometimes preferred other places for a while, but Windsor has satisfied alike the dignity of Edward III. and the homeliness of George III.

The situation is superb. The castle stands high above the river, which here curves, so as to show off its irregular outlines to the greatest advantage. They rise in a series of rough levels to the mighty Round Tower, the crown of the whole, which is massive enough to dominate, but not sufficiently high to dwarf the rest. Turrets, battlements, and smaller towers serve only to emphasize the dignity of this central keep. It was built in the time of Edward III., and strangely enough, though altered and heightened in that worst period of architectural taste, the reign of George IV., it was not spoiled; and even to a child proclaims something of the grandeur one naturally associates with it.

As seen from the bridge the whole of the north range can be followed by the eye, from the Prince of Wales's Tower, facing the east terrace, to the Curfew Tower on the west. Intermediately there are the State apartments, and the Norman gateway, over which is the Library. These overlook the north terrace—open to the public at all hours from sunrise to sunset.

The view from this terrace is very fine, stretching away to Maidenhead, and at times, on days of cloud and shadow, the light-coloured walls of Clieveden stand out suddenly, caught by a passing gleam, amid a forest of green trees. We can look down on the whole of Eton—the church with its tall spire; the buttresses and pinnacles of the chapel standing up white against an indigo background; the red and blue roofs piled this way and that; and the green playing fields girdled by the swift river. It was on the castle terrace that George III. used to walk with all his family, except the erring eldest, when he took those tiresome parades which Miss Burney describes with so much life-like detail.

The Chapel cannot be seen from the river, as it is in the lower ward behind the canons' houses, and is not sufficiently high to rise well above them.

It would be of little use to attempt to tell stories of Windsor, for its history belongs to the history of England and not to the river Thames; yet there is one memory which may be noted. Young James Stuart of Scotland had been sent by his father, Robert III., to France after the death of his elder brother, the wild Duke of Rothesay, nominally for education, but in reality for safe keeping. The boy was captured by the English while on the sea and brought as a prisoner to England. He was then only about ten or twelve years old. He was treated with every consideration, and educated so worthily that he became afterwards one of the best of all the Scottish kings. He was at first in the Tower and elsewhere, but when he reached young manhood he was brought to Windsor, where he had apartments allotted to him. Though he was allowed to follow the chase and pursue the amusements of his time, he was yet a prisoner, and the sad opening stanzas of his great poem, the Kingis Quair, speak the melancholy he often felt. This poem was composed at Windsor, and its pensiveness changes after the day when, looking down from his window in the castle, the youth saw walking in the garden Joan Beaufort, whom he afterwards made his wife:

His visions further on in the poem must have been coloured more or less by what he daily saw before him, and we may credit to the Thames the flowing lines:

Windsor should be seen in sunshine and heat, when black shadows set off the towering walls, and all the uneven houses and crooked streets are pieced in light and shade. Then it is exceedingly like a foreign town in its details; and many people who travel miles to admire Chinon, and others of its class, would do well to visit Windsor first.

The town has always been subordinate to the castle, for it was the castle that caused the town to spring up, as there were always numbers of artificers, attendants, grooms, workmen and others needed for the service of the Court. In the fourteenth century it was reckoned that the Court employed an army of 20,000 of such people. These would all have to be housed somehow, and the nearer the protection of the castle the better; hence the town on the slopes.

The Home Park, in which is the mausoleum, borders the river. It is separated by a road from the Great Park, made for hunting. Pope's poem on "Windsor Forest" is not particularly beautiful; perhaps the best descriptive lines are those that follow:

Windsor Park is introduced by Shakspeare as the scene of some of Falstaff's escapades, an honour shared by the neat, bright village of Datchet, opposite. Datchet is a model village grouped about a green, and the houses are softened by all the usual creepers and bushes: we see roses, jasmine, laurustinus, magnolia, and ampelopsis at every turn. Above and below Datchet this clean neatness continues.

The Victoria and Albert bridges are severe, and the weir and the great bow of the channel, which is cut by the lock-stream, have no particular characteristics. The whole neighbourhood has rather the air of holding itself on its best behaviour, as though royalty might any moment appear upon the scene. As might be expected, the scenery is rather like the poetry it inspired. Here is Sir John Denham's effusion about Coopers Hill:

There is a pretty reach below Old Windsor, where willows and poplars are massed effectively. It is in places like this, where they grow abundantly, that the beautiful tawny colour which willows assume in the spring, just before bursting into leaf, can be best seen.

The Bells of Ouseley stands at a bend, and with its tinted walls and the old elm tree growing close to the entrance, is a typical old-English Inn. The road to Staines passes by the water's edge, and the guide-post is less reticent than guide-posts are wont to be, for it tells us this is the "Way to Staines, except at high-water."

As we pass softly back up the current to Eton, we think how often in this reach the incomparable Izaak and his friend Sir Henry Wotton fished together.

Wotton built a fishing box a mile below the college, from which he and Walton often sallied forth during the fifteen years he was provost of Eton, and to his rod many a "jealous trout that low did lie, rose at a well dissembled fly," as he himself has left on record.

In rounding the great sweep of the river below the London and South Western railway bridge, we catch at once the pinnacles of Eton chapel—most glorious of chapels—and see the green playing fields.

The long tree-covered island of Romney, on one side of which lies the lock, ends in a terrible "snout," strengthened by "camp-shedding." This point is locally known as the "Cobbler," and is a source of peril to many an inexperienced boatman.

The bridge over the river can, unfortunately, hardly be called a good feature in the landscape—it is as ugly as a railway bridge! Just above it is a row of boat-houses, and then follows the Brocas, the famous meadow. Above the bridge is a tiny islet which serves as an objective in the Fourth of June procession of boats. The boats come down and round the island, and once more returning, pass under the bridge to the lock, having made a sort of spiral. Nearly all the Eton races are rowed in this strip of the river, though, of course, Henley Regatta is the greatest event in the boating calendar. A small string of islands faces some little public gardens, and away northward winds the Great Western Railway on a series of small arches which carry it over the marshy ground, no doubt at one time under water.

Beyond the line is a small backwater known as Cuckoo weir, the bathing place of the lower boys. Here the swimming trials take place, when a set of trembling pink youngsters stand in a punt ready to take a graceful header, or, from sheer nervousness, to fall with an ugly flop smack upon the water and be disqualified for the time being!

The bathing place of the upper boys, called by the dignified title of Athens, is further up in the main river, near the curious island on which is Windsor racecourse. The river winds giddily in and out between the end of this island and Upper and Lower Hope, which lie between it and Cuckoo weir. A mill stands at the end of the long narrow stream that separates the racecourse from the mainland, and on the other side of the island is Boveney Lock. The quaint old chapel stands amid trees further up.

Above the island was once Surley Hall, a favourite resort of the Etonians, but it is now pulled down, and Monkey Island is the place to go to on half-holidays. Monkey Island is a good way up, and is the third of a row of islands. The little one below it, called Queen's ait, now belongs to the Eton boys, who have built a small cottage on it. Monkey Island itself is a curious and attractive place, except when the launches come up from Windsor on Saturdays, bringing hundreds of people, who sit about at little tables on the green sward under the famous walnut trees, and call for refreshments. There is a large pavilion, part boat-house, which belongs to the Eton boys, where they can get tea served without mingling with the townspeople. Near it is a quaint little temple. This, as well as the house, now the hotel, was built by the third Duke of Marlborough, a man of curious taste. The hall in the hotel is painted all round with the figures of monkeys engaged in various sports and pastimes. There is a broad frieze which appears to have been executed in water colours on plaster; the ceiling is likewise painted, but in rather a different style. The monkeys are a good size, and attract a vast crowd of visitors. The pretty verandah round the hotel redeems its appearance externally. Inside it has at once all the attractions and disadvantages of an old house—low ceilings, very small rooms; but on the other hand there are windings and twistings, crooked passages and odd corners, that delight the heart of those to whom machine-made houses are an abomination. The duke's bedroom is shown, and is as queerly shaped a room as ever mortal man conceived. Monkey Island is being embanked with the precious gravel dredged from the bed of the Thames, and, though no doubt a necessary precaution, as the river insidiously breaks off what it can, the operation is not a beautiful one. The island is very proud of its walnut trees, and well it may be, for they are a great change after the ubiquitous willows, and their gnarled stems and fine shady leaves are just the right element in such a scene as a gay lawn covered with summer folk in summer dresses.

From Monkey Island the little church tower of Bray can be seen, but before reaching it Bray Lock has to be negotiated, and here are a long sinuous osier-covered ait and a mill, making, as usual, a convenient backwater.

Bray is truly a charming place, and one could find it in one's heart to forgive the vicar who turned his coat to keep his vicarage. The real man lived in the reign of Henry VIII. and his successors, and changed his religious practices in conformity with those of the sovereign for the time being, turning from Roman Catholic to Reformed Church, Reformed to Roman Catholic, and back once more with ease and pliability. In the ballad he is represented as living in the seventeenth century, and his gymnastics refer to the varying fortunes of the house of Stuart, and the Romish tendencies of the later kings of that house. Fuller, with his usual quaintness, remarks of him that he had seen some martyrs burnt at Windsor and "found this fire too hot for his tender temper." But one would fain believe it was not altogether cowardice, but also a love of his delightful village, that made him so amenable. The little flint and stone tower of the church peeps at the river over a splendid assortment of evergreens—laurels, holm oaks, yews, and spruce firs being particularly noticeable—and the old vicarage with this growth of sheltering trees and its smooth lawn right down to the water's edge, is certainly a place that one would think twice about before leaving. The village itself is so irregular that, tiny as it is, one may get lost in it. There are endless vistas of gable ends, of bowed timbers, of pretty porches, and worn brick softly embraced by vine or wistaria; yet even in Bray, new red brick is making its way. One of the most interesting features is the almshouses, and if one lands by the hotel, they are reached after only a few minutes' walk. The exterior is very quaint; large cylindrical yews and hollies, like roly-poly puddings on end, stand up in stubborn rank before the worn red brick. The statue of the founder, of an immaculate whiteness, with the glitter of gilt in the coat-of-arms below, just lightens the effect. Through an ancient arch one passes to the quadrangle, which is filled with tiny flower-beds, and surrounded by a low range of red brick with dormer windows. At the other side is the chapel covered with ivy, and this, with the little diamond panes and the brightness of the variegated flower-beds, is home-like and cosy. Yet it must be confessed that in his well-known picture, "The Harbour of Refuge," admittedly taken from Bray, Frederick Walker, the artist, has greatly improved the scene with artistic licence. The raised terrace at the side, the greater width of the quadrangle, the smooth green lawn and sheltering central tree in his picture, are far more harmonious and beautiful than the reality.

Bray is a very popular haunt with artists and boating people. In summer the George Hotel cannot take in all its visitors, and beds are hired all over the village, consequently, anyone wishing to spend some weeks in Bray must make arrangements well beforehand. This is not to be wondered at, because, as well as its own attractions, it is within easy reach of Maidenhead and the delights beyond, and its unspoilt quaintness makes it ideal to stay in. Long may Bray remain as it is, unaltered and a tiny village.