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,

              Hay, hay, the white swan,
              By Godde's soul, I am thy man.

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 together.