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WINDSOR CASTLE.

"Here hills and vales, the woodland and the plain,
Here earth and water seem to strive again;
Not, chaos-like, together crush'd and bruised,
But, as the world, harmoniously confused;
Where order in variety we see,

Volumes have been written upon Windsor Castle, | He thus describes the appearance of the forest in but we can only devote one page to the most interest- which he spent his earliest years: ing relic of the past that an American can gaze upon. Windsor Castle is still the residence of an English monarch, but how long it will remain so, it would be dangerous to predict. Not many years, we believe; and there are many people who do not hesitate to proclaim that the last of the royal occupants of Windsor now inhabits that ancient pile. It matters not. The huge pile of buildings will always be held in veneration by Englishmen, let who will be its occupant, whether a democratic governor or a crowned monarch. It has cost money and blood enough to the people who inherit it, to cause them to cherish it with a feeling of superstitious veneration.

Travellers visit Windsor with very different feelings. Washinton Irving trod its romantic courts and gloomy halls with his mind full of the sufferings of the romantic and royal captive, James I. of Scotland, who was a prisoner in one of the towers nineteen weary years; who the re, in his weary confinement, fell in love with the Lady Jane Beaufort, whom he saw :

"Walking under the tower

Full secretly, new coming her to pleyne,
The fairest or the freshest younge flower
That ever I saw, methout, before that hour."

And where, though all things differ, all agree.
Here waving groves a chequer'd scene display,
And part admit and part exclude the day;
As some coy nymph her lover's warm address
Nor quite indulges, nor can quite repress.
There, interspersed in lawns and open glades,
Thin trees arise that shun each other's shades,
Here in full light the russet plains extend;
There, wrap in clouds, the bluish hills ascend.
E'en the wild heath displays her purple dyes,
And 'midst the desert fruitful fields arise,
That, crowned with tufted trees and springing corn,
Like verdant isles the sable waste adorn.'

Immense sums have been expended in beautifying and enlarging Windsor Castle since the time of George the Third; his profligate and heartless son, George the Fourth, who, although he was called the first gentleman in Europe, was, unquestionably, one of the greatest rascals of his time, squandered enormous sums in enlarging the Castle, and employed one of the most incompetent architects of his time, Sir Jeffrey Wyattville, to superintend the work. The Castle has grown in size, but not in beauty, for after all it is but a relic of past barbarism. Since Queen Victoria succeeded to the crown, large sums have been expended for furniture and pictures, but no important addititions have been made to the Castle itself. The Park and grounds have been greatly beautified, and among the trees is a young Oak with a brass plate, upon which is engraved "QUEEN VICTO

Washington Irving says, in his exquisite story | of "A Royal Poet," in the Sketch Book:-" It was the recollection of this romantic tale of former times, and of the golden little poem which had its birthplace in this tower, that made us visit the old pile with more than common interest. The suit of armour hanging up in the hall, richly gilt and embellished, as if to figure in the tournay, brought the image of the gallant and romantic prince vividly before my imagination. IRIA'S OAK." It was probably planted by her. Prince paced the deserted chambers where he had composed his poem; I leaned upon the window, and endeavoured to persude myself it was the very one where he had been visited by his vision; I looked out upon the spot where he had first seen the Lady Jane. It was the same genial and joyous month; the birds were again vying with each other in strains of liquid melody; everything was bursting into vegetation, and budding forth the tender promise of the year. Time —which delights to obliterate the sterner memorials of human pride-seems to have passed lightly over this little scene of poetry and love, and to have withheld his desolating hand. Several centuries are gone by, yet the garden still flourishes at the foot of the tower. It occupies what was once the moat of the keep; and though some parts have been separated by dividing walls, yet others have still their arbours and shaded walks, as in the days of James; and the whole is sheltered, blooming, and retired."

But apart from the romantic interest which belongs to Windsor from the historic deeds that have been done there, the castle and every tree and acre of ground which surrounds it has been sanctified by poetry. Pope is sometimes called the Poet of Windsor, as he is entitled to be. It was Windsor that inspired his first strains, he says:

"Enough for me that to the listening swains,
First in these fields I sung the sylvan strains.'

Albert enjoys the sinecure offices of Governor and Constable of Windsor Castle, for which he receives £1120 sterling per annum; and that of Ranger of Windsor House Park, for which he receives £500 per annum. There is an officer of the Queen's household at Windsor, called the Hereditary Grand Falconer, who receives £1200 a year, a larger salary than the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court receives, yet there is not a falcon or a hawk kept at Windsor, and the Queen never goes a hawking. But it is the policy of the British Government to preserve all the old usages of the Kingdom, as well as all the old buildings of the Crown, or such a costly and unnecessary assemblage of towers, and keeps, and dungeons, and halls, as make up the grand total of Windsor Castle, would long since have been left, like many of the Castles of the old Barons, to fall into decay; to be peopled with owls and bats, and overun with ivy.

Our engraving represents the front of the Castle from a by-path leading to Datchet, perhaps the best view that could be taken of the hoary pile. It is limbs of venerable oaks serving as a kind of frameseen through an opening in the forest, the twisted work to the pleasant picture. These oaks are the pride of Englishmen, who look upon them with almost the same feelings of awe and superstition that they were gazed upon by the ancient Britons, when they were worshipped by the Druids.