AND ITS FAMOUS TREES. 199 



One more poet and I have done. Shelley — Percy Bysslie Shelley — 

 according- to his wife's memoir, in the summer of 1815, after his 

 return from Devonshire and Clifton, rented a house at Bishopsp;ate, 

 or more likely at Parkside, just beyond the palings of the Great 

 Park. " Here," she says, "he enjoyed several months of comparative 

 health and tranquil happiness. He spent his days under the oak 

 shades of Windsor Great Park, and the magnificent woodland was 

 a fitting study to inspire the various descriptions of forest-scenery 

 we find in the poem of ' Alastor,' written at this time." Charles 

 Xniglit takes the following extract from the poem : 



" More dark 

 And dark the shades accumulate. The oak 

 Expanding its immense and knotty arms 

 Embraces the light beech. The pyramids 

 Of the tall cedar, over-reachiug, frame 

 Mausoleum domes within ; and, far below, 

 Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky, 

 The ash and the acacia floating hang 

 Tremulous and pale." 



And now, at the end of this paper, having had frequent occasion 

 to speak of Royalty, let me conclude with a few words on Com- 

 monalty. There is no place in the kingdom where the institution 

 called a Bank Holiday is better known than at Windsor. The 

 ' Times' newspaper informs us how on a Whit-Monday some 8,000 

 persons pass through the State Apartments. Should the day be 

 fine, some even of these thousands pass into the park. Some 

 hundreds, availing themselves of the railway, penetrate to the 

 forest and Virginia Water. I am happy to be able to report that 

 they are welcomed in both park and forest, and that there is a 

 very kindly feeling as to their presence. Those who know the 

 beauties of the inclosure surrounding Virginia Water — " dense 

 masses of pine," says the guide book — and the real excellence of 

 some specimens of the Pinus tribe there growing, may form an 

 idea what an outing a jaded city clerk may have, weather per- 

 mitting, in this right royal domain. The greater number of our 

 visitors do not get beyond the Long Walk. It is sufficient pleasure 

 to them, once a year, to lie at full length on the green grass, and 

 see, as far as the eye can reach, an endless vista of tall trees. If 

 it should so happen (and it frequently has before now) that her 

 Majesty is in residence, and they can say, as the simple carriage 

 passes, with its grey ponies and its one outrider, " We have been to 

 Windsor and we have seen the Queen," then they go back quite 

 happy and somewhat proud. We could wish that they would take 

 their sandwich-papers back with them. It is astounding to see the 

 next day the way in which the ground is strewn with their relics 

 — you would think the penny newspapers could not furnish the 

 wherewithal ; but the day after that they are all removed, and no 

 trace remains of the crowds upon whose heads you might almost 

 walk as they go up our hill and past my house. This, I think, 

 entitles me to claim that, on the utilitarian principle of Mr. Jere- 

 miah Benthani — " the greatest happiness to the greatest number " 



