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and the old coacliing inns either mere beer-shops or 

 else improved away altogether. The last one to 

 remain in its old form — the ' Catherine Wheel ' — has 

 recently lost all its old roadside character, and has 

 become very much up-to-date. 



Here we are upon the borders of Windsor Great 

 Park, and a road turning off to the right hand leads 

 beside the Thames to Old Windsor, past Cooper's 

 Hill and within sioht of Runemede and Maona Charta 



o o 



island, where the ' Palladium of our English liberties ' 

 was wrung from the unwilling King John. A pul^lic 

 reference to the ' Palladium ' used unfailingly to 

 ' bring down the house,' but it has been left to the 

 present generation to view the very spot where it 

 was granted, not only without a quickening of the 

 pulse, but with the suspicion of a yawn. You 

 cannot expect reverence from people who possibly 

 saw" Kino; John as the central and farcical fioure of 

 last year's pantomime, with a low-comedy nose and 

 an expression of ludicrous terror, handing Magna 

 Charta to baronial supers armoured with polished 

 metal dish-covers for breastplates and saucepans for 

 helmets. ' Nothing is sacred to a sapper,' is a saying 

 that arose in Napoleon's campaigns. Let us, in these 

 piping times of peace, change the figure, and say, 

 ' Nothino- is sacred to a liljrettist.' 



Long years before Egiiam ever became a coaching 

 village, in the dark ages of road travel, when inns 

 were scarce and travellers few, the ' Bells of Ouseley,' 

 the old-fashioned riverside inn alono- this bve-road, 

 was a place of greater note than it is now. Although 

 forgotten l^y the crowds who keep the high-road, it is 



