VIRGINIA WATER 91 



has yet issued from Egliaiu with a message for the 

 world ; and that, consequently, Mr. Thomas Hollo- 

 way and his medicated grease have as yet missed that 

 posthumous fame for which so big a bid was made. 



In two miles Virginia Water is reached, passing 

 on the right hand the plantations of Windsor (Ireat 

 Park. To this spot runs every day in summer-time 

 the ' Old Times ' coach, which, first put on this road 

 in the spring of 1879, kept running every season 

 until 1886, when it was transferred to the Brighton 

 Road, there to become famous through Selby's historic 

 'record' drive. Another coach, called the 'Express,' 

 was put on the Virginia Water trip in 1886 and 1887; 

 but, following upon Selby's death in the November 

 of the latter year, the ' Old Times ' was reinstated on 

 this route, and has been running ever since, leaving 

 the Hotel Victoria, Northumberland Avenue, every 

 week-day morning for the ' Wheatsheaf,' and return- 

 ino- in the evening-. 



o o 



This same 'Wheatsheaf is probaljly one of the 

 very ugliest houses that ever liedevilled a country 

 road, and looks like a great public-house wrenched 

 bodily from London streets and dropped down here 

 at a venture. But it is for all that a very popular place 

 with the holiday-makers who come here to explore 

 the beauties and the curiosities of Virginia Water. 



There are artificial lakes here, just within the 

 Park of Windsor — lakes which give the place its name, 

 and made so long ago that Nature in her kindly way 

 has obliterated all traces of their artificiality. It is a 

 hundred years since this pleasance of A'irginia Water 

 was formed by imprisoning the rivulets that run into 



