windows. These loopholes are badly designed for shooting, for they allow to the casemates in which they are placed merely a direct view of the narrowest limits. It was only long after these were made that the horizontal loophole, giving a wide range, was used.

There is so great a throng of recollections joined to each scene at Windsor, that while we must associate the memory of Falstaff with the "Garter or "White Hart" building, it is well, in looking at the Castle, to remember only the earlier days when the front of the fortress opposite first rose nearly in the shape it now presents to the eye-namely, those of Henry III.

Over the causeway, that was narrow enough in those times, and very unlike the broad, terraced, paved road which now occupies far more space, were to be seen swarming on those lofty walls and rounded towers the army of workmen in their coloured gaberdines and hose, employed in raising the defences under the directions of the king's overseers. In bright long robes of red, green, and blue, the citizens looked on, glad to see so much money spent among the people of their town, and receiving with acclamations the good-looking, fair-haired monarch, as he came to watch the work. The pulling down of the older walls with pick and hammer, the dust raised by the fall of dislodged and crumbling masonry, the heaving by lever and scaffold of new material up

to the masons who were fitting new tiers of stone to the new structure, the king's guards called from their lounge to stand erect and silent in their gleaming armour, while Henry was superintending the workmen's labours-all this we can see well enough as we fill in the foreground to that enduring scene beyond.

At

Then we may turn to think of the fortunes of that master of men before us, and, wise after the event, may be sorry that he was less constant to his own good fortune than he was to his love for Windsor. Henry III. was a wilful man, uncertain and extravagant. the marriage of his daughter to Alexander III., King of Scotland, he had at Windsor one thousand of his knights clothed in silk, and his court was, like his conduct, full of glitter and weakness. His desperate conflicts with his barons would have ruined him, had it not been for the best gift he gave his people, in his son.

That son, Edward I., seems to us in these days more like a prince in a fairy-tale than a man who held rule in this sober England of ours. His life was a succession of romantic adventures. The warriorsaviour of his father's party while yet a young man, the successful adversary in single combat against the most noted swordsman of his day, Adam de Gordon ; he fought in Palestine, and lived to conquer in Wales and in Scotland. And what were the events that in Europe made Henry and Edward speak of their great neighbours abroad, in France and in Germany?

With France Henry had only too much concern. Normandy was practically lost to him through the energy of the French king, and the name of Taillebourg reminds men of a defeat such as English arms have seldom suffered. But father and son had longings also for a more glorious conquest than that of a French province. Jerusalem was the goal of the Crusaders, and Edward yearned to take part in the Crusades. While Louis of France, the ninth of the name, with a greater daring even than that of the English, was soon to forfeit all his army, taken and slaughtered in Africa, at Mansora; the power of the Pope of Rome was again to be illustrated by the humiliation of the German Emperor, who, kneeling to the pontiff at Canossa, had the priest's foot placed upon his neck.

HENRY VIII.'S GATEWAY.

Looking up the broad roadway, past Boehm s bronze statue of Queen Victoria, the eye follows the long and varied line of the southern walls of the Lower Ward. These, like the others near the town, are not marred, except in places, by the black mortar placed elsewhere between the stones, and they wear, therefore, a more massive appearance. Ascending this road, we see at once on the left the gateway called by the name of Henry VIII. (p. 45).

When you visit the state rooms in the Castle you will see faithful portraits of this king by Holbein.

Broad, fair, and with little tufts on upper lip and chin, his stout face is set squarely to you, with the two well-shaped but small blue eyes, which cannot have been displeasing, or else why was it that so many women liked them? They must often have looked cruel enough. But rank and jewels are said to be as good as fine eyes, and gems and gold hang round his neck and adorn the cap set jauntily on one side of his close-cropped head. Nor were his shapely strong hands niggardly of gifts. He it was who widened what may have been a meaner gate at this place, and built the two peculiar-shaped flanking towers. But the windows have been enlarged, and the summit battlements renewed. A portcullis in his time barred the entrance, and a drawbridge made access difficult. But the external aspect is all that is slightly altered. See, over the machicolation, or projected parapet, that guards the entrance, the rose, portcullis, and fleur-de-lys. These were Tudor crests, the royal emblems that were donned and doffed in feudal families; for the crests were not like the arins, necessarily descendant from father to son. In Germany you may see half a dozen crests or badges above a coat-of-arms. In England they were more sparingly used. The central part of the gate-house, and that facing the inner side, is as he left it. Just beyond, in the outer ditch, there was a vineyard, from which good grapes came, fit to make into wine. Warm summers ripen grapes well in this part of