WINDSOR GREAT PARK.

He who has not seen the Great Park at Windsor has not seen the greatest attraction that Windsor possesses: palaces are palaces, and state rooms are state rooms, all the world over: gorgeous and magnificent as they may be, they serve little more than to enrich the eyes of barren spectators; there is a noble inutility about them; even Rubenses and Vandycks we can behold elsewhere. The vast superiority of Windsor over other palaces, as well as its intrinsic beauty, is bestowed upon it by Nature, and it is in its association with natural beauty that the greatest pleasure of our visit is derived.

Its grand, yet gentle elevation above the surrounding country, and its isolation, mark it as the monarch of the plain: the courtier Thames, in full dress, and in his gayest smiles, pays homage to the royal hill; for subjects, has it not myriads of stately elms, umbrageous oaks, spiral poplars, and all the aristocracy of tree? for territory, has it not the subjacent country round?

Yet, such is taste, nineteen-twentieths of those who visit Windsor are whirled up the steep, narrow streets of the town into the Castle, where they are hurried, like a flock of sheep, through the usual sights of the place, so rapidly, that thought, reflection, or association of ideas, is out of the question; and then, having, perhaps, extended their drive as far as the upper end of the Long Walk, where they look about them, return to town, satisfied that they have seen all that Windsor has to be proud of.

Why forget, in doing homage to the ancient seat of royalty, that nature has also claims on our attention? Surely there is a royalty in the gorgeous sun, reflected from the liquid bosom of yon rippling waters; there is poetry in that landscape, and chronicles of centuries in those aged oaks; in yonder stately towers the eye has been delighted, and the mind has participated in pleasurable sensations, but here we attain to something more and better; the spirit is soothed, and the cares and irritations of our every-day life vanish before the sedative influences of Nature. Castles and palaces are food, if you will; but these pastoral meads, thick embowering woods, and secluded glades, are medicine for world-wearied man: it is not merely a pleasure to come here-it is a blessing!

Look up at the " azure firmament on high :" has Verrio painted anything like it? are there hangings in Windsor or any other castle comparable for a moment with those purple and orange-tinted clouds-heaven's own tapestry are there anywhere windows patched with parti-coloured glass, streaming with prismatic lights, like—

"the windows of the sky,

Through which Aurora shows her sun-bright face?"

Or are carpets sprinkled with stars and garters to be named in the same day with this, upon which we freely tread, rich in thousand harmonising hues of empurpled heath, and blossomy furze, and eye-refreshing strips of greenest green-rich, too, in commingling odours, and alive with the hum of bees, the chirp of grasshoppers, and song of various birds?

Then, as to pictures: really I do not see that we lose a gallery by coming here. There are no Vandycks or Rubenses, it is true; but look where that enormous beech of silvery stem intercepts the strong sunlight from the centre of that little prairie, and with its blackening shade makes, where it overshadows, night in the midst of day-what a Ruysdael! Then, where that forest road turns abruptly round the broken sandbank, upon whose verge, half its roots exposed, clings a withered oak, you have a noble specimen of Wynants. Everywhere, trees in all their combinations of form and colour, picturesque buildings, deer sheds, reedy ponds, foregrounds of fern and withered shrubs, and distances of blue heath blending with the bluer sky, make pictures upon pictures, such as Both or Hobbima would have been glad to paint.

Our artists, with much regret and indignation, talk of the National Gallery being deficient in landscape: here, in Windsor Great Park and the adjoining Forest, are twenty thousand priceless pictures, accessible, by railway, for half-a-crown, and yet nobody thinks it worth his while to come and copy them!

"The Great Park," we are informed by the author of the Magna Britannia, "according to Norden's Survey, formerly contained three thousand six hundred and fifty acres: its principal entrance from the town leads to a noble avenue of elms, nearly three miles in length (the Long Walk): the ranger's lodge (Cumberland Lodge), together with a great part of the Great Park, is in the parish of Old Windsor. The rangership of the Great and Little Park at Windsor was given by King William to the Earl of Portland, and upon his death was granted by Queen Anne, for three lives,

to Sarah Duchess of Marlborough: on the expiration of this grant, the rangership of the Great Park was given, in 1746, to his Royal Highness William Duke of Cumberland, by whom the lodge was much improved and altered: the late Duke of Cumberland, his Majesty's brother, was appointed Ranger of the Great Park on the death of his illustrious uncle; but on the death of the late Duke, in 1791, his Majesty took this management of the park into his own hands; it was then found to contain three thousand eight hundred acres, the greater part of which his Majesty, with a very laudable zeal for the interests of agriculture, has devoted to experiment, it having been disparked and converted into farms, under the direction of Mr. Kent, who introduced there the Norfolk and Flemish modes of husbandry."

The principal object of attraction in the Great Park is the Long Walk. The view from the summit, where is placed, upon a block of granite, a colossal statue of George the Third, is probably unrivalled in England for luxuriant beauty. When the mellow tints of autumn overspread the woods, pleasing the eye with diversities of colour, nothing can be finer than the effect of the "long-drawn aisle" of magnificent trees extending from Snow Hill to Windsor, a distance of nearly three miles, a direct line.

From this point the traveller usually proceeds towards Cumberland Lodge, a large straggling and melancholy edifice. It is not generally known that Cumberland Lodge boasts a vine, and producing yearly prodigious crops of delicious fruit, even larger than the monster vine at Hampton Court.

From Cumberland Lodge we proceed towards Bishopsgate. Here we have one of the most enchanting views of the Castle, which, wherever we turn, forms the terminating point of view. The foreground is formed by overshadowing trees of enormous magnitude, and the Castle and country beyond, seen through lengthened vista, have all the effect of a landscape set in a frame of elegant arabesque work.

From Bishopsgate the usual route is to Virginia Water, a place full of artificial prettinesses in that boasted taste which, for want of a better name, we may denominate the Grand Cockney. Here are Chinese tea-houses painted all colours of the rainbow, fishing-temples of most preposterous architecture and absurd decoration, belvideres, ruins, puppet frigates floating on the lake,

and the like. Our illustration exhibits the ruins, and the building called the Belvidere. The grand defect of Virginia Water, however, and one that can never be got over, is the artificiality, the manufactured air of lake, and walks, and groves :

Kings may inherit, but cannot create a forest: not even royal resources or power can approach that grandeur of prospect, that magnificence of shade, time and nature alone can give. Nothing about Virginia Water is more than pretty. The water collected into a lake of considerable expanse is a pleasing

object in the landscape, notwithstanding that at a glance you can see the cutout character of its banks and the formality of its outline. But water in every landscape is pleasing, and compensates for many defects.

Returning from Virginia Water, the western side of the Great Park may be explored. The views on either side Queen Anne's ride, especially about Hawk's Hill, Dark Wood, and Sandpit Gate, are most magnificent. Here you have in its perfection, the true sublime of forest scenery; picturesque without infertility, and grand without horror.

The Heronry, near Sandpit Gate, should be visited. Here are some beech trees whose magnitude may be estimated from the fact, that the trunk of one

interposed has concealed a man on horseback, at the opposite side, altogether from our view.

Cranbourn Lodge will not fail to arrest the attention of visitors to the Great Park. This strange-looking mansion was built by the Earl of Ranelagh, Paymaster of the Forces, in the time of Charles the Second. It has been successively in the occupation of Charles, Duke of St. Alban's, of the Duke of Cumberland, and of his late Royal Highness the Duke of York. The mansion, or rather the portion of it now remaining, is an hexagonal tower, of considerable elevation, and commanding, on every side, delightful and varied prospects over the Forest, Cranbourne Chase, and the Great Park.

Holly Grove, or Lodge, the residence of Sir William Freemantle, Deputy Ranger of the Great Park, is a delightful retreat, embowered in woods, among which many very fine evergreens are not the least conspicuous.