UP THE THAMES.

CONCLUDING PAPER.

[Illustration: WINDSOR CASTLE, FROM ETON.]

Let our demonstration to-day be on the monarchical citadel of England,
the core and nucleus of her kingly associations, her architectural
_eikon basiliké_, Windsor. To reach the famous castle it will not do
to lounge along the river. We must cut loose from the suburbs of the
suburbs, and launch into a more extended flight. Our destination
is nearly an hour distant by rail; and though it does not take us
altogether out of sight of the city, it leads us among real farms and
genuine villages, tilled and inhabited as they have been since the
Plantagenets, instead of market-gardens and villas.

We go to Paddington and try the Great Western, the parent of the broad
gauges with no very numerous family, Erie being one of its unfortunate
children. That six-foot infant is not up to the horizontal stature of
its seven-foot progenitor, but has still sixteen inches too many
to fare well in the contest with its little, active, and above all
numerous, foes of the four-feet-eight-and-a-half-inch "persuasion."
The English and the American giants can sympathize with each other.
Both have drained the bitter cup that is tendered by a strong majority
to a weak minority. Neither the American nor the British constitution,
with their whole admirable array of checks and balances, has shielded
them from this evil. In the battle of the gauges both have gone to
the wall, and will stay there until they can muster strength enough to
reel over into the ranks of their enemies.