[Illustration: ETON COLLEGE AND CHAPEL.]

The monarchical idea is certainly predominant in our present
surroundings. The Thames flows from the castle and the school under
two handsome erections named the Victoria and Albert bridges; and
when, turning our back upon Staines, just below Runnymede, with its
boundary-stone marking the limit of the jurisdiction of plebeian
London's fierce democracy, and inscribed "God preserve the City of
London, 1280," we strike west into the Great Park, we soon come plump
on George III, a great deal larger than life. The "best farmer that
ever brushed dew from lawn" is clad in antique costume with toga and
buskins. Bestriding a stout horse, without stirrups and with no bridle
to speak of, the old gentleman looks calmly into the distance while
his steed is in the act of stepping over a perpendicular precipice.
This preposterous effort of the glyptic art has the one merit of
serving as a finger-board. The old king points us to his palace, three
miles off, at the end of the famous Long Walk. He did not himself care
to live at the castle, but liked to make his home at an obscure lodge
in the park, the same from which, on his first attack of insanity, he
set out in charge of two of his household on that melancholy ride
to the retreat of Kew, more convenient in those days for medical
attendance from London, and to which he returned a few months later
restored for the time. Shortly after his recovery he undertook to
throw up one of the windows of the lodge, but found it nailed down. He
asked the cause, and was told, with inconsiderate bluntness, that
it had been done during his illness to prevent his doing himself an
injury. The perfect calmness and silence with which he received this
explanation was a sufficient evidence of his recovery.

[Illustration: ETON COLLEGE, FROM NORTH TERRACE, WINDSOR.]