Back at the castle, we must "do" it, after the set fashion. Reminders
meet us at the threshold that it is in form a real place of defence,
contemplative of wars and rumors of wars, and not a mere dwelling by
any means in original design. A roadway, crooked and raked by frowning
embrasures, leads up from the peaceful town to the particularly
inhospitable-looking twin towers of Henry VIII.'s gateway, in their
turn commanded by the round tower on the right, in full panoply of
artificial scarp and ditch. Sentinels in the scarlet livery that
has flamed on so many battlefields of all the islands and continents
assist in proving that things did not always go so easy with majesty
as they do now. But two centuries and more have elapsed since
there happened any justification for this frown of stone, steel and
feathers; Rupert's futile demonstration on it in 1642 having been
Windsor's last taste of war, its sternest office after that having
been the safe-keeping of Charles I., who here spent his "sorrowful and
last Christmas." Once inside the gate, visions of peace recur. The eye
first falls on the most beautiful of all the assembled structures,
St. George's Chapel. It, with the royal tomb house, the deanery and
Winchester tower, occupies the left or north side of the lower or
western ward. In the rear of the chapel of St. George are quartered in
cozy cloisters the canons of the college of that ilk--not great guns
in any sense, but old ecclesiastical artillery spiked after a more or
less noisy youth and laid up in varnished black for the rest of their
days. Watch and ward over these modern equipments is kept by Julius
Cæsar's tower, as one of the most ancient erections is of course
called. Still farther to our left as we enter are the quarters of
sundry other antiquated warriors, the Military Knights of Windsor.
These are a few favored veterans, mostly decayed officers of the army
and navy, who owe this shelter to royal favor and an endowment. The