Coeur de Lion for the Holy Land. Against the bole of this was set up
a practicing butt for the clothyard shafts that won Agincourt, and
beneath that bivouacked the pickets of Cromwell. As we look down upon
their topmost leaves there floats, high above our own level, "darkly
painted on the crimson sky," a member, not so old, of another
commonwealth quite as ancient that has flourished among their branches
from time immemorial. There flaps the solitary heron to the evening
tryst of his tribe. Where is the hawk? Will he not rise from some fair
wrist among the gay troop we see cantering across yonder glade? Only
the addition of that little gray speck circling into the blue is
needed to round off our illusion. But it comes not. In place of it
comes a spirt of steam from the railway viaduct, and the whistle of
an engine. Froissart is five hundred years dead again, and we turn to
Bradshaw.

[Illustration: WINDSOR CASTLE, FROM BISHOPSGATE.]

Yet we have a "view of an interior" to contemplate before facing the
lower Thames. And first, as the day is fading, we seek the dimmest
part. We dive into the crypt of the bell-tower, or the curfew-tower,
that used to send far and wide to many a Saxon cottage the hateful
warning that told of servitude. How old the base of this tower is
nobody seems to know, nor how far back it has served as a prison.
The oldest initials of state prisoners inscribed on its cells date
to 1600. The walls are twelve feet thick, and must have begotten a
pleasant feeling of perfect security in the breasts of the involuntary
inhabitants. They did not know of a device contrived for the security
of their jailers, which has but recently been discovered. This is a
subterranean and subaqueous passage, alleged to lead under the river
to Burnham Abbey, three miles off. The visitor will not be disposed to