Original Size
Perhaps the best view of the castle from the Thames is that from a point just beyond the Great Western Railway bridge. When the queen is absent, access is easy. St. George’s Chapel, built by Edward IV., is the finest existing specimen of the architecture of that period; and the view from the North Terrace, constructed by Queen Elizabeth, is perhaps the most beautiful on the River Thames.
A little lower down, and we are passing between Runnimede (“Meadow of Council”), where the barons camped, and Magna Charta Island, where the great charter of English liberty was signed; and a temporary struggle between king and nobles laid the broad foundations of English freedom.
As we sweep round the bend beneath the broad meadow and the wooded isle, “while we muse the fire burneth,”—the ardour of grateful love to Him who has shaped the destinies of our beloved land, and has never from that hour withdrawn the trust then committed to the nation, of being the guardians and pioneers of the world’s freedom. A multitude of thoughts and questionings throng in upon us, but we must not lose the opportunity of impressing on our memory the outward features of the scene. There is not much to see: if there be time to land upon the island, it will be as well to do so, and enter the pretty modern cottage there erected, containing the very stone—if tradition is to be believed—on which the Charter was laid for the royal signature.
From Runnimede, it is but an easy climb to the brow of Cooper’s Hill, with its far-famed view of the river, of Windsor, and its woods. Dr. Johnson speaks of Sir John Denham’s poem, of which we have taken some lines as the motto to this chapter, as “the first English specimen of local poetry.” Its subject, as well as its style, will preserve it from the oblivion to which the greater number of the poet’s works have descended.
Another Coin falls into the river, to the left, a little farther on—suggestive, in its name, of the Roman occupation; the “street” to the west here crossing the Thames by a bridge. “London Stone,” a few hundred yards lower down, marks the entrance into Middlesex; then clean and quiet Staines——“Stones,” so termed, perhaps, from the piers of the old Roman bridge, or, it may be, from the London Stone itself, comes into view: but if the traveller has time to spare, he will rather pause at Laleham, so well known to every Christian educator as the earliest scene of Arnold’s labours.