unct.

Now Reading, save, perhaps, in barbaric times, when the Thames was the
main highway of Southern England, occupied no such vantage until the
nineteenth century. To-day, with its large population, its provision
of steam and electrical power, and above all, its command of the main
junction between the southern and middle railways, Reading would again
prove of primary strategic importance if we still considered warfare
with our equals as a possibility. But during all previous centuries,
since the Dark Ages, Reading was potentially, as it is still actually,
civilian; and, indeed, it is as the typical great town of the Thames
Valley that it will be treated later in these pages.

The long and narrow peninsula between the Kennet and the Thames was an
ideal place for defence. It needed but a trench from the one marsh to
the other to secure the stronghold. But though this was evident to
every fighter, though it is as such a stronghold that Reading is
mentioned first in history, yet the advantage was never permanently
held. Armies hold Reading, fall back on the town, fight near it, and
raid it: but it is never a great fortress in the intervals of wars,
because, while Oxford commanded the Drovers' Road, Wallingford the
western road, and Windsor (as we shall see in a moment) London itself,
Reading neither held a line of supply nor an accumulation of supply,
and was, therefore, civilian, though it was nearly as easy to hold as
Windsor, as easy as Dorchester, its parallel, easier than Oxford, and
far easier than Wallingford, which had, indeed, no natural defences
whatsoever.

Proceeding with the stream, there is no further stronghold till we
come to Windsor.

Even to-day, and in an England that has lost hold of her past more
than has any rival nation, Windsor seems to the passer-by to possess a
meaning. That hill of stones, sharp though most of its modern outlines
are, set upon another hill for a pedestal, gives, even to a modern
patriot, a hint of history; and when it is seen from up-stream,
showing its only noble part, where the Middle Ages still linger, it
has an aspect almost approaching majesty.

The creator of Windsor was the Conqueror. The artificial mound on
which the Round Tower stands may or may not be pre-historic. The
slopes of the hill were inhabited, like nearly all our English sites,
by the Romans, and by the savages before and after the Romans; but the
welter of the Saxon dark ages did not use this abrupt