out of
the gleaming paths and avenues of silvery water that wind between them
glide the little boats. The young Britons take to the element like
young ducks. Many a "tall admiral" has commenced his "march over the
mountain wave" among these water-lilies and hedges of osier.

Shall we leave the boys at play, and, renewing our youth, go
ourselves to school? Entering the great gate of the western of the two
quadrangles, we are welcomed by a bronze statue of the founder of the
institution, Henry VI. He endowed it in 1440. The first organization
comprised "a provost, four clerks, ten priests, six choristers,
twenty-five poor grammar-scholars, and twenty-five poor infirm men to
pray for the king." The prayers of these invalids were sorely needed
by the unhappy scion of Lancaster, but did him little good in a
temporal sense. The provost is always rector of the parish. Laymen are
non-eligible. Thus it happens that the list does not include two
names which would have illuminated it more than those of any of the
incumbents--Boyle the philosopher, "father of chemistry and brother
of the earl of Cork," and Waller the poet. The modern establishment
consists of a provost, vice-provost, six fellows, a master,
under-master, assistants, seventy foundation scholars, seven lay
clerks and ten choristers, with a cortege of "inferior officers and
servants"--a tolerably full staff. The pay-students, as they would be
termed in this country, numbering usually five to six hundred, do not
live in the college precincts, but at boarding-houses in the town,
whence their designation of oppidans, the seventy gowns-men only
having dormitories in the college. The roll of the alumni contains
such names as the first earl of Chatham, Harley, earl of Oxford,
Bolingbroke, Fox, Gray, Canning, Wellington and Hallam. That is enough
to say for Eton. The beauties of the chapel, the treasures of the
library and the other shows of the place become trivial by the side of
the record.

[Illustration: HEDSOR AND COOKHAM CHURCHES.]

Over the "fifteen-arch" bridge, which has but three or four arches, we
pass to the town of Windsor, which crouches, on the river-side, close
up to the embattled walls of the castle--so closely that the very
irregular pile of buildings included in the latter cannot at first
glance be well distinguished from the town. High over all swells the
round tower to a height above the water of two hundred and twenty
feet--no excessive altitude, if