objects much removed.  We see the summits of hills, each having its name, as St. Leonard’s, Cooper’s, Highstanding, etc., and glimpses of the river and of some country-seats.  St. Anne’s Hill was the home of Fox; at St. Leonard’s dwelt the father of his rival and rival of his father, and at Binfield, Pope, of whom it is so hard to conceive as having ever been young, “lisped in numbers, for the numbers came,” natural descriptions, ethical reflections, vers de societe and all, for around him here there was food for them all.  To descend from Pope in point of both time and romance, the view includes the scenes of Prince Albert’s agricultural experiments.  Quite successful many of them were.  He was a thoroughly practical man—­a circumstance which carried him by several routes across ploughed fields and through well-built streets, straight to the hearts of the English people.  His memory is more warmly cherished, and impressed upon the stranger by more monuments, than that of any other of the German strain.  It might have been less so had he succeeded in the efforts he is now known to have made soon after his marriage to attain a higher nominal rank.  He possessed, through the alliance of Leopold and Stockmar and the devotion of Victoria, kingly power without the name and the responsibility, and with that he became content.  He used it cautiously and well when he employed it at all.  His position was a trying one, but he steered well through its difficulties, and died as generally trusted as he was at first universally watched.  The love-match of 1840 was every way a success.

[Illustration:  EAST FRONT, WINDSOR CASTLE.]

Another figure, more rugged and less majestic, but not less respectable, will be associated with Victoria in the memories, if not the history proper, of her reign.  This is John Brown, the canny and impassive Scot, content, like the Rohans, to be neither prince nor king, and, prouder than they, satisfied honestly to discharge the office of a flunkey without the very smallest trace of the flunkey spirit.  He too has lived down envy and all uncharitableness.  Contemptuous and serene amid the hootings of the mob and the squibs of the newspapers, he carries, as he has done for years, Her Majesty’s shawl and capacious India-rubbers, attends her tramps through the Highlands and the Home Park, engineers her special trains and looks after her personal comfort even to the extent of ordering her to wear “mair claes” in a Scotch mist.  The queen has embalmed him in her books, and he will rank among the heroes of royal authors as his namesake and countryman the Cameronian, by favor of very similar moral qualities, does with those of more democratic proclivities.

[Illustration:  QUEEN ELIZABETH’S BUILDING, WINDSOR.]

We cannot apply literally to the view from Windsor Thackeray’s lines on “the castle towers of Bareacres:” 

  I stood upon the donjon keep and viewed the country o’er;
  I saw the lands of Bareacres for fifty miles or more.