Windsor Castle [antikvár]

WINDSOR CASTLE. §ook the gix&t ANNE BOLEYN. I. of the earl of surrey's solitary ramble in the home park ; of the vision beheld by him in the haunted dell ; and of his meeting with morgan fenwolf, the keeper, beneath herne's oak. In the twentieth year of the reign of the right high and puissant king Henry the Eighth, namely, in 1529, on the 21 St of April, and on one of the loveliest evenings that ever fell on the loveliest district in England, a fair youth, having somewhat the appearance of a page, was leaning over the terrace-wall on the north side of Windsor Castle, and gazing at the magnificent scene before him. On his right stretched the broad green expanse, forming the Home Park, studded with noble trees, chiefly consisting of ancient oaks, of which England had already learnt to be proud, thorns as old, or older than the oaks, wide-spreading beeches, tall elms, and hollies. The disposition of these trees was picturesque and beautiful in the extreme. Here, at the end of a sweeping vista, and in the midst of an open space, covered with the greenest sward, stood a mighty, broad-armed oak, beneath whose ample boughs, though as yet almost destitute of foliage, while the sod beneath them could scarcely boast a head of fern, couched a herd of deer ; there lay a thicket of thorns skirting a sand-bank, burrowed by rabbits ; on this hand, grew a dense and Druid-like 9