Distant View of Stratford.
Paired Eagle Border
Those persons upon whom the spirit of the past has power—and it has not power upon every mind!—are aware of the mysterious charm that invests certain familiar spots and objects, in all old cities. London, to observers of this class, is a never-ending delight. Modern cities, for the most part, reveal a definite and rather a commonplace design. Their main avenues are parallel. Their shorter streets bisect their main avenues. They are diversified with rectangular squares. Their configuration, in brief, suggests the sapient, utilitarian forethought of the land-surveyor and civil engineer. The ancient British capital, on the contrary, is the expression—slowly and often narrowly made—of many thousands of characters. It is a city that has happened—and the stroller through the old part of it comes continually upon the queerest imaginable alleys, courts, and nooks. Not far from Drury Lane Theatre, for instance, hidden away in a clump of dingy houses, is a dismal little graveyard—the same that Dickens has chosen, in his novel ofBleak House,as the sepulchre of little Jo's friend, the first love of the unfortunate Lady Dedlock. It is a doleful spot, draped in the robes of faded sorrow, and crowded into the twilight of obscurity by the thick-clustering habitations of men.† The Cripplegate church, St. Giles's, a less lugubrious spot and less difficult of access, is nevertheless strangely sequestered, so that it also affects the observant eye as equally one of the surprises of London. I saw it, for the first time, on a gray, sad Sunday, a little before twilight, and when the service was going on within its venerable walls. The footsteps of John Milton were sometimes on the threshold of the Cripplegate, and his grave is in the nave of that ancient church. A simple flat stone marks that sacred spot, and many a heedless foot tramples over that hallowed dust. From Golden Lane, which is close by, you can see the tower of this church; and, as you walk from the place where Milton lived to the place where his ashes repose, you seem, with a solemn, awe-stricken emotion, to be actually following in his funeral train. At St. Giles's occurred the marriage of Cromwell.‡ I remembered—as I stood there and conjured up that scene of golden joy and hope—the place of the Lord Protector's coronation in Westminster Hall; the place, still marked, in Westminster Abbey, where his body was buried; and old Temple Bar, on which (if not on Westminster Hall) his mutilated corse was finally exposed to the blind rage of the fickle populace. A little time—a very little time—serves to gather up equally the happiness and the anguish, the conquest and the defeat, the greatness and the littleness of human life, and to cover them all with silence.
† That place has been renovated and is no longer a disgrace.
‡ The church of St. Giles was built in 1117 by Queen Maud. It was demolished in 1623 and rebuilt in 1731. The tomb of Richard Pendrell, who saved Charles the Second, after Worcester fight, in 1651, is in the churchyard.
But not always with oblivion. Those quaint churches, and many other mouldering relics of the past, in London, are haunted with associations that never can perish out of remembrance. In fact the whole of the old city impresses you as densely invested with an atmosphere of human experience, dark, sad, and lamentable. Walking, alone, in ancient quarters of it, after midnight, I was aware of the oppressive sense of tragedies that have been acted and misery that has been endured in its dusky streets and melancholy houses. They do not err who say that the spiritual life of man leaves its influence in the physical objects by which he is surrounded. Night-walks in London will teach you that, if they teach you nothing else. I went more than once into Brooke Street, Holborn, and traced the desolate footsteps of poor Thomas Chatterton to the scene of his self-murder and agonised, pathetic, deplorable death. It is more than a century (1770), since that "marvellous boy" was driven to suicide by neglect, hunger, and despair. They are tearing down the houses on one side of Brooke Street now (1877); it is doubtful which house was No. 4, in the attic of which Chatterton died, and doubtful whether it remains: his grave—a pauper's grave, that was made in a workhouse burial-ground, in Shoe Lane, long since obliterated—is unknown; but his presence hovers about that region; his strange and touching story tinges its commonness with the mystical moonlight of romance; and his name is blended with it for ever.
Whitehall Gateway.
On another night I walked from St. James's Palace to Whitehall (the York Place of Cardinal Wolsey), and viewed the ground that Charles the First must have traversed, on his way to the scaffold. The story of the slaughter of that king, always sorrowful to remember, is very grievous to consider, when you realise, upon the actual scene of his ordeal and death, his exalted fortitude and his bitter agony. It seemed as if I could almost hear his voice, as it sounded on that fateful morning, asking that his body might be more warmly clad, lest, in the cold January air, he should shiver, and so, before the eyes of his enemies, should seem to be trembling with fear. The Puritans, having brought that poor man to the place of execution, kept him in suspense from early morning till after two o'clock in the day, while they debated over a proposition to spare his life—upon any condition they might choose to make—that had been sent to them by his son, Prince Charles. Old persons were alive in London, not very long ago, who remembered having seen, in their childhood, the window, in the end of the Whitehall Banquet House—now a Chapel Royal and all that remains of the ancient palace—through which the doomed monarch walked forth to the block. It was long ago walled up, and the palace has undergone much alteration since the days of the Stuarts. In the rear of Whitehall stands a bronze statue of James the Second, by Roubiliac (whose marbles are numerous, in the Abbey and elsewhere in London, and whose grave is in the church of St. Martin), one of the most graceful works of that spirited sculptor. The figure is finely modelled. The face is dejected and full of reproach. The right hand points, with a truncheon, toward the earth. It is impossible to mistake the ruminant, melancholy meaning of this memorial; and equally it is impossible to walk without both thought that instructs and emotion that elevates through a city which thus abounds with traces of momentous incident and representative experience.
The literary pilgrim in London has this double advantage—that while he communes with the past he may enjoy in the present. Yesterday and to-day are commingled here, in a way that is almost ludicrous. When you turn from Roubiliac's statue of James your eyes rest upon the retired house of Disraeli. If you walk in Whitehall, toward the Palace of Westminster, some friend may chance to tell you how the great Duke of Wellington walked there, in the feebleness of his age, from the Horse Guards to the House of Lords; and with what pleased complacency the old warrior used to boast of his skill in threading a crowded thoroughfare,—unaware that the police, acting by particular command, protected his revered person from errant cabs and pushing pedestrians. As I strolled one day past Lambeth Palace it happened that the palace gates were suddenly unclosed and that His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury came forth, on horseback, from that episcopal residence, and ambled away towards the House of Lords. It is the same arched portal through which, in other days, passed out the stately train of Wolsey. It is the same towered palace that Queen Elizabeth looked upon as her barge swept past, on its watery track to Richmond. It is for ever associated with the memory of Thomas Cromwell.
Lambeth Palace.
In the church, hard by, rest the ashes of men distinguished in the most diverse directions—Jackson, the clown; and Tenison, the archbishop, the "honest, prudent, laborious, and benevolent" primate of William the Third, who was thought worthy to succeed in office the illustrious Tillotson. The cure of souls is sought here with just as vigorous energy as when Tillotson wooed by his goodness and charmed by his winning eloquence. Not a great distance from this spot you come upon the college at Dulwich that Edward Alleyn founded, in the time of Shakespeare, and that still subsists upon the old actor's endowment. It is said that Alleyn—who was a man of fortune, and whom a contemporary epigram styles the best actor of his day—gained the most of his money by the exhibition of bears. But, howsoever gained, he made a good use of it. His tomb is in the centre of the college. Here may be seen one of the best picture-galleries in England. One of the cherished paintings in that collection is the famous portrait, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, of Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse—remarkable for its colour, and splendidly expositive of the boldness of feature, brilliancy of countenance, and stately grace of posture for which its original was distinguished. Another represents two renowned beauties of their day—the Linley sisters—who became Mrs. Sheridan and Mrs. Tickel. You do not wonder, as you look on those fair faces, sparkling with health, arch with merriment, lambent with sensibility, and soft with goodness and feeling, that Sheridan should have fought duels for such a prize as the lady of his love; or that those fascinating creatures, favoured alike by the Graces and the Muse, should in their gentle lives have been, "like Juno's swans, coupled and inseparable." Mary, Mrs. Tickel, died first; and Moore, in hisLife of Sheridan,has preserved a lament for her, written by Eliza, Mrs. Sheridan, which—for deep, true sorrow and melodious eloquence—is worthy to be named with Thomas Tickel's monody on Addison or Cowper's memorial lines on his mother's picture:—
"Shall all the wisdom of the world combinedErase thy image, Mary, from my mind,Or bid me hope from others to receiveThe fond affection thou alone couldst give?Ah no, my best beloved, thou still shalt beMy friend, my sister, all the world to me!"
Precious also among the gems of the Dulwich gallery are certain excellent specimens of the gentle, dreamy style of Murillo. The pilgrim passes on, by a short drive, to Sydenham, and dines at the Crystal Palace—and still he finds the faces of the past and the present confronted, in a manner that is almost comic. Nothing could be more aptly representative of the practical, ostentatious phase of the spirit of to-day than is this enormous, opulent, and glittering "palace made of windows." Yet I saw there the carriage in which Napoleon Buonaparte used to drive, at St. Helena—a vehicle as sombre and ghastly as were the broken fortunes of its death-stricken master; and, sitting at a table close by, I saw the son of Buonaparte's fiery champion, William Hazlitt.
Dulwich College.
It was a gray and misty evening. The plains below the palace terraces were veiled in shadow, through which, here and there, twinkled the lights of some peaceful villa. Far away the spires and domes of London, dimly seen, pierced the city's nightly pall of smoke. It was a dream too sweet to last. It ended when all the illuminations were burnt out; when the myriads of red and green and yellow stars had fallen; and all the silver fountains had ceased to play.
The Crown Inn, Dulwich.
Paisley Border
The Byron Memorial Loan Collection, that was displayed at the Albert Memorial Hall, for a short time in the summer of 1877, did not attract much attention: yet it was a vastly impressive show of relics. The catalogue names seventy-four objects, together with thirty-nine designs for a monument to Byron. The design that has been chosen presents a seated figure, of the young sailor-boy type. The right hand supports the chin; the left, resting on the left knee, holds an open book and a pencil. The dress consists of a loose shirt, open at the throat and on the bosom, a flowing neckcloth, and wide, marine trousers. Byron's dog, Boatswain—commemorated in the well-known misanthropic epitaph—
"To mark a friend's remains these stones arise,I never knew but one, and here he lies"—
is shown, in effigy, at the poet's feet. The treatment of the subject, in this model, certainly deserves to be called free, but the general effect of the work is finical. The statue will probably be popular; but it will give no adequate idea of the man. Byron was both massive and intense; and this image is no more than the usual hero of nautical romance. (It was dedicated in May, 1880, and it stands in Hamilton Gardens, near Hyde Park Corner, London.)
It was the treasure of relics, however, and not the statuary, that more attracted notice. The relics were exhibited in three glass cases, exclusive of large portraits. It is impossible to make the reader—supposing him to revere this great poet's genius and to care for his memory—feel the thrill of emotion that was aroused by actual sight, and almost actual touch, of objects so intimately associated with the living Byron. Five pieces of his hair were shown, one of which was cut off, after his death, by Captain Trelawny—the remarkable gentleman who says that he uncovered the legs of the corse, in order to ascertain the nature and extent of their deformity. All those locks of hair are faded and all present a mixture of gray and auburn. Byron's hair was not, seemingly, of a fine texture, and it turned gray early in life. Those tresses were lent to the exhibition by Lady Dorchester, John Murray, H. M. Robinson, D.D., and E. J. Trelawny. A strangely interesting memorial was a little locket of plain gold, shaped like a heart, that Byron habitually wore. Near to this was the crucifix found in his bed at Missolonghi, after his death. It is about ten inches long and is made of ebony. A small bronze figure of Christ is displayed upon it, and at the feet of the figure are cross-bones and a skull, of the same metal. A glass beaker, that Byron gave to his butler, in 1815, attracted attention by its portly size and, to the profane fancy, hinted that his lordship had formed a liberal estimate of that butler's powers of suction. Four articles of head-gear occupied a prominent place in one of the cabinets. Two are helmets that Byron wore when he was in Greece, in 1824—and very queer must have been his appearance when he wore them. One is light blue, the other dark green; both are faded; both are fierce with brass ornaments and barbaric with brass scales like those of a snake. A comelier object is the poet's "boarding-cap"—a leather slouch, turned up with green velvet and studded with brass nails. Many small articles of Byron's property were scattered through the cases. A corpulent little silver watch, with Arabic numerals upon its face, and a meerschaum pipe, not much coloured, were among them. The cap that he sometimes wore, during the last years of his life,—the one depicted in a well-known sketch of him by Count D'Orsay,—was exhibited, and so was D'Orsay's portrait. The cap is of green velvet, not much tarnished, and is encircled by a gold band and faced by an ugly visor. The face in the sketch is supercilious and defiant. A better, and obviously truer sketch is that made by Cattermole, which also was in this exhibition. Strength in despair and a dauntless spirit that shines through the ravages of irremediable suffering are the qualities of this portrait; and they make it marvellously effective. Thorwaldsen's fine bust of Byron, made for Hobhouse, and also the celebrated Phillips portrait—that Scott said was the best likeness of Byron ever painted—occupied places in this group. The copy of the New Testament that Lady Byron gave to her husband, and that he, in turn, presented to Lady Caroline Lamb, was there, and is a pocket volume, bound in black leather, with the inscription, "From a sincere and anxious friend," written in a stiff, formal hand, across the fly-leaf. A gold ring that the poet constantly wore, and the collar of his dog Boatswain—a discoloured band of brass, with sharply jagged edges—should also be named as among the most interesting of the relics.
But the most remarkable objects of all were the manuscripts. These comprise the original draft of the third canto of "Childe Harold," written on odd bits of paper, during Byron's journey from London to Venice, in 1816; the first draft of the fourth canto, together with a clean copy of it; the notes to "Marino Faliero"; the concluding stage directions—much scrawled and blotted—in "Heaven and Earth"; a document concerning the poet's matrimonial trouble; and about fifteen of his letters. The passages seen are those beginning "Since my young days of passion, joy, or pain"; "To bear unhurt what time cannot abate"; and in canto fourth the stanzas 118 to 129 inclusive. The writing is free and strong, and it still remains legible although the paper is yellow with age. Altogether those relics were touchingly significant of the strange, dark, sad career of a wonderful man. Yet, as already said, they attracted but little notice. The memory of Byron seems darkened, as with the taint of lunacy. "He did strange things," one Englishman said to me; "and there was something queer about him." The London house in which he was born, in Holies Street, Cavendish Square, is marked with a tablet,—according to a custom instituted by a society of arts. (It was torn down in 1890 and its site is now occupied by a shop, bearing the name of John Lewis & Co.) Two houses in which he lived, No. 8 St. James Street, near the old palace, and No. 139 Piccadilly, are not marked. The house of his birth was occupied in 1877 by a descendant of Elizabeth Fry, the philanthropist.
The custom of marking the houses associated with great names is obviously a good one, and it ought to be adopted in other countries. Two buildings, one in Westminster and one in the grounds of the South Kensington Museum, bear the name of Franklin; and I also saw memorial tablets to Dryden and Burke in Gerrard Street, to Dryden in Fetter Lane, to Mrs. Siddons in Baker Street, to Sir Joshua Reynolds and to Hogarth in Leicester Square, to Garrick in the Adelphi Terrace, to Louis Napoleon, and to many other renowned individuals. The room that Sir Joshua occupied as a studio is now an auction mart. The stone stairs leading up to it are much worn, but they remain as they were when, it may be imagined, Burke, Johnson, Goldsmith, Langton, Beauclerk, and Boswell walked there, on many a festive night in the old times. It is a breezy, slate-coloured evening in July. I look from the window of a London house that fronts a spacious park. Those great elms, which in their wealth of foliage and irregular and pompous expanse of limb are finer than all other trees of their class, fill the prospect, and nod and murmur in the wind. Through a rift in their heavy-laden boughs is visible a long vista of green field, in which many children are at play. Their laughter and the rustle of leaves, with now and then the click cf a horse's hoofs upon the road near by, make up the music of this hallowed hour. The sky is a little overcast but not gloomy. As I muse upon this delicious scene the darkness slowly gathers, the stars come out, and presently the moon rises, and blanches the meadow with silver light. Such has been the English summer, with scarce a hint of either heat or storm.
Oriel Window.
Cherub Tooting Flower Border
It is strange that the life of the past, in its unfamiliar remains and fading traces, should so far surpass the life of the present, in impressive force and influence. Human characteristics, although manifested under widely different conditions, were the same in old times that they are now. It is not in them, surely, that we are to seek for the mysterious charm that hallows ancient objects and the historical antiquities of the world. There is many a venerable, weather-stained church in London, at sight of which your steps falter and your thoughts take a wistful, melancholy turn—though then you may not know either who built it, or who has worshipped in it, or what dust of the dead is mouldering in its vaults. The spirit which thus instantly possesses and controls you is not one of association, but is inherent in the place. Time's shadow on the works of man, like moonlight on a landscape, gives only graces to the view—tingeing them, the while, with sombre sheen—and leaves all blemishes in darkness. This may suggest the reason that relics of bygone years so sadly please and strangely awe us, in the passing moment; or it may be that we involuntarily contrast their apparent permanence with our own evanescent mortality, and so are dejected with a sentiment of dazed helplessness and solemn grief. This sentiment it is—allied to bereaved love and a natural wish for remembrance after death—that has filled Westminster Abbey, and many another holy mausoleum, with sculptured memorials of the departed; and this, perhaps, is the subtle power that makes us linger beside them, "with thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls."
Westminster Abbey, from the Triforium.
When the gentle angler Izaak Walton went into Westminster Abbey to visit the grave of Casaubon, he scratched his initials on the scholar's monument, where the record, "I. W., 1658," may still be read by the stroller in Poets' Corner. One might well wish to follow that example, and even thus to associate his name with the great cathedral. And not in pride but in humble reverence! Here if anywhere on earth self-assertion is rebuked and human eminence set at nought. Among all the impressions that crowd upon the mind in this wonderful place that which oftenest recurs and longest remains is the impression of man's individual insignificance. This is salutary, but it is also dark. There can be no enjoyment of the Abbey till, after much communion with the spirit of the place, your soul is soothed by its beauty rather than overwhelmed by its majesty, and your mind ceases from the vain effort to grasp and interpret its tremendous meaning. You cannot long endure, and you never can express, the sense of grandeur that is inspired by Westminster Abbey; but, when at length its shrines and tombs and statues become familiar, when its chapels, aisles, arches, and cloisters are grown companionable, and you can stroll and dream undismayed "through rows of warriors and through walks of kings," there is no limit to the pensive memories they awaken and the poetic fancies they prompt.
Henry VII. Chapel.
In this church are buried, among generations of their nobles and courtiers, fourteen monarchs of England—beginning with the Saxon Sebert and ending with George the Second. Fourteen queens rest here, and many children of the royal blood who never came to the throne. Here, confronted in a haughty rivalry of solemn pomp, rise the equal tombs of Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart. Queen Eleanor's dust is here, and here, too, is the dust of the grim Queen Mary. In one little chapel you may pace, with but half a dozen steps, across the graves of Charles the Second, William and Mary, and Queen Anne and her consort Prince George. At the tomb of Henry the Fifth you may see the helmet, shield, and saddle that were worn by the valiant young king at Agincourt; and close by—on the tomb of Margaret Woodeville, daughter of Edward the Fourth—the sword and shield that were borne, in royal state, before the great Edward the Third, five hundred years ago. The princes who are said to have been murdered in the Tower are commemorated here by an altar, set up by Charles the Second, whereon the inscription—blandly and almost humorously oblivious of the incident of Cromwell—states that it was erected in the thirtieth year of Charles's reign. Richard the Second, deposed and assassinated, is here entombed; and within a few feet of him are the relics of his uncle, the able and powerful Duke of Gloster, treacherously ensnared and betrayed to death. Here also, huge, rough, and gray, is the stone sarcophagus of Edward the First, which, when opened, in 1771, disclosed the skeleton of departed majesty, still perfect, wearing robes of gold tissue and crimson velvet, and having a crown on the head and a sceptre in the hand. So sleep, in jewelled darkness and gaudy decay, what once were monarchs! And all around are great lords, holy prelates, famous statesmen, renowned soldiers, and illustrious poets. Burleigh, Pitt, Fox, Burke, Canning, Newton, Barrow, Wilberforce—names forever glorious!—are here enshrined in the grandest sepulchre on earth.
The interments that have been effected in and around the Abbey since the remote age of Edward the Confessor must number thousands; but only about six hundred are named in the guide-books. In the south transept, which is Poets' Corner, rest Chaucer, Spenser, Drayton, Cowley, Dryden, Beaumont, Davenant, Prior, Gay, Congreve, Rowe, Dr. Johnson, Campbell, Macaulay, and Dickens. Memorials to many other poets and writers have been ranged on the adjacent walls and pillars; but these are among the authors that were actually buried in this place. Ben Jonson is not here, but—in an upright posture, it is said—under the north aisle of the Abbey; Addison is in the chapel of Henry the Seventh, at the foot of the monument of Charles Montague, the great Earl of Halifax; and Bulwer is in the chapel of St. Edmund. Garrick, Sheridan, Henderson, Cumberland, Handel, Parr, Sir Archibald Campbell, and the once so mighty Duke of Argyle are almost side by side; while in St. Edward's chapel sleep Anne of Cleves, the divorced wife of Henry the Eighth, and Anne Neville, queen of Richard the Third.
Chapel of Edward the Confessor.
Betterton and Spranger Barry are in the cloisters—where may be read, in four little words, the most touching epitaph in the Abbey: "Jane Lister—dear child." There are no monuments to either Byron, Shelley, Swift, Pope, Bolingbroke, Keats, Cowper, Moore, or Young; but Mason and Shadwell are commemorated; and Barton Booth is splendidly inurned; while hard by, in the cloisters, a place was found for Mrs. Cibber, Tom Brown, Anne Bracegirdle, Anne Oldfield, and Aphra Behn. The destinies have not always been stringently fastidious as to the admission of lodgers to this sacred ground. The pilgrim is startled by some of the names that he finds in Westminster Abbey, and pained by reflection on the absence of some that he will seek in vain. Yet he will not fail to moralise, as he strolls in Poets' Corner, upon the inexorable justice with which time repudiates fictitious reputations and twines the laurel on only the worthiest brows. In well-nigh five hundred years of English literature there have lived only about a hundred and ten poets whose names survive in any needed chronicle; and not all of those possess life outside of the library. To muse over the literary memorials in the Abbey is also to think upon the seeming caprice of chance with which the graves of the British poets have been scattered far and wide throughout the land.
The Poets' Corner.
Gower, Fletcher, and Massinger (to name but a few of them) rest in Southwark; Sydney and Donne in St. Paul's cathedral; More (his head, that is, while his body moulders in the Tower chapel) at Canterbury; Drummond in Lasswade church; Dorset at Withyham, in Sussex; Waller at Beaconsfield; Wither, unmarked, in the church of the Savoy; Milton in the church of the Cripplegate—where his relics, it is said, were despoiled; Swift at Dublin, in St. Patrick's cathedral; Young at Welwyn; Pope at Twickenham; Thomson at Richmond; Gray at Stoke-Pogis; Watts in Bunhill-Fields; Collins in an obscure little church at Chichester—though his name is commemorated by a tablet in Chichester cathedral; Cowper in Dereham church; Goldsmith in the garden of the Temple; Savage at Bristol; Burns at Dumfries; Rogers at Hornsey; Crabbe at Trowbridge; Scott in Dryburgh abbey; Coleridge at Highgate; Byron in Hucknall church, near Nottingham; Moore at Bromham; Montgomery at Sheffield; Heber at Calcutta; Southey in Crossthwaite churchyard, near Keswick; Wordsworth and Hartley Coleridge side by side in the churchyard of Grasmere; and Clough at Florence—whose lovely words may here speak for all of them—
"One port, methought, alike they sought,One purpose held, where'er they fare:O bounding breeze, O rushing seas.At last, at last, unite them there!"
But it is not alone in the great Abbey that the rambler in London is impressed by poetic antiquity and touching historic association—always presuming that he has been a reader of English literature and that his reading has sunk into his mind. Little things, equally with great ones, commingled in a medley, luxuriant and delicious, so people the memory of such a pilgrim that all his walks will be haunted. The London of to-day, to be sure (as may be seen in Macaulay's famous third chapter, and in Scott'sFortunes of Nigel),is very little like even the London of Charles the Second, when the great fire had destroyed eighty-nine churches and thirteen thousand houses, and when what is now Regent Street was a rural solitude in which sportsmen sometimes shot the woodcock.
The North Ambulatory.
Yet, though much of the old capital has vanished and more of it has been changed, many remnants of its historic past exist, and many of its streets and houses are fraught with a delightful, romantic interest. It is not forgotten that sometimes the charm resides in the eyes that see, quite as much as in the object that is seen. The storied spots of London may not be appreciable by all who look upon them every day. The cab-drivers in the region of Kensington Palace Road may neither regard, nor even notice, the house in which Thackeray lived and died. The shop-keepers of old Bond Street may, perhaps, neither care nor know that in this famous avenue was enacted the woeful death-scene of Laurence Sterne. The Bow Street runners are quite unlikely to think of Will's Coffee House, and Dryden, or Button's, and Addison, as they pass the sites of those vanished haunts of wit and revelry in the days of Queen Anne. The fashionable lounger through Berkeley Square, when perchance he pauses at the corner of Bruton Street, will not discern Colley Cibber, in wig and ruffles, standing at the parlour window and drumming with his hands on the frame. The casual passenger, halting at the Tavistock, will not remember that this was once Macklin's Ordinary, and so conjure up the iron visage and ferocious aspect of the first great Shylock of the British stage, formally obsequious to his guests, or striving to edify them, despite the banter of the volatile Foote, with discourse upon "the Causes of Duelling in Ireland." The Barbican does not to every one summon the austere memory of Milton; nor Holborn raise the melancholy shade of Chatterton; nor Tower Hill arouse the gloomy ghost of Otway; nor Hampstead lure forth the sunny figure of Steele and the passionate face of Keats; nor old Northumberland Street suggest the burly presence of "rare Ben Jonson"; nor opulent Kensington revive the stately head of Addison; nor a certain window in Wellington Street reveal in fancy's picture the rugged lineaments and splendid eyes of Dickens.
The Spaniards, Hampstead.
Yet London never disappoints; and for him who knows and feels its history these associations, and hundreds like to these, make it populous with noble or strange or pathetic figures, and diversify the aspect of its vital present with pictures of an equally vital past. Such a wanderer discovers that in this vast capital there is literally no end to the themes that are to stir his imagination, touch his heart, and broaden his mind. Soothed already by the equable English climate and the lovely English scenery, he is aware now of an influence in the solid English city that turns his intellectual life to perfect tranquillity. He stands amid achievements that are finished, careers that are consummated, great deeds that are done, great memories that are immortal; he views and comprehends the sum of all that is possible to human thought, passion, and labour; and then,—high over mighty London, above the dome of St. Paul's cathedral, piercing the clouds, greeting the sun, drawing into itself all the tremendous life of the great city and all the meaning of its past and present,—the golden cross of Christ!
Dome of St. Paul's
Leaf and Flower Border
It is the everlasting glory of Stratford-upon-Avon that it was the birthplace of Shakespeare. Situated in the heart of Warwickshire, which has been called "the garden of England," it nestles cosily in an atmosphere of tranquil loveliness and is surrounded with everything that soft and gentle rural scenery can provide to soothe the mind and to nurture contentment. It stands upon a plain, almost in the centre of the island, through which, between the low green hills that roll away on either side, the Avon flows downward to the Severn. The country in its neighbourhood is under perfect cultivation, and for many miles around presents the appearance of a superbly appointed park. Portions of the land are devoted to crops and pasture; other portions are thickly wooded with oak, elm, willow, and chestnut; the meadows are intersected by hedges of fragrant hawthorn, and the region smiles with flowers. Old manor-houses, half-hidden among the trees, and thatched cottages embowered with roses are sprinkled through the surrounding landscape; and all the roads that converge upon this point—from Birmingham, Warwick, Shipton, Bidford, Alcester, Evesham, Worcester, and other contiguous towns—wind, in sun and shadow, through a sod of green velvet, swept by the cool, sweet winds of the English summer.
The Grange.
Such felicities of situation and such accessories of beauty, however, are not unusual in England; and Stratford, were it not hallowed by association, though it would always hold a place among the pleasant memories of the traveller, would not have become a shrine for the homage of the world. To Shakespeare it owes its renown; from Shakespeare it derives the bulk of its prosperity. To visit Stratford is to tread with affectionate veneration in the footsteps of the poet. To write about Stratford is to write about Shakespeare.
More than three hundred years have passed since the birth of that colossal genius and many changes have occurred in his native town within that period. The Stratford of Shakespeare's time was built principally of timber, and it contained about fourteen hundred inhabitants. To-day its population numbers more than eight thousand. New dwellings have arisen where once were fields of wheat, glorious with the shimmering lustre of the scarlet poppy. Many of the older buildings have been altered. Manufacture has been stimulated into prosperous activity. The Avon has been spanned by a new bridge, of iron—a path for pedestrians, adjacent to Clopton's bridge of stone. (The iron bridge was opened November 23, 1827. The Clopton Bridge was 376 yards long and about 16 yards wide. Alterations of the west end of it were made in 1814.) The streets have been levelled, swept, rolled and garnished till they look like a Flemish drawing, of the Middle Ages. Even the Shakespeare cottage, the old Harvard house in High Street, and the two old churches—authentic and splendid memorials of a distant and storied past—have been "restored." If the poet could walk again through his accustomed haunts, though he would see the same smiling country round about, and hear, as of old, the ripple of the Avon murmuring in its summer sleep, his eyes would rest on but few objects that once he knew. Yet, there are the paths that Shakespeare often trod; there stands the house in which he was born; there is the school in which he was taught; there is the cottage in which he wooed his sweetheart; there are the traces and relics of the mansion in which he died; and there is the church that keeps his dust, so consecrated by the reverence of mankind
"That kings for such a tomb would wish to die."
In shape the town of Stratford somewhat resembles a large cross, which is formed by High Street, running nearly north and south, and Bridge Street and Wood Street, running nearly east and west. From these, which are main avenues, radiate many and devious branches. A few of the streets are broad and straight but many of them are narrow and crooked. High and Bridge streets intersect each other at the centre of the town, and there stands the market house, an ugly building, of the period of George the Fourth, with belfry and illuminated clock, facing eastward toward the old stone bridge, with fourteen arches,—the bridge that Sir Hugh Clopton built across the Avon, in the reign of Henry the Seventh. A cross once stood at the corner of High Street and Wood Street, and near the cross was a pump and a well. From that central point a few steps will bring the traveller to the birthplace of Shakespeare.
Shakespeare's Birthplace in Henley Street.
It is a little, two-story cottage, of timber and plaster, on the north side of Henley Street, in the western part of the town. It must have been, in its pristine days, finer than most of the dwellings in its neighbourhood. The one-story house, with attic windows, was the almost invariable fashion of building, in English country towns, till the seventeenth century. This cottage, besides its two stories, had dormer-windows, a pent-house over its door, and altogether was built and appointed in a manner both luxurious and substantial. Its age is unknown; but the history of Stratford reaches back to a period three hundred years antecedent to William the Conqueror, and fancy, therefore, is allowed ample room to magnify its antiquity. It was bought, or occupied, by Shakespeare's father in 1555, and in it he resided till his death, in 1601, when it descended by inheritance to the poet. Such is the substance of the complex documentary evidence and of the emphatic tradition that consecrate this cottage as the house in which Shakespeare was born. The point has never been absolutely settled. John Shakespeare, the father, was the owner in 1564 not only of the house in Henley Street but of another in Greenhill Street. William Shakespeare might have been born at either of those dwellings. Tradition, however, has sanctified the Henley Street cottage; and this, accordingly, as Shakespeare's cradle, will be piously guarded to a late posterity. It has already survived serious perils and vicissitudes. By Shakespeare's will it was bequeathed to his sister Joan—Mrs. William Hart—to be held by her, under the yearly rent of twelvepence, during her life, and at her death to revert to his daughter Susanna and her descendants. His sister Joan appears to have been living there at the time of his decease, in 1616. She is known to have been living there in 1639—twenty-three years later,—and doubtless she resided there till her death, in 1646. The estate then passed to Susanna—Mrs. John Hall,—from whom in 1649 it descended to her grandchild, Lady Barnard, who left it to her kinsmen, Thomas and George Hart, grandsons of Joan. In this line of descent it continued—subject to many of those infringements which are incidental to poverty—till 1806, when William Shakespeare Hart, the seventh in collateral kinship from the poet, sold it to Thomas Court, from whose family it was at last purchased for the British nation. Meantime the property, which originally consisted of two tenements and a considerable tract of adjacent land, had, little by little, been curtailed of its fair proportions by the sale of its gardens and orchards. The two tenements—two in one, that is—had been subdivided. A part of the building became an inn—at first called "The Maidenhead," afterward "The Swan," and finally "The Swan and Maidenhead." Another part became a butcher's shop. The old dormer-windows and the pent-house disappeared. A new brick casing was foisted upon the tavern end of the structure. In front of the butcher's shop appeared a sign announcing "William Shakespeare was born in this house: N.B.—A Horse and Taxed Cart to Let." Still later appeared another legend, vouching that "the immortal Shakespeare was born in this house." From 1793 till 1820 Thomas and Mary Hornby, connections by marriage with the Harts, lived in the Shakespeare cottage—now at length become the resort of literary pilgrims,—and Mary Hornby, who set up to be a poet and wrote tragedy, comedy, and philosophy, took delight in exhibiting its rooms to visitors. During the reign of that eccentric custodian the low ceilings and whitewashed walls of its several chambers became covered with autographs, scrawled thereon by many enthusiasts, including some of the most famous persons in Europe. In 1820 Mary Hornby was requested to leave the premises. She did not wish to go. She could not endure the thought of a successor. "After me, the deluge!" She was obliged to abdicate; but she conveyed away all the furniture and relics alleged to be connected with Shakespeare's family, and she hastily whitewashed the cottage walls. Only a small part of the wall of the upper room, the chamber in which "nature's darling" first saw the light, escaped that act of spiteful sacrilege. On the space behind its door may still be read many names, with dates affixed, ranging back from 1820 to 1729. Among them is that of Dora Jordan, the beautiful and fascinating actress, who wrote it there June 2, 1809. Much of Mary Hornby's whitewash, which chanced to be unsized, was afterward removed, so that her work of obliteration proved only in part successful. Other names have been added to this singular, chaotic scroll of worship. Byron, Scott,† Rogers, Thackeray, Kean, Tennyson, and Dickens are among the votaries there and thus recorded.
† Sir Walter Scott visited Shakespeare's birthplace in August, 1821, and at that time scratched his name on the window-pane. He had previously, in 1815, visited Kenilworth. He was in Stratford again in 1828, and on April 8 he went to Shakespeare's grave, and subsequently drove to Charlecote. The visit of Lord Byron has been incorrectly assigned to the year 1816. It occurred on August 28, possibly in 1812.
The successors of Mary Hornby guarded their charge with pious care. The precious value of the old Shakespeare cottage grew more and more evident to the English people. Washington Irving made his pilgrimage to Stratford and recounted it in his beautifulSketch-Book.Yet it was not till P. T. Barnum, from the United States, arrived with a proposition to buy the Shakespeare house and convey it to America that the literary enthusiasm of Great Britain was made to take a practical shape, and this venerated and inestimable relic became, in 1847, a national possession. In 1856 John Shakespeare, of Worthington Field, near Ashby-de-la-Zouche, gave a large sum of money to restore it; and within the next two years, under the superintendence of Edward Gibbs and William Holtom of Stratford, it was isolated by the demolition of the cottages at its sides and in the rear, repaired wherever decay was visible, and set in perfect order.
The builders of this house must have done their work thoroughly well, for even after all these years of rough usage and of slow but incessant decline the great timbers remain solid, the plastered walls are firm, the huge chimney-stack is as permanent as a rock, and the ancient flooring only betrays by the channelled aspect of its boards, and the high polish on the heads of the nails which fasten them down, that it belongs to a period of remote antiquity. The cottage stands close upon the margin of the street, according to ancient custom of building throughout Stratford; and, entering through a little porch, the pilgrim stands at once in that low-ceiled, flag-stoned room, with its wide fire-place, so familiar in prints of the chimney-corner of Shakespeare's youthful days. Within the fire-place, on either side, is a seat fashioned in the brick-work; and here, as it is pleasant to imagine, the boy-poet often sat, on winter nights, gazing dreamily into the flames, and building castles in that fairyland of fancy which was his celestial inheritance. You presently pass from this room by a narrow, well-worn staircase to the chamber above, which is shown as the place of the poet's birth. An antiquated chair, of the sixteenth century, stands in the right-hand corner. At the left is a small fire-place. Around the walls are visible the great beams which are the framework of the building—beams of seasoned oak that will last forever. Opposite to the door of entrance is a threefold casement (the original window) full of narrow panes of glass scrawled all over with names that their worshipful owners have written with diamonds. The ceiling is so low that you can easily touch it with uplifted hand. A portion of it is held in place by a network of little iron laths. This room, and indeed the whole structure, is as polished and orderly as any waxen, royal hall in the Louvre, and it impresses observation much like old lace that has been treasured up, in lavender or jasmine. These walls, which no one is now permitted to mar, were naturally the favourite scroll of the Shakespeare votaries of long ago. Every inch of the plaster bears marks of the pencil of reverence. Hundreds of names are written there—some of them famous but most of them obscure, and all destined to perish where they stand. On the chimney-piece at the right of the fireplace, which is named The Actor's Pillar, many actors have inscribed their signatures. Edmund Kean wrote his name there—with what soulful veneration and spiritual sympathy it is awful even to try to imagine. Sir Walter Scott's name is scratched with a diamond on the window—"W. Scott." That of Thackeray appears on the ceiling, and upon the beam across the centre is that of Helen Faucit. The name of Eliza Vestris is written near the fireplace. Mark Lemon and Charles Dickens are together on the opposite wall. Byron wrote his name there, but it has disappeared. The list would include, among others, Elliston, Buckstone, G. V. Brooke, Charles Kean, Charles Mathews, and Fanny Fitzwilliam. But it is not of these offerings of fealty that you think when you sit and muse alone in that mysterious chamber. As once again I conjure up that strange and solemn scene, the sunshine rests in checkered squares upon the ancient floor, the motes swim in the sunbeams, the air is very cold, the place is hushed as death, and over it all there broods an atmosphere of grave suspense and mystical desolation—a sense of some tremendous energy stricken dumb and frozen into silence and past and gone forever.
Opposite to the birthchamber, at the rear, there is a small apartment, in which is displayed "the Stratford Portrait" of the poet. This painting is said to have been owned by the Clopton family, and to have fallen into the hands of William Hunt, town clerk of Stratford, who bought the mansion of the Cloptons in 1758. The adventures through which it passed can only be conjectured. It does not appear to have been valued, and although it remained in the house it was cast away among lumber and rubbish. In process of time it was painted over and changed into a different subject. Then it fell a prey to dirt and damp. There is a story that the little boys of the tribe of Hunt were accustomed to use it as a target for their arrows. At last, after the lapse of a century, the grandson of William Hunt showed it by chance to Simon Collins, an artist, who surmised that a valuable portrait might perhaps exist beneath its muddy surface. It was carefully cleaned. A thick beard was removed, and the face of Shakespeare emerged upon the canvas. It is not pretended that this portrait was painted in Shakespeare's time. The close resemblance that it bears,—in attitude, dress, colours, and other peculiarities,—to the painted bust of the poet in Stratford church seems to indicate that it is a modern copy of that work. Upon a brass plate affixed to it is the following inscription: "This portrait of Shakespeare, after being in the possession of Mr. William Oakes Hunt, town-clerk of Stratford, and his family, for upwards of a century, was restored to its original condition by Mr. Simon Collins of London, and, being considered a portrait of much interest and value, was given by Mr. Hunt to the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, to be preserved in Shakespeare's house, 23d April, 1862." There, accordingly, it remains, and, in association with several other dubious presentments of the poet, cheerfully adds to the mental confusion of the pilgrim who would form an accurate image of Shakespeare's appearance. Standing in its presence it was worth while to reflect that there are only two authentic representations of Shakespeare in existence—the Droeshout portrait and the Gerard Jonson bust. They may not be perfect works of art; they may not do justice to the original; but they were seen and accepted by persons to whom Shakespeare had been a living companion. The bust was sanctioned by his children; the portrait was sanctioned by his friend Ben Jonson, and by his brother actors Heminge and Condell, who prefixed it, in 1623, to the first folio of his works. Standing among the relics that have been gathered into a museum in an apartment on the ground-floor of the cottage it was essential also to remember how often "the wish is father to the thought" that sanctifies the uncertain memorials of the distant past. Several of the most suggestive documents, though, which bear upon the sparse and shadowy record of Shakespeare's life are preserved in this place. Here is a deed, made in 1596, which proves that this house was his father's residence. Here is the only letter addressed to him that is known to exist—the letter of Richard Quiney (1598) asking for the loan of thirty pounds. Here is a declaration in a suit, in 1604, to recover the price of some malt that he had sold to Philip Rogers. Here is a deed, dated 1609, on which is the autograph of his brother Gilbert, who represented him, at Stratford, in his business affairs, while he was absent in London, and who, surviving, it is dubiously said, almost till the period of the Restoration, talked, as a very old man, of the poet's impersonation of Adam inAs You Like It.(Possibly the reference of that legend is not to Gilbert but to a son of his. Gilbert would have been nearly a century old when Charles the Second came to the throne.) Here likewise is shown a gold seal ring, found many years ago in a field near Stratford church, on which, delicately engraved, appear the letters W. S., entwined with a true lovers' knot. It may have belonged to Shakespeare. The conjecture is that it did, and that,—since on the last of the three sheets which contain his will the word "seal" is stricken out and the word "hand" substituted,—he did not seal that document because he had only just then lost this ring. The supposition is, at least, ingenious. It will not harm the visitor to accept it. Nor, as he stands poring over the ancient, decrepit school-desk which has been lodged in this museum, from the grammar-school, will it greatly tax his credulity to believe that the "shining morning face" of the boy Shakespeare once looked down upon it, in the irksome quest of his "small Latin and less Greek." They call it Shakespeare's desk. It is old, and it is known to have been in the school of the guild three hundred years ago. There are other relics, more or less indirectly connected with the great name that is here commemorated. The inspection of them all would consume many days; the description of them would occupy many pages. You write your name in the visitors' book at parting, and perhaps stroll forth into the garden of the cottage, which encloses it at the sides and in the rear, and there, beneath the leafy boughs of the English lime, while your footsteps press "the grassy carpet of this plain," behold growing all around you the rosemary, pansies, fennel, columbines, rue, daisies, and violets, which make the imperishable garland on Ophelia's grave, and which are the fragrance of her solemn and lovely memory.
Thousands of times the wonder must have been expressed that while the world knows so much about Shakespeare's mind it should know so little about his life. The date of his birth, even, is established by an inference. The register of Stratford church shows that he was baptised there in 1564, on April 26. It was customary to baptise infants on the third day after their birth. It is presumed that the custom was followed in this instance, and hence it is deduced that Shakespeare was born on April 23—a date which, making allowance for the difference between the old and new styles of reckoning time, corresponds to our third of May. Equally by an inference it is established that the boy was educated in the free grammar-school. The school was there; and any boy of the town, who was seven years old and able to read, could get admission to it. Shakespeare's father, an alderman of Stratford (elected chief alderman, October 10, 1571), and then a man of worldly substance, though afterward he became poor, would surely have wished that his children should grow up in knowledge. To the ancient school-house, accordingly, and the adjacent chapel of the guild—which are still extant, at the south-east corner of Chapel Lane and Church Street—the pilgrim confidently traces the footsteps of the poet. Those buildings are of singular, picturesque quaintness. The chapel dates back to about the middle of the thirteenth century. It was a Roman Catholic institution, founded in 1296, under the patronage of the Bishop of Worcester, and committed to the pious custody of the guild of Stratford. A hospital was connected with it in those days, and Robert de Stratford was its first master. New privileges and confirmation were granted to the guild by Henry the Sixth, in 1403 and 1429. The grammar-school, established on an endowment of lands and tenements by Thomas Jolyffe, was set up in association with it in 1482. Toward the end of the reign of Henry the Seventh the whole of the chapel, excepting the chancel, was torn down and rebuilt under the munificent direction of Sir Hugh Clopton, Lord Mayor of London and Stratford's chief citizen and benefactor. Under Henry the Eighth, when came the stormy times of the Reformation, the priests were driven out, the guild was dissolved, and the chapel was despoiled. Edward the Sixth, however, granted a new charter to this ancient institution, and with especial precautions reinstated the school. The chapel itself was occasionally used as a schoolroom when Shakespeare was a boy, and until as late as the year 1595; and in case the lad did go thither (in 1571) as a pupil, he must have been from childhood familiar with the series of grotesque paintings upon its walls, presenting, in a pictorial panorama, the history of the Holy Cross, from its origin as a tree at the beginning of the world to its exaltation at Jerusalem. Those paintings were brought to light in 1804 in the course of a renovation of the chapel which then occurred, when the walls were relieved of thick coatings of whitewash, laid on them long before, in Puritan times, either to spoil or to hide from the spoiler. They are not visible now, but they were copied and have been engraved. The drawings of them, by Fisher, are in the collection of Shakespearean Rarities made by J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps. This chapel and its contents constitute one of the few remaining spectacles at Stratford that bring us face to face with Shakespeare. During the last seven years of his life he dwelt almost continually in his house of New Place, on the corner immediately opposite to this church. The configuration of the excavated foundations of that house indicates what would now be called a deep bay-window in its southern front. There, probably, was Shakespeare's study; and through that casement, many and many a time, in storm and in sunshine, by night and by day, he must have looked out upon the grim, square tower, the embattled stone wall, and the four tall Gothic windows of that mysterious temple. The moment your gaze falls upon it, the low-breathed, horror-stricken words of Lady Macbeth murmur in your memory:—
"The raven himself is hoarseThat croaks the fatal entrance of DuncanUnder my battlements."
New Place, Shakespeare's home at the time of his death and the house in which he died, stood on the north-east corner of Chapel Street and Chapel Lane. Nothing now remains of it but a portion of its foundations—long buried in the earth, but found and exhumed in comparatively recent days. Its gardens have been redeemed, through the zealous and devoted exertions of J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps and have been restored to what is thought to have been almost their condition when Shakespeare owned them. The crumbling fragments of the foundation are covered with screens of wood and wire. A mulberry-tree, a scion of the famous mulberry that Shakespeare is known to have planted, is growing on the lawn. There is no authentic picture in existence that shows New Place as it was when Shakespeare left it, but there is a sketch of it as it appeared in 1740. The house was made of brick and timber, and was built by Sir Hugh Clopton nearly a century before it became by purchase the property of the poet. Shakespeare bought it in 1597, and in it he passed, intermittently, a considerable part of the last nineteen years of his life. It had borne the name of New Place before it came into his possession. The Clopton family parted with it in 1563, and it was subsequently owned by families of Bott and Underhill. At Shakespeare's death it was inherited by his eldest daughter, Susanna, wife of Dr. John Hall. In 1643, Mrs. Hall, then seven years a widow, being still its owner and occupant, Henrietta Maria, queen to Charles the First, who had come to Stratford with a part of the royal army, resided for three days at New Place, which, therefore, must even then have been the most considerable private residence in the town. (The queen arrived at Stratford on July 11 and on July 13 she went to Kineton.) Mrs. Hall, dying in 1649, aged sixty-six, left it to her only child, Elizabeth, then Mrs. Thomas Nashe, who afterward became Lady Barnard, wife to Sir John Barnard, of Abingdon, and in whom the direct line of Shakespeare ended. After her death the estate was purchased by Sir Edward Walker, in 1675, who ultimately left it to his daughter's husband, Sir John Clopton (1638-1719), and so it once more passed into the hands of the family of its founder. A second Sir Hugh Clopton (1671-1751) owned it at the middle of the eighteenth century, and under his direction it was repaired, decorated, and furnished with a new front. That proved the beginning of the end of this old structure, as a relic of Shakespeare; for this owner, dying in 1751, bequeathed it to his son-in-law, Henry Talbot, who in 1753 sold it to the most universally execrated iconoclast of modern times, the Rev. Francis Gastrell, vicar of Frodsham, in Cheshire, by whom it was destroyed. Mr. Gastrell was a man of fortune, and he certainly was one of insensibility. He knew little of Shakespeare; but he knew that the frequent incursion, into his garden, of strangers who came to sit beneath "Shakespeare's mulberry" was a troublesome annoyance. He struck, therefore, at the root of the vexation and cut down the tree. That was in 1756. The wood was purchased by Thomas Sharp, a watchmaker of Stratford, who subsequently made the solemn declaration that he carried it to his home and converted it into toys and kindred memorial relics. The villagers of Stratford, meantime, incensed at the barbarity of Mr. Gastrell, took their revenge by breaking his windows. In this and in other ways the clergyman was probably made to realise his local unpopularity. It had been his custom to reside during a part of each year in Lichfield, leaving some of his servants in charge of New Place. The overseers of Stratford, having lawful authority to levy a tax, for the maintenance of the poor, on every house in the town valued at more than forty shillings a year, did not neglect to make a vigorous use of their privilege in the case of Mr. Gastrell. The result of their exactions in the sacred cause of charity was significant. In 1759 Mr. Gastrell declared that the house should never be taxed again, pulled down the building, sold the materials of which it had been composed, and left Stratford forever. He repaired to Lichfield and there died. In the house adjacent to the site of what was once Shakespeare's home has been established a museum of Shakespearean relics. Among them is a stone mullion, found on the site, which may have belonged to a window of the original mansion. This estate, bought from different owners and restored to its Shakespearean condition, became on April 17, 1876, the property of the corporation of Stratford. The tract of land is not large. The visitor may traverse the whole of it in a few minutes, although if he obey his inclination he will linger there for hours. The enclosure is an irregular rectangle, about two hundred feet long. The lawn is perfect. The mulberry is extant and tenacious, and wears its honours in contented vigour. Other trees give grateful shade to the grounds, and the voluptuous red roses, growing all around in rich profusion, load the air with fragrance. Eastward, at a little distance, flows the Avon. Not far away rises the graceful spire of the Holy Trinity. A few rooks, hovering in the air and wisely bent on some facetious mischief, send down through the silver haze of the summer morning their sagacious yet melancholy caw. The windows of the gray chapel across the street twinkle, and keep their solemn secret. On this spot was first waved the mystic wand of Prospero. Here Ariel sang of dead men's bones turned into pearl and coral in the deep caverns of the sea. Here arose into everlasting life Hermione, "as tender as infancy and grace." Here were created Miranda and Perdita, twins of heaven's own radiant goodness,—
"DaffodilsThat come before the swallow dares, and takeThe winds of March with beauty; violets dim,But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyesOr Cytherea's breath."
To endeavour to touch upon the larger and more august aspect of Shakespeare's life—when, as his wonderful sonnets betray, his great heart had felt the devastating blast of cruel passions and the deepest knowledge of the good and evil of the universe had been borne in upon his soul—would be impious presumption. Happily to the stroller in Stratford every association connected with him is gentle and tender. His image, as it rises there, is of smiling boyhood or sedate and benignant maturity; always either joyous or serene, never passionate, or turbulent, or dark. The pilgrim thinks of him as a happy child at his father's fireside; as a wondering school-boy in the quiet, venerable close of the old guild chapel, where still the only sound that breaks the silence is the chirp of birds or the creaking of the church vane; as a handsome, dauntless youth, sporting by his beloved river or roaming through field and forest many miles around; as the bold, adventurous spirit, bent on frolic and mischief, and not averse to danger, leading, perhaps, the wild lads of his village in their poaching depredations on the chace of Charlecote; as the lover, strolling through the green lanes of Shottery, hand in hand with the darling of his first love, while round them the honeysuckle breathed out its fragrant heart upon the winds of night, and overhead the moonlight, streaming through rifts of elm and poplar, fell on their pathway in showers of shimmering silver; and, last of all, as the illustrious poet, rooted and secure in his massive and shining fame, loved by many, and venerated and mourned by all, borne slowly through Stratford churchyard, while the golden bells were tolled in sorrow and the mourning lime-trees dropped their blossoms on his bier, to the place of his eternal rest. Through all the scenes incidental to this experience the worshipper of Shakespeare's genius may follow him every step of the way.