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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Shakespeare's England, by William Winter
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Shakespeare's England
+
+Author: William Winter
+
+Release Date: January 28, 2011 [EBook #35105]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jim Adcock, Special Thanks to the Internet
+Archive, American Libraries.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+     SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND
+          BY
+     WILLIAM WINTER
+
+     New Edition, Revised, with Illustrations
+
+     _New York_
+     THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+     LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
+     1898
+
+     _All rights reserved_
+
+     Copyright, 1892,
+     BY MACMILLAN AND CO.
+
+     ------
+
+     _Illustrated Edition,_
+     COPYRIGHT, 1893,
+     BY MACMILLAN AND CO.
+
+     ------
+
+     First published elsewhere.
+     Set up and electrotyped by Macmillan & Co., April, 1892.
+     Reprinted November, 1892; January, 1893.
+
+     Illustrated edition, revised throughout, in crown 8v0, set up and
+     Electrotyped June, 1893. Reprinted October, 1893; August, 1895;
+     September, 1898.
+
+     _Norwood Press_
+     J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
+     Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
+
+
+
+     To _Whitelaw Reid_
+
+
+     IN HONOUR OF EXALTED VIRTUES
+     ADORNING A LIFE OF
+     NOBLE ACHIEVEMENT AND PATIENT KINDNESS
+     AND IN REMEMBRANCE OF
+     FAITHFUL AND GENTLE FRIENDSHIP
+     I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
+
+
+     ------
+
+     _"Tum meae, si quid loquar audiendum,
+     Vocis accedet bona pars"_
+
+
+
+     PREFACE TO THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND
+
+
+_The favour with which this book has been received, alike in Great
+Britain and America, is thought to warrant a reproduction of it with
+pictorial embellishment, and accordingly it is offered in the present
+form. I have revised the text for this reprint, and my friend Mr. George
+P. Brett, of the house of Messrs. Macmillan and Company,--at whose
+suggestion the pictorial edition was undertaken,--has supervised the
+choice of pictures for its adornment. The approval that the work has
+elicited is a source of deep gratification. It signifies that my
+endeavour to reflect the gentle sentiment of English landscape and the
+romantic character of English rural life has not proved altogether
+in vain. It also shows that an appeal may confidently be
+made,--irrespective of transitory literary fashions and of popular
+caprice,--to the love of the ideal, the taste for simplicity, and the
+sentiment of veneration. In these writings there is, I hope, a profound
+practical deference to the perfect standard of style that is represented
+by such illustrious exemplars as Addison, Goldsmith, Sterne, and Gray.
+This frail fabric may perish: that standard is immortal; and whatever
+merit this book may possess is due to an instinctive and passionate
+devotion to the ideal denoted by those shining names. These sketches
+were written out of love for the subject. The first book of them, called
+_The Trip to England, _reprinted, with changes, from the _New York
+Tribune, _was made for me, at the De Vinne Press. The subsequent growth
+of the work is traced in the earlier Preface, herewith reprinted. The
+title of _Shakespeare's England _was given to it when the first English
+edition was published, by Mr. David Douglas, of Edinburgh. It has been
+my privilege to make various tours of the British islands, since those
+of _1877 _and _1882, _recorded here; and my later books, _Gray Days and
+Gold, _and _Old Shrines and Ivy, _should be read in association with
+this one, by those persons who care for a wider glimpse of the same
+delightful field, in the same companionship, and especially by those who
+like to follow the record of exploration and change in Shakespeare's
+home. As to the question of accuracy,--and indeed, as to all other
+questions,--it is my wish that this book may be judged by the text of
+the present edition, which is the latest and the best._
+
+
+     _W. W._
+
+     June 6, 1893.
+
+
+
+     PREFACE
+
+
+_Beautiful and storied scenes that have soothed and elevated the mind
+naturally inspire a feeling of gratitude. Prompted by that feeling the
+present author has written this record of his rambles in England. It was
+his wish, in dwelling upon the rural loveliness and the literary and
+historical associations of that delightful realm, to afford sympathetic
+guidance and useful suggestion to other American travellers who, like
+himself, might be attracted to roam among the shrines of the mother
+land. There is no pursuit more fascinating or in a high intellectual
+sense more remunerative; since it serves to define and regulate
+knowledge, to correct misapprehensions of fact, to broaden the mental
+vision, to ripen and refine the Judgment and the taste, and to fill the
+memory with ennobling recollections. These papers commemorate two visits
+to England, the first made in _1877, _the second in _1882; _they
+occasionally touch upon the same place or scene as observed at different
+times; and especially they describe two distinct journeys, separated by
+an interval of five years, through the region associated with the great
+name of Shakespeare. Repetitions of the same reference, which now and
+then occur, were found unavoidable by the writer, but it is hoped that
+they will not be found tedious by the reader. Those who walk twice in
+the same pathways should be pleased, and not pained, to find the same
+wild-flowers growing beside them. The first American edition of this
+work consisted of two volumes, published in _1879, 1881, _and _1884,
+_called _The Trip to England _and _English Rambles. _The former book was
+embellished with poetic illustrations by Joseph Jefferson, the famous
+comedian, my life-long friend. The paper on _Shakespeare's
+Home,--_written to record for American readers the dedication of the
+Shakespeare Memorial at Stratford,_--_was first printed in _Harper's
+Magazine, _in May _1879. _with delicate illustrative pictures from the
+graceful pencil of Edwin Abbey. This compendium of the _Trip _and the
+_Rambles, _with the title of _Shakespeare's England, _was first
+published by David Douglas of Edinburgh. That title was chosen for the
+reason that the book relates largely to Warwickshire and because it
+depicts not so much the England of fact as the England created and
+hallowed by the spirit of her poetry, of which Shakespeare is the soul.
+Several months after the publication of _Shakespeare's England _the
+writer was told of a work, published many years ago, bearing a similar
+title, though relating to a different theme--the physical state of
+England in Shakespeare's time. He had never heard of it and has never
+seen it. The text for the present reprint has been carefully revised. To
+his British readers the author would say that it is neither from lack of
+sympathy with the happiness around him nor from lack of faith in the
+future of his country that his writings have drifted toward the pathos
+in human experience and toward the hallowing associations of an old
+historic land. Temperament is the explanation of style: and he has
+written thus of England because she has filled his mind with beauty and
+his heart with mingled joy and sadness: and surely some memory of her
+venerable ruins, her ancient shrines, her rustic glens, her gleaming
+rivers, and her flower-spangled meadows will mingle with the last
+thoughts that glimmer through his brain, when the shadows of the eternal
+night are falling and the ramble of life is done._
+
+
+     _W. W._
+
+     1892.
+
+
+
+          CONTENTS
+
+
+     Preface  To Illustrated Edition
+
+     Old  Preface
+
+     CHAPTER I.
+     The  Voyage
+
+     CHAPTER II.
+     Beauty Of England
+
+     CHAPTER III.
+     Great Historic Places
+
+     CHAPTER IV.
+     Rambles In London
+
+     CHAPTER V.
+     A Visit To Windsor
+
+     CHAPTER VI.
+     The Palace Of Westminster.
+
+     CHAPTER VII.
+     Warwick And Kenilworth
+
+     CHAPTER VIII.
+     First View Of Stratford-Upon-Avon
+
+     CHAPTER IX.
+     London Nooks And Corners
+
+     CHAPTER X.
+     Relics Of Lord Byron
+
+     CHAPTER XI.
+     Westminster Abbey
+
+     CHAPTER XII.
+     Shakespeare's Home
+
+     CHAPTER XIII.
+     Up to London
+
+     CHAPTER XIV.
+     Old Churches of London
+
+     CHAPTER XV.
+     Literary Shrines of London
+
+     CHAPTER XVI.
+     A Haunt Of Edmund Kean
+
+     CHAPTER XVII.
+     Stoke-Pogis and Thomas Gray
+
+     CHAPTER XVIII.
+     At The Grave of Coleridge
+
+     CHAPTER XIX.
+     On Barnet Battle-field
+
+     CHAPTER XX.
+     A Glimpse Of Canterbury
+
+     CHAPTER XXI.
+     The Shrines Of Warwickshire
+
+     CHAPTER XXII.
+     A Borrower of The Night
+
+
+
+          ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+     Portrait of William Winter--from a crayon by Arthur Jule Goodman
+
+     The Anchor Inn
+
+     Old House at Bridport
+
+     Restoration House, Rochester
+
+     Charing Cross
+
+     Kensington Palace
+
+     The Tower of London
+
+     Old Water Gate
+
+     Approach to Cheshire Cheese
+
+     St. Mary-le-Strand
+
+     Temple Church
+
+     Gower's Monument
+
+     Andrews's Monument
+
+     Old Tabard Inn, Southwark
+
+     Windsor Castle
+
+     St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle
+
+     Windsor Forest and Park
+
+     The Curfew Tower
+
+     The Sign of the Swan
+
+     Westminster Hall
+
+     The Mace
+
+     Greenwich Hospital
+
+     Queen Elizabeth's Cradle
+
+     Warwick Castle
+
+     Old Inn
+
+     Washington Irving's Parlour
+
+     From the Warwick Shield
+
+     Holy Trinity Church, Stratford
+
+     The Inglenook
+
+     Approach to Shottery
+
+     Distant View of Stratford
+
+     Whitehall Gateway
+
+     Lambeth Palace
+
+     Dulwich College
+
+     The Crown Inn, Dulwich
+
+     Oriel Window
+
+     From the Triforium, Westminster Abbey
+
+     Chapel of Henry VII.
+
+     Chapel of Edward the Confessor
+
+     The Poets' Corner
+
+     The North Ambulatory
+
+     The Spaniards, Hampstead
+
+     The Dome of St. Paul's
+
+     The Grange
+
+     Shakespeare's Birthplace
+
+     Anne Hathaway's Cottage
+
+     Charlecote
+
+     Meadow Walk by the Avon
+
+     Antique Font
+
+     Monument
+
+     Gable Window
+
+     Peveril Peak
+
+     St. Paul's, from Maiden Lane
+
+     The Charter-house
+
+     St. Giles', Cripplegate
+
+     Sir John Crosby's Monument
+
+     Gresham's Monument
+
+     Goldsmith's House
+
+     A Bit from Clare Court
+
+     Fleet Street in 1780
+
+     Gray's Inn Square
+
+     Stoke-Pogis Church
+
+     Old Church
+
+     The White Hart
+
+     Column on Barnet Battle-field
+
+     Farm-house
+
+     Falstaff Inn and West Gate, Canterbury
+
+     Butchery Lane, Canterbury
+
+     Flying-horse Inn, Canterbury
+
+     Canterbury Cathedral
+
+     Stratford-upon-Avon
+
+     Stratford Church
+
+     Washington Irving's Chair
+
+     The Stratford Memorial
+
+     Mary Arden's Cottage
+
+     Church of St. Martin
+
+     Westminster Abbey
+
+     Middle Temple Lane
+
+
+
+     _This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,_
+     _This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,_
+     _This other Eden, demi-paradise,_
+     _This fortress built by Nature for herself, . . ._
+     _This precious stone set in the silver sea, . . ._
+     _This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, . . ._
+     _This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,_
+     _Dear for her reputation through the world!_
+
+
+          SHAKESPEARE.
+
+
+          ------
+
+
+     _All that I saw returns upon my view;_
+     _All that I heard comes back upon my ear;_
+     _All that I felt this moment doth renew._
+
+     _Fair land! by Time's parental love made free,_
+     _By Social Order's watchful arms embraced,_
+     _With unexampled union meet in thee,_
+     _For eye and mind, the present and the past;_
+     _With golden prospect for futurity,_
+     _If that be reverenced which ought to last._
+
+
+          WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+
+
+SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE VOYAGE
+
+1887
+
+The coast-line recedes and disappears, and night comes down upon the
+ocean. Into what dangers will the great ship plunge? Through what
+mysterious waste of waters will she make her viewless path? The black
+waves roll up around her. The strong blast fills her sails and whistles
+through her creaking cordage. Overhead the stars shine dimly amid the
+driving clouds. Mist and gloom close in the dubious prospect, and a
+strange sadness settles upon the heart of the voyager--who has left his
+home behind, and who now seeks, for the first time, the land, the homes,
+and the manners of the stranger. Thoughts and images of the past crowd
+thick upon his remembrance. The faces of absent friends rise before him,
+whom, perhaps, he is destined nevermore to behold. He sees their smiles;
+he hears their voices; he fancies them by familiar hearth-stones, in the
+light of the evening lamps. They are very far away now; and already it
+seems months instead of hours since the parting moment. Vain now the
+pang of regret for misunderstandings, unkindness, neglect; for golden
+moments slighted and gentle courtesies left undone. He is alone upon the
+wild sea--all the more alone because surrounded with new faces of
+unknown companions--and the best he can do is to seek his lonely pillow
+and lie down with a prayer in his heart and on his lips. Never before
+did he so clearly know--never again will he so deeply feel--the
+uncertainty of human life and the weakness of human nature. Yet, as he
+notes the rush and throb of the vast ship and the noise of the breaking
+waves around her, and thinks of the mighty deep beneath, and the broad
+and melancholy expanse that stretches away on every side, he cannot miss
+the impression--grand, noble, and thrilling--of human courage, skill,
+and power. For this ship is the centre of a splendid conflict. Man and
+the elements are here at war; and man makes conquest of the elements by
+using them as weapons against themselves. Strong and brilliant, the
+head-light streams over the boiling surges. Lanterns gleam in the tops.
+Dark figures keep watch upon the prow. The officer of the night is at
+his post upon the bridge. Let danger threaten howsoever it may, it
+cannot come unawares; it cannot subdue, without a tremendous struggle,
+the brave minds and hardy bodies that are here arrayed to meet it. With
+this thought, perhaps, the weary voyager sinks to sleep; and this is his
+first night at sea.
+
+There is no tediousness of solitude to him who has within himself
+resources of thought and dream, the pleasures and pains of memory, the
+bliss and the torture of imagination. It is best to have few
+acquaintances--or none--on shipboard. Human companionship, at some
+times, and this is one of them, distracts by its pettiness. The voyager
+should yield himself to nature now, and meet his own soul face to face.
+The routine of everyday life is commonplace enough, equally upon sea and
+land. But the ocean is a continual pageant, filling and soothing the
+mind with unspeakable peace. Never, in even the grandest words of
+poetry, was the grandeur of the sea expressed. Its vastness, its
+freedom, its joy, and its beauty overwhelm the mind. All things else
+seem puny and momentary beside the life that this immense creation
+unfolds and inspires. Sometimes it shines in the sun, a wilderness of
+shimmering silver. Sometimes its long waves are black, smooth,
+glittering, and dangerous. Sometimes it seems instinct with a superb
+wrath, and its huge masses rise, and clash together, and break into
+crests of foam. Sometimes it is gray and quiet, as if in a sullen sleep.
+Sometimes the white mist broods upon it and deepens the sense of awful
+mystery by which it is forever enwrapped. At night its surging billows
+are furrowed with long streaks of phosphorescent fire; or, it may be,
+the waves roll gently, under the soft light of stars; or all the waste
+is dim, save where, beneath the moon, a glorious pathway, broadening out
+to the far horizon, allures and points to heaven. One of the most
+exquisite delights of the voyage, whether by day or night, is to lie
+upon the deck in some secluded spot, and look up at the tall, tapering
+spars as they sway with the motion of the ship, while over them the
+white clouds float, in ever-changing shapes, or the starry
+constellations drift, in their eternal march. No need now of books, or
+newspapers, or talk! The eyes are fed by every object they behold. The
+great ship, with all her white wings spread, careening like a tiny
+sail-boat, dips and rises, with sinuous, stately grace. The clank of her
+engines--fit type of steadfast industry and purpose--goes steadily on.
+The song of the sailors--"Give me some time to blow the man down"--rises
+in cheery melody, full of audacious, light-hearted thoughtlessness, and
+strangely tinged with the romance of the sea. Far out toward the horizon
+many whales come sporting and spouting along. At once, out of the
+distant bank of cloud and mist, a little vessel springs into view, and
+with convulsive movement--tilting up and down like the miniature barque
+upon an old Dutch clock--dances across the vista and vanishes into
+space. Soon a tempest bursts upon the calm; and then, safe-housed from
+the fierce blast and blinding rain, the voyager exults over the stern
+battle of winds and waters and the stalwart, undaunted strength with
+which his ship bears down the furious floods and stems the gale. By and
+by a quiet hour is given, when, met together with the companions of his
+journey, he stands in the hushed cabin and hears the voice of prayer and
+the hymn of praise, and, in the pauses, a gentle ripple of waves against
+the ship, which now rocks lazily upon the sunny deep; and, ever and
+anon, as she dips, he can discern through her open ports the shining sea
+and the wheeling and circling gulls that have come out to welcome her to
+the shores of the old world.
+
+
+The present writer, when first he saw the distant and dim coast of
+Britain, felt, with a sense of forlorn loneliness that he was a
+stranger; but when last he saw that coast he beheld it through a mist of
+tears and knew that he had parted from many cherished friends, from many
+of the gentlest men and women upon the earth, and from a land henceforth
+as dear to him as his own. England is a country which to see is to love.
+As you draw near to her shores you are pleased at once with the air of
+careless finish and negligent grace that everywhere overhangs the
+prospect. The grim, wind-beaten hills of Ireland have first been
+passed--hills crowned, here and there, with dark, fierce towers that
+look like strongholds of ancient bandit chiefs, and cleft by dim valleys
+that seem to promise endless mystery and romance, hid in their sombre
+depths. Passed also is white Queenstown, with its lovely little bay, its
+circle of green hillsides, and its valiant fort; and picturesque
+Fastnet, with its gaily painted tower, has long been left behind. It is
+off the noble crags of Holyhead that the voyager first observes with
+what a deft skill the hand of art has here moulded nature's luxuriance
+into forms of seeming chance-born beauty; and from that hour, wherever
+in rural England the footsteps of the pilgrim may roam, he will behold
+nothing but gentle rustic adornment, that has grown with the grass and
+the roses--greener grass and redder roses than ever we see in our
+western world! In the English nature a love of the beautiful is
+spontaneous, and the operation of it is as fluent as the blowing of the
+summer wind. Portions of English cities, indeed, are hard and harsh and
+coarse enough to suit the most utilitarian taste; yet even in those
+regions of dreary monotony the national love of flowers will find
+expression, and the people, without being aware of it, will, in many odd
+little ways, beautify their homes and make their surroundings pictorial,
+at least to stranger eyes. There is a tone of rest and homelike comfort
+even in murky Liverpool; and great magnificence is there--as well of
+architecture and opulent living as of enterprise and action. "Towered
+cities" and "the busy hum of men," however, are soon left behind by the
+wise traveller in England. A time will come for those; but in his first
+sojourn there he soon discovers the two things that are utterly to
+absorb him--which cannot disappoint--and which are the fulfilment of all
+his dreams. These things are--the rustic loveliness of the land and the
+charm of its always vital and splendid antiquity. The green lanes, the
+thatched cottages, the meadows glorious with wildflowers, the little
+churches covered with dark-green ivy, the Tudor gables festooned with
+roses, the devious footpaths that wind across wild heaths and long and
+lonesome fields, the narrow, shining rivers, brimful to their banks and
+crossed here and there with gray, moss-grown bridges, the stately elms
+whose low-hanging branches droop over a turf of emerald velvet, the
+gnarled beech-trees "that wreathe their old, fantastic roots so high,"
+the rooks that caw and circle in the air, the sweet winds that blow from
+fragrant woods, the sheep and the deer that rest in shady places, the
+pretty children who cluster round the porches of their cleanly, cosy
+homes, and peep at the wayfarer as he passes, the numerous and often
+brilliant birds that at times fill the air with music, the brief, light,
+pleasant rains that ever and anon refresh the landscape--these are some
+of the everyday joys of rural England; and these are wrapped in a
+climate that makes life one serene ecstasy. Meantime, in rich valleys or
+on verdant slopes, a thousand old castles and monasteries, ruined or
+half in ruins, allure the pilgrim's gaze, inspire his imagination,
+arouse his memory, and fill his mind. The best romance of the past and
+the best reality of the present are his banquet now; and nothing is
+wanting to the perfection of the feast. I thought that life could have
+but few moments of content in store for me like the moment--never to be
+forgotten!--when, in the heart of London, on a perfect June day, I lay
+upon the grass in the old Green Park, and, for the first time, looked up
+to the towers of Westminster Abbey.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND
+
+
+It is not strange that Englishmen should be--as certainly they
+are--passionate lovers of their country; for their country is, almost
+beyond parallel, peaceful, gentle, and beautiful. Even in vast London,
+where practical life asserts itself with such prodigious force, the
+stranger is impressed, in every direction, with a sentiment of repose
+and peace. This sentiment seems to proceed in part from the antiquity of
+the social system here established, and in part from the affectionate
+nature of the English people. Here are finished towns, rural regions
+thoroughly cultivated and exquisitely adorned; ancient architecture,
+crumbling in slow decay; and a soil so rich and pure that even in its
+idlest mood it lights itself up with flowers, just as the face of a
+sleeping child lights itself up with smiles. Here, also, are soft and
+kindly manners, settled principles, good laws, wise customs--wise,
+because rooted in the universal attributes of human nature; and, above
+all, here is the practice of trying to live in a happy condition instead
+of trying to make a noise about it. Here, accordingly, life is soothed
+and hallowed with the comfortable, genial, loving spirit of home. It
+would, doubtless, be easily possible to come into contact here with
+absurd forms and pernicious abuses, to observe absurd individuals, and
+to discover veins of sordid selfishness and of evil and sorrow. But the
+things that first and most deeply impress the observer of England and
+English society are their potential, manifold, and abundant sources of
+beauty, refinement, and peace. There are, of course, grumblers. Mention
+has been made of a person who, even in heaven, would complain that his
+cloud was damp and his halo a misfit. We cannot have perfection; but the
+man who could not be happy in England--in so far, at least, as happiness
+depends upon external objects and influences--could not reasonably
+expect to be happy anywhere.
+
+Summer heat is perceptible for an hour or two each day, but it causes no
+discomfort. Fog has refrained; though it is understood to be lurking in
+the Irish sea and the English channel, and waiting for November, when it
+will drift into town and grime all the new paint on the London houses.
+Meantime, the sky is softly blue and full of magnificent bronze clouds;
+the air is cool, and in the environs of the city is fragrant with the
+scent of new-mown hay; and the grass and trees in the parks--those
+copious and splendid lungs of London--are green, dewy, sweet, and
+beautiful. Persons "to the manner born" were lately calling the season
+"backward," and they went so far as to grumble at the hawthorne, as
+being less brilliant than in former seasons. But, in fact, to the
+unfamiliar sense, this tree of odorous coral has been delicious. We have
+nothing comparable with it in northern America, unless, perhaps, it be
+the elder, of our wild woods; and even that, with all its fragrance,
+lacks equal charm of colour. They use the hawthorne, or some kindred
+shrub, for hedges in this country, and hence their fields are seldom
+disfigured with fences. As you ride through the land you see miles and
+miles of meadow traversed by these green and blooming hedgerows, which
+give the country a charm quite incommunicable in words. The green of the
+foliage--enriched by an uncommonly humid air and burnished by the
+sun--is in perfection, while the flowers bloom in such abundance that
+the whole realm is one glowing pageant. I saw near Oxford, on the crest
+of a hill, a single ray of at least a thousand feet of scarlet poppies.
+Imagine that glorious dash of colour in a green landscape lit by the
+afternoon sun! Nobody could help loving a land that woos him with such
+beauty.
+
+English flowers are exceptional for substance and pomp. The roses, in
+particular--though some of them, it should be said, are of French
+breeds--surpass all others. It may seem an extravagance to say, but it
+is certainly true, that these rich, firm, brilliant flowers affect you
+like creatures of flesh and blood. They are, in this respect, only to be
+described as like nothing in the world so much as the bright lips and
+blushing cheeks of the handsome English women who walk among them and
+vie with them in health and loveliness. It is easy to perceive the
+source of those elements of warmth and sumptuousness that are so
+conspicuous in the results of English taste. It is a land of flowers.
+Even in the busiest parts of London the people decorate their houses
+with them, and set the sombre, fog-grimed fronts ablaze with scarlet and
+gold. These are the prevalent colours--radically so, for they have
+become national--and, when placed against the black tint with which this
+climate stains the buildings, they have the advantage of a vivid
+contrast that much augments their splendour. All London wears crape,
+variegated with a tracery of white, like lace upon a pall. In some
+instances the effect is splendidly pompous. There cannot be a grander
+artificial object in the world than the front of St. Paul's cathedral,
+which is especially notable for this mysterious blending of light and
+shade. It is to be deplored that a climate which can thus beautify
+should also destroy; but there can be no doubt that the stones of
+England are steadily defaced by the action of the damp atmosphere.
+Already the delicate carvings on the palace of Westminster are beginning
+to crumble. And yet, if one might judge the climate by this glittering
+July, England is a land of sunshine as well as of flowers. Light comes
+before three o'clock in the morning, and it lasts, through a dreamy and
+lovely gloaming, till nearly ten o'clock at night. The morning sky is
+usually light blue, dappled with slate-coloured clouds. A few large
+stars are visible then, lingering to outface the dawn. Cool winds
+whisper, and presently they rouse the great, sleepy, old elms; and then
+the rooks--which are the low comedians of the air in this region--begin
+to grumble; and then the sun leaps above the horizon, and we sweep into
+a day of golden, breezy cheerfulness and comfort, the like of which is
+rarely or never known in northern America, between June and October.
+Sometimes the whole twenty-four hours have drifted past, as if in a
+dream of light, and fragrance, and music. In a recent moonlight time
+there was scarce any darkness at all; and more than once I have lain
+awake all night, within a few miles of Charing Cross, listening to a
+twitter of birds that is like the lapse and fall of silver water. It
+used to be difficult to understand why the London season should begin in
+May and last through most of the summer; it is not difficult to
+understand the custom now.
+
+The elements of discontent and disturbance which are visible in English
+society are found, upon close examination, to be merely superficial.
+Underneath them there abides a sturdy, immutable, inborn love of
+England. Those croakings, grumblings, and bickerings do but denote the
+process by which the body politic frees itself from the headaches and
+fevers that embarrass the national health. The Englishman and his
+country are one; and when the Englishman complains against his country
+it is not because he believes that either there is or can be a better
+country elsewhere, but because his instinct of justice and order makes
+him crave perfection in his own. Institutions and principles are, with
+him, by nature, paramount to individuals; and individuals only possess
+importance--and that conditional on abiding rectitude--who are their
+representatives. Everything is done in England to promote the permanence
+and beauty of the home; and the permanence and beauty of the home, by a
+natural reaction, augment in the English people solidity of character
+and peace of life. They do not dwell in a perpetual fret and fume as to
+the acts, thoughts, and words of other nations: for the English there is
+absolutely no public opinion outside of their own land: they do not live
+for the sake of working, but they work for the sake of living; and, as
+the necessary preparations for living have long since been completed,
+their country is at rest. This is the secret of England's first, and
+continuous, and last, and all-pervading charm and power for the
+stranger--the charm and power to soothe.
+
+The efficacy of endeavouring to make a country a united, comfortable,
+and beautiful home for all its inhabitants,--binding every heart to the
+land by the same tie that binds every heart to the fireside,--is
+something well worthy to be considered, equally by the practical
+statesman and the contemplative observer. That way, assuredly, lie the
+welfare of the human race and all the tranquillity that human
+nature--warped as it is by evil--will ever permit to this world. This
+endeavour has, through long ages, been steadily pursued in England, and
+one of its results--which is also one of its indications--is the vast
+accumulation of what may be called home treasures in the city of London.
+The mere enumeration of them would fill large volumes. The description
+of them could not be completed in a lifetime. It was this copiousness of
+historic wealth and poetic association, combined with the flavour of
+character and the sentiment of monastic repose, that bound Dr. Johnson
+to Fleet Street and made Charles Lamb such an inveterate lover of the
+town. Except it be to correct a possible insular narrowness there can be
+no need that the Londoner should travel. Glorious sights, indeed, await
+him, if he journeys no further away than Paris; but, aside from
+ostentation, luxury, gaiety, and excitement, Paris will give him nothing
+that he may not find at home.
+
+The great cathedral of Notre Dame will awe him; but not more than his
+own Westminster Abbey. The grandeur and beauty of the Madeleine will
+enchant him; but not more than the massive solemnity and stupendous
+magnificence of St. Paul's. The embankments of the Seine will satisfy
+his taste with their symmetrical solidity; but he will not deem them
+superior in any respect to the embankments of the Thames. The Pantheon,
+the Hotel des Invalides, the Luxembourg, the Louvre, the Tribunal of
+Commerce, the Opera-House,--all these will dazzle and delight his eyes,
+arousing his remembrances of history and firing his imagination of great
+events and persons; but all these will fail to displace in his esteem
+the grand Palace of Westminster, so stately in its simplicity, so strong
+in its perfect grace! He will ride through the exquisite Park of
+Monceau,--one of the loveliest spots in Paris,--and onward to the Bois
+de Boulogne, with its sumptuous pomp of foliage, its romantic green
+vistas, its many winding avenues, its hillside hermitage, its cascades,
+and its affluent lakes whereon the white swans beat the water with their
+joyous wings; but still his soul will turn, with unshaken love and loyal
+preference to the sweetly sylvan solitude of the gardens of Kensington
+and Kew. He will marvel in the museums of the Louvre, the Luxembourg,
+and Cluny; and probably he will concede that of paintings, whether
+ancient or modern, the French display is larger and finer than the
+English; but he will vaunt the British Museum as peerless throughout the
+world, and he will still prize his National Gallery, with its originals
+of Hogarth, Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Turner, its spirited, tender,
+and dreamy Murillos, and its dusky glories of Rembrandt. He will admire,
+at the Théâtre Français, the photographic perfection of French acting;
+but he will be apt to reflect that English dramatic art, if it sometimes
+lacks finish, often has the effect of nature; and he will certainly
+perceive that the playhouse itself is not superior to either Her
+Majesty's Theatre or Covent Garden. He will luxuriate in the Champs
+Élysées, in the superb Boulevards, in the glittering pageant of precious
+jewels that blazes in the Rue de la Paix and the Palais Royal, and in
+that gorgeous panorama of shop-windows for which the French capital is
+unrivalled and famous; and he will not deny that, as to brilliancy of
+aspect, Paris is prodigious and unequalled--the most radiant of
+cities--the sapphire in the crown of Solomon. But, when all is seen,
+either that Louis the Fourteenth created or Buonaparte pillaged,--when
+he has taken his last walk in the gardens of the Tuileries, and mused,
+at the foot of the statue of Caesar, on that Titanic strife of monarchy
+and democracy of which France has seemed destined to be the perpetual
+theatre,--sated with the glitter of showy opulence and tired with the
+whirl of frivolous life he will gladly and gratefully turn again to his
+sombre, mysterious, thoughtful, restful old London; and, like the Syrian
+captain, though in the better spirit of truth and right, declare that
+Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, are better than all the waters of
+Israel.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+GREAT HISTORIC PLACES
+
+
+There is so much to be seen in London that the pilgrim scarcely knows
+where to choose and certainly is perplexed by what Dr. Johnson called
+"the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness." One spot to which I have
+many times been drawn, and which the mention of Dr. Johnson instantly
+calls to mind, is the stately and solemn place in Westminster Abbey
+where that great man's ashes are buried. Side by side, under the
+pavement of the Abbey, within a few feet of earth, sleep Johnson,
+Garrick, Sheridan, Henderson, Dickens, Cumberland, and Handel. Garrick's
+wife is buried in the same grave with her husband. Close by, some brass
+letters on a little slab in the stone floor mark the last resting-place
+of Thomas Campbell. Not far off is the body of Macaulay; while many a
+stroller through the nave treads upon the gravestone of that astonishing
+old man Thomas Parr, who lived in the reigns of nine princes
+(1483-1635), and reached the great age of 152. All parts of Westminster
+Abbey impress the reverential mind. It is an experience very strange and
+full of awe suddenly to find your steps upon the sepulchres of such
+illustrious men as Burke, Pitt, Fox, and Grattan; and you come, with a
+thrill of more than surprise, upon such still fresh antiquity as the
+grave of Anne Neville, the daughter of Warwick and queen of Richard the
+Third. But no single spot in the great cathedral can so enthral the
+imagination as that strip of storied stone beneath which Garrick,
+Johnson, Sheridan, Henderson, Cumberland, Dickens, Macaulay, and Handel
+sleep, side by side. This writer, when lately he visited the Abbey,
+found a chair upon the grave of Johnson, and sat down there to rest and
+muse. The letters on the stone are fast wearing away; but the memory of
+that sturdy champion of thought can never perish, as long as the
+votaries of literature love their art and honour the valiant genius that
+battled--through hunger, toil, and contumely--for its dignity and
+renown. It was a tender and right feeling that prompted the burial of
+Johnson close beside Garrick. They set out together to seek their
+fortune in the great city. They went through privation and trial hand in
+hand. Each found glory in a different way; and, although parted
+afterward by the currents of fame and wealth, they were never sundered
+in affection. It was fit they should at last find their rest together,
+under the most glorious roof that greets the skies of England.
+
+Fortune gave me a good first day at the Tower of London. The sky
+lowered. The air was very cold. The wind blew with angry gusts. The rain
+fell, now and then, in a chill drizzle. The river was dark and sullen.
+If the spirits of the dead come back to haunt any place they surely come
+back to haunt that one; and this was a day for their presence. One dark
+ghost seemed near, at every step--the ominous shade of the lonely Duke
+of Gloster. The little room in which the princes are said to have been
+murdered, by his command, was shown, and the oratory where king Henry
+the Sixth is supposed to have met a violent death, and the council
+chamber, in which Richard--after listening, in an ambush behind the
+arras--denounced the wretched Hastings. The latter place is now used as
+an armoury; but the same ceiling covers it that echoed the bitter
+invective of Gloster and the rude clamour of his soldiers, when their
+frightened victim was plucked forth and dragged downstairs, to be
+beheaded on "a timber-log" in the courtyard. The Tower is a place for
+such deeds, and you almost wonder that they do not happen still, in its
+gloomy chambers. The room in which the princes were killed (if killed
+indeed they were) is particularly grisly in aspect. It is an inner room,
+small and dark. A barred window in one of its walls fronts a window on
+the other side of the passage by which you approach it. This is but a
+few feet from the floor, and perhaps the murderers paused to look
+through it as they went to their hellish work upon the children of king
+Edward. The entrance was indicated to a secret passage by which this
+apartment could be approached from the foot of the Tower. In one gloomy
+stone chamber the crown jewels are exhibited, in a large glass case. One
+of the royal relics is a crown of velvet and gold that was made for poor
+Anne Boleyn. You may pass across the courtyard and pause on the spot
+where that miserable woman was beheaded, and you may walk thence over
+the ground that her last trembling footsteps traversed, to the round
+tower in which, at the close, she lived. Her grave is in the chancel of
+the little antique church, close by. I saw the cell of Raleigh, and that
+direful chamber which is scrawled all over with the names and emblems of
+prisoners who therein suffered confinement and lingering agony, nearly
+always ending in death; but I saw no sadder place than Anne Boleyn's
+tower. It seemed in the strangest way eloquent of mute suffering. It
+seemed to exhale grief and to plead for love and pity. Yet--what woman
+ever had greater love than was lavished on her? And what woman ever
+trampled more royally and recklessly upon human hearts?
+
+The Tower of London is degraded by being put to commonplace uses and by
+being exhibited in a commonplace manner. They use the famous White Tower
+now as a store-house for arms, and it contains about one hundred
+thousand guns, besides a vast collection of old armour and weapons. The
+arrangement of the latter was made by J. R. Planché, the dramatic
+author,--famous as an antiquarian and a herald. [That learned, able,
+brilliant, and honoured gentleman died, May 29, 1880, aged 84.] Under
+his tasteful direction the effigies and gear of chivalry are displayed
+in such a way that the observer may trace the changes that war fashions
+have undergone, through the reigns of successive sovereigns of England,
+from the earliest period until now. A suit of mail worn by Henry the
+Eighth is shown, and also a suit worn by Charles the First. The
+suggestiveness of both figures is remarkable. In a room on the second
+floor of the White Tower they keep many gorgeous oriental weapons, and
+they show the cloak in which General Wolfe died, on the Plains of
+Abraham. It is a gray garment, to which the active moth has given a
+share of his assiduous attention. The most impressive objects to be seen
+there, however, are the block and axe that were used in beheading the
+Scotch lords, Kilmarnock, Balmerino, and Lovat, after the defeat of the
+pretender, in 1746. The block is of ash, and there are big and cruel
+dents upon it, showing that it was made for use rather than ornament. It
+is harmless enough now, and this writer was allowed to place his head
+upon it, in the manner prescribed for the victims of decapitation. The
+door of Raleigh's bedroom is opposite to these baleful relics, and it is
+said that his _History of the World _was written in the room in which
+these implements are now such conspicuous objects of gloom.¹ The place
+is gloomy and cheerless beyond expression, and great must have been the
+fortitude of the man who bore, in that grim solitude, a captivity of
+thirteen years--not failing to improve it by producing a book so
+excellent for quaintness, philosophy, and eloquence. A "beef-eater,"
+arrayed in a dark tunic, trousers trimmed with red, and a black velvet
+hat adorned with bows of blue and red ribbon, precedes each group of
+visitors, and drops information and the letter h, from point to point.
+The centre of what was once the Tower green is marked with a brass
+plate, naming Anne Boleyn and giving the date when she was there
+beheaded. They found her body in an elm-wood box, made to hold arrows,
+and it now rests, with the ashes of other noble sufferers, under the
+stones of the church of St. Peter, about fifty feet from the place of
+execution. The ghost of Anne Boleyn is said to haunt that part of the
+Tower where she lived, and it is likewise whispered that the spectre of
+Lady Jane Grey was seen, not long ago, on the anniversary of the day of
+her execution [Obiit February 12, 1554], to glide out upon a balcony
+adjacent to the room in which she lodged during nearly eight months, at
+the last of her wasted, unfortunate, but gentle and noble life. [That
+room was in the house of Thomas Brydges, brother and deputy of Sir John
+Brydges, Lieutenant of the Tower, and its windows command an
+unobstructed view of the Tower green, which was the place of the block.]
+It could serve no good purpose to relate the particulars of those
+visitations; but nobody doubts them--while he is in the Tower. It is a
+place of mystery and horror, notwithstanding all that the practical
+spirit of to-day has done to make it trivial and to cheapen its grim
+glories by association with the commonplace.
+
+¹ Many of these relics have since been disposed in a different
+way.--Raleigh was incarcerated in various parts of the Tower, in the
+course of his several imprisonments.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+RAMBLES IN LONDON
+
+
+All old cities get rich in association, as a matter of course and
+whether they will or no; but London, by reason of its great extent, as
+well as its great antiquity, is richer in association than any modern
+place on earth. The stranger scarcely takes a step without encountering
+a new object of interest. The walk along the Strand and Fleet Street, in
+particular, is continually on storied ground. Old Temple Bar still
+stands (July 1877), though "tottering to its fall," and marks the
+junction of the two streets. The statues of Charles the First and
+Charles the Second on its western front would be remarkable anywhere, as
+characteristic portraits. You stand beside that arch and quite forget
+the passing throng, and take no heed of the tumult around, as you think
+of Johnson and Boswell leaning against the Bar after midnight in the
+far-off times and waking the echoes of the Temple Garden with their
+frolicsome laughter. The Bar is carefully propped now, and they will
+nurse its age as long as they can; but it is an obstruction to
+travel--and it must disappear. (It was removed in the summer of 1878.)
+They will probably set it up, newly built, in another place. They have
+left untouched a little piece of the original scaffolding built around
+St. Paul's; and that fragment of decaying wood may still be seen, high
+upon the side of the cathedral. The Rainbow, the Mitre, the Cheshire
+Cheese, Dolly's Chop-House, the Cock, and the Round Table--taverns or
+public-houses that were frequented by the old wits--are still extant
+(1877). The Cheshire Cheese is scarcely changed from what it was when
+Johnson, Goldsmith, and their comrades ate beefsteak pie and drank
+porter there, and the Doctor "tossed and gored several persons," as it
+was his cheerful custom to do. The benches in that room are narrow,
+incommodious, penitential; mere ledges of well-worn wood, on which the
+visitor sits bolt upright, in difficult perpendicular; but there is,
+probably, nothing on earth that would induce the owner to alter
+them--and he is right.
+
+Illustration: "Approach to Cheshire Cheese."
+
+The conservative principle in the English mind, if it has saved some
+trash, has saved more treasure. At the foot of Buckingham Street, in the
+Strand,--where was situated an estate of George Villiers, first Duke of
+Buckingham, assassinated in 1628, whose tomb may be seen in the chapel
+of Henry the Seventh in Westminster Abbey,--still stands the slowly
+crumbling ruin of the old Water Gate, so often mentioned as the place
+where accused traitors were embarked for the Tower. The river, in former
+times, flowed up to that gate, but the land along the margin of the
+Thames has been redeemed, and the magnificent Victoria and Albert
+embankments now border the river for a long distance on both sides. The
+Water Gate, in fact, stands in a little park on the north bank of the
+Thames. Not far away is the Adelphi Terrace, where Garrick lived and
+died (Obiit January 20, 1779, aged 63), and where, on October 1, 1822,
+his widow expired, aged 98. The house of Garrick is let in "chambers"
+now. If you walk up the Strand towards Charing Cross you presently come
+near to the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, which is one of the
+works of James Gibbs, a pupil of Sir Christopher Wren, and entirely
+worthy of the master's hand. The fogs have stained that building with
+such a deft touch as shows the caprice of nature to be often better than
+the best design of art. Nell Gwyn's name is connected with St. Martin.
+Her funeral occurred in that church, and was pompous, and no less a
+person than Tenison (afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury) preached the
+funeral sermon.¹
+
+¹ This was made the occasion of a complaint against him, to Queen Mary,
+who gently expressed her unshaken confidence in his goodness and truth.
+
+Illustration: "Temple Church."
+
+That prelate's dust reposes in Lambeth church, which can be seen, across
+the river, from this part of Westminster. If you walk down the Strand,
+through Temple Bar, you presently reach the Temple; and there is no
+place in London where the past and the present are so strangely
+confronted as they are here. The venerable church, so quaint with its
+cone-pointed turrets, was sleeping in the sunshine when first I saw it;
+sparrows were twittering around its spires and gliding in and out of the
+crevices in its ancient walls; while from within a strain of organ
+music, low and sweet, trembled forth, till the air became a benediction
+and every common thought and feeling was purified away from mind and
+heart. The grave of Goldsmith is close to the pathway that skirts this
+church, on a terrace raised above the foundation of the building and
+above the little graveyard of the Templars that nestles at its base. As
+I stood beside the resting-place of that sweet poet it was impossible
+not to feel both grieved and glad: grieved at the thought of all he
+suffered, and of all that the poetic nature must always suffer before it
+will utter its immortal music for mankind: glad that his gentle spirit
+found rest at last, and that time has given him the crown he would most
+have prized--the affection of true hearts. A gray stone, coffin-shaped
+and marked with a cross,--after the fashion of the contiguous tombs of
+the Templars,--is imposed upon his grave.
+
+Illustration: "St. Mary-le-Strand--The Strand."
+
+One surface bears the inscription, "Here lies Oliver Goldsmith"; the
+other presents the dates of his birth and death. (Born Nov. 10, 1728;
+died April 4, 1774.) I tried to call up the scene of his burial, when,
+around the open grave, on that tearful April evening, Johnson, Burke,
+Reynolds, Beauclerk, Boswell, Davies, Kelly, Palmer, and the rest of
+that broken circle, may have gathered to witness
+
+     "The duties by the lawn-robed prelate paid,
+     And the last rites that dust to dust conveyed."
+
+No place could be less romantic than Southwark is now; but there are few
+places in England that possess a greater charm for the literary pilgrim.
+Shakespeare lived there, and it was there that he wrote for a theatre
+and made a fortune. Old London Bridge spanned the Thames at this point,
+in those days, and was the only road to the Surrey side of the river.
+The theatre stood near the end of the bridge and was thus easy of access
+to the wits and beaux of London. No trace of it now remains; but a
+public-house called the Globe, which was its name, is standing near, and
+the old church of St. Saviour--into which Shakespeare must often have
+entered--still braves the storm and still resists the encroachments of
+time and change. In Shakespeare's day there were houses on each side of
+London Bridge; and as he walked on the bank of the Thames he could look
+across to the Tower, and to Baynard Castle, which had been the residence
+of Richard, Duke of Gloster, and could see, uplifted high in air, the
+spire of old St. Paul's. The borough of Southwark was then but thinly
+peopled. Many of its houses, as may be seen in an old picture of the
+city, were surrounded by fields or gardens; and life to its inhabitants
+must have been comparatively rural. Now it is packed with buildings,
+gridironed with railways, crowded with people, and to the last degree
+resonant and feverish with action and effort. Life swarms, traffic
+bustles, and travel thunders all round the cradle of the British drama.
+The old church of St. Saviour alone preserves the sacred memory of the
+past. I made a pilgrimage to that shrine, with Arthur Sketchley (George
+Rose), one of the kindliest humourists in England. (Obiit November 13,
+1882.) We embarked at Westminster Bridge and landed close by the church
+in Southwark, and we were so fortunate as to get permission to enter it
+without a guide. The oldest part of it is the Lady chapel--which, in
+English cathedrals, is almost invariably placed behind the choir.
+Through this we strolled, alone and in silence. Every footstep there
+falls upon a grave. The pavement is one mass of gravestones; and through
+the tall, stained windows of the chapel a solemn light pours in upon the
+sculptured names of men and women who have long been dust. In one corner
+is an ancient stone coffin--a relic of the Roman days of Britain. This
+is the place in which Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, in the
+days of cruel Queen Mary, held his ecclesiastical court and doomed many
+a dissentient devotee to the rack and the fagot. Here was condemned John
+Rogers,--afterwards burnt at the stake, in Smithfield. Queen Mary and
+Queen Elizabeth may often have entered this chapel. But it is in the
+choir that the pilgrim pauses with most of reverence; for there, not far
+from the altar, he stands at the graves of Edmund Shakespeare, John
+Fletcher, and Philip Massinger.
+
+Illustration: "Gower's Monument."
+
+They apparently rest almost side by side, and only their names and the
+dates of their death are cut in the tablets that mark their sepulchres.
+Edmund Shakespeare, the younger brother of William, was an actor in his
+company, and died in 1607, aged twenty-seven. The great poet must have
+stood at that grave, and suffered and wept there; and somehow the lover
+of Shakespeare comes very near to the heart of the master when he stands
+in that place. Massinger was buried there, March 18, 1638,--the parish
+register recording him as "a stranger." Fletcher--of the Beaumont and
+Fletcher alliance--was buried there, in 1625: Beaumont's grave is in the
+Abbey. The dust of Henslowe the manager also rests beneath the pavement
+of St. Saviour's. Bishop Gardiner was buried there, with pompous
+ceremonial, in 1555,--but subsequently his remains were removed to the
+cathedral at Winchester. The great prelate Lancelot Andrews,
+commemorated by Milton, found his grave there, in 1626. The royal poet
+King James the First, of Scotland, was married there, in 1423, to Jane,
+daughter of the Earl of Somerset and niece of Cardinal Beaufort. In the
+south transept of the church is the tomb of John Gower, the old
+poet--whose effigy, carved and painted, reclines upon it and is not
+attractive. A formal, severe aspect he must have had, if he resembled
+that image. The tomb has been moved from the spot where it first
+stood--a proceeding made necessary by a fire that destroyed part of the
+old church. It is said that Gower caused the tomb to be erected during
+his lifetime, so that it might be in readiness to receive his bones. The
+bones are lost, but the memorial remains--sacred to the memory of the
+father of English song. This tomb was restored by the Duke of
+Sutherland, in 1832.
+
+Illustration: "Andrews Monument."
+
+It is enclosed by a little grill made of iron spears, painted brown and
+gilded at their points. I went into the new part of the church, and,
+alone, knelt in one of the pews and long remained there, overcome with
+thoughts of the past and of the transient, momentary nature of this our
+earthly life and the shadows that we pursue.
+
+One object of merriment attracts a passing glance in that old church.
+There is a tomb in a corner of it that commemorates Dr. Lockyer, a maker
+of patent physic, in the time of Charles the Second. This elaborate
+structure presents an effigy of the doctor, together with a sounding
+epitaph which declares that
+
+"His virtues and his pills are so well known
+That envy can't confine them under stone."
+
+Shakespeare once lived in Clink Street, in the borough of Southwark.
+Goldsmith practised medicine there. Chaucer came there, with his
+Canterbury Pilgrims, and lodged at the Tabard inn, which has
+disappeared. It must have been a romantic region in the old times. It is
+anything but romantic now.
+
+Illustration: "Hanging Lantern"
+
+Illustration: "Old Tabard Inn, Southwark."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+A VISIT TO WINDSOR
+
+
+If the beauty of England were only superficial it would produce only a
+superficial effect. It would cause a passing pleasure and would be
+forgotten. It certainly would not--as now in fact it does--inspire a
+deep, joyous, serene and grateful contentment, and linger in the mind, a
+gracious and beneficent remembrance. The conquering and lasting potency
+of it resides not alone in loveliness of expression but in loveliness of
+character. Having first greatly blessed the British islands with the
+natural advantages of position, climate, soil, and products, nature has
+wrought their development and adornment as a necessary consequence of
+the spirit of their inhabitants. The picturesque variety and pastoral
+repose of the English landscape spring, in a considerable measure, from
+the imaginative taste and the affectionate gentleness of the English
+people. The state of the country, like its social constitution, flows
+from principles within, which are constantly suggested, and it steadily
+comforts and nourishes the mind with a sense of kindly feeling, moral
+rectitude, solidity, and permanence.
+
+Illustration: "Windsor Castle."
+
+Thus in the peculiar beauty of England the ideal is made the actual--is
+expressed in things more than in words, and in things by which words are
+transcended. Milton's "L'Allegro," fine as it is, is not so fine as the
+scenery--the crystallised, embodied poetry--out of which it arose. All
+the delicious rural verse that has been written in England is only the
+excess and superflux of her own poetic opulence: it has rippled from the
+hearts of her poets just as the fragrance floats away from her hawthorn
+hedges. At every step of his progress the pilgrim through English scenes
+is impressed with this sovereign excellence of the accomplished fact, as
+contrasted with any words that can be said in its celebration.
+
+Among representative scenes that are eloquent with this instructive
+meaning,--scenes easily and pleasurably accessible to the traveller in
+what Dickens expressively called "the green, English summer
+weather,"--is the region of Windsor. The chief features of it have often
+been described; the charm that it exercises can only be suggested. To
+see Windsor, moreover, is to comprehend as at a glance the old feudal
+system, and to feel in a profound and special way the pomp of English
+character and history. More than this: it is to rise to the ennobling
+serenity that always accompanies broad, retrospective contemplation of
+the current of human affairs. In this quaint, decorous town--nestled at
+the base of that mighty and magnificent castle which has been the home
+of princes for more than five hundred years--the imaginative mind
+wanders over vast tracts of the past and beholds as in a mirror the
+pageants of chivalry, the coronations of kings, the strife of sects, the
+battles of armies, the schemes of statesmen, the decay of transient
+systems, the growth of a rational civilisation, and the everlasting
+march of thought. Every prospect of the region intensifies this
+sentiment of contemplative grandeur. As you look from the castle walls
+your gaze takes in miles and miles of blooming country, sprinkled over
+with little hamlets, wherein the utmost stateliness of learning and rank
+is gracefully commingled with all that is lovely and soothing in rural
+life. Not far away rise the "antique towers" of Eton--
+
+     "Where grateful science still adores
+     Her Henry's holy shade."
+
+It was in Windsor Castle that her Henry was born; and there he often
+held his court; and it is in St. George's chapel that his ashes repose.
+In the dim distance stands the church of Stoke-Pogis, about which Gray
+used to wander,
+
+     "Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade."
+
+You recognise now a deeper significance than ever before in the "solemn
+stillness" of the incomparable Elegy. The luminous twilight mood of that
+immortal poem--its pensive reverie and solemn passion--is inherent in
+the scene; and you feel that it was there, and there only, that the
+genius of its exceptional author--austerely gentle and severely pure,
+and thus in perfect harmony with its surroundings--could have been moved
+to that sublime strain of inspiration and eloquence. Near at hand, in
+the midst of your reverie, the mellow organ sounds from the chapel of
+St. George, where, under "fretted vault" and over "long-drawn aisle,"
+depend the ghostly, mouldering banners of ancient knights--as still as
+the bones of the dead-and-gone monarchs that crumble in the crypt below.
+
+Illustration: "St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle."
+
+In this church are many of the old kings and nobles of England. The
+handsome and gallant Edward the Fourth here found his grave; and near it
+is that of the accomplished Hastings--his faithful friend, to the last
+and after. Here lies the dust of the stalwart, impetuous, and savage
+Henry the Eighth, and here, at midnight, by the light of torches, they
+laid beneath the pavement the mangled body of Charles the First. As you
+stand on Windsor ramparts, pondering thus upon the storied past and the
+evanescence of "all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave," your eyes
+rest dreamily on green fields far below, through which, under tall elms,
+the brimming and sparkling river flows on without a sound, and in which
+a few figures, dwarfed by distance, flit here and there, in seeming
+aimless idleness; while, warned homeward by impending sunset, the
+chattering birds circle and float around the lofty towers of the castle;
+and delicate perfumes of seringa and jasmine are wafted up from dusky,
+unknown depths at the base of its ivied steep. At such an hour I stood
+on those ramparts and saw the shy villages and rich meadows of fertile
+Berkshire, all red and golden with sunset light; and at such an hour I
+stood in the lonely cloisters of St. George's chapel, and heard the
+distant organ sob, and saw the sunlight fade up the gray walls, and felt
+and knew the sanctity of silence. Age and death have made this church
+illustrious; but the spot itself has its own innate charm of mystical
+repose.
+
+     "No use of lanterns; and in one place lay
+     Feathers and dust to-day and yesterday."
+
+Illustration: "Windsor Forest and Park."
+
+The drive from the front of Windsor Castle is through a broad and
+stately avenue, three miles in length, straight as an arrow and level as
+a standing pool; and this white highway through the green and fragrant
+sod is sumptuously embowered, from end to end, with double rows of
+magnificent elms and oaks. The Windsor avenue, like the splendid
+chestnut grove at Bushey Park, long famous among the pageants of rural
+England, has often been described. It is after leaving this that the
+rambler comes upon the rarer beauties of Windsor Park and Forest. From
+the far end of the avenue--where, in a superb position, the equestrian
+statue of King George the Third rises on its massive pedestal of natural
+rock,--the road winds away, through shaded dell and verdant glade, past
+great gnarled beeches and under boughs of elm, and yew, and oak, till
+its silver thread is lost in the distant woods. At intervals a sinuous
+pathway strays off to some secluded lodge, half hidden in foliage--the
+property of the Crown, and the rustic residence of a scion of the royal
+race. In one of those retreats dwelt poor old George the Third, in the
+days of his mental darkness; and the memory of the agonising king seems
+still to cast a shadow on the mysterious and melancholy house. They show
+you, under glass, in one of the lodge gardens, an enormous grapevine,
+owned by the Queen--a vine which, from its single stalwart trunk,
+spreads its teeming branches, laterally, more than a hundred feet in
+each direction. So come use and thrift, hand in hand with romance! Many
+an aged oak is passed, in your progress, round which, "at still
+midnight," Herne the Hunter might yet take his ghostly prowl, shaking
+his chain "in a most hideous and dreadful manner." The wreck of the
+veritable Herne's Oak, it is said, was rooted out, together with other
+ancient and decayed trees, in the time of George the Third, and in
+somewhat too literal fulfilment of his Majesty's misinterpreted command.
+
+Illustration: "The Curfew Tower."
+
+This great park is fourteen miles in circumference and contains nearly
+four thousand acres, and many of the youngest trees that adorn it are
+more than one hundred and fifty years old. Far in its heart you stroll
+by Virginia Water--an artificial lake, but faultless in its gentle
+beauty--and perceive it so deep and so breezy that a full-rigged
+ship-of-war, with armament, can navigate its wind-swept, curling
+billows. This lake was made by that sanguinary Duke of Cumberland who
+led the English forces at Culloden. In the dim groves that fringe its
+margin are many nests wherein pheasants are bred, to fall by the royal
+shot and to supply the royal table: those you may contemplate but not
+approach. At a point in your walk, sequestered and lonely, they have set
+up and skilfully disposed the fragments of a genuine ruined temple,
+brought from the remote East--relic perchance of "Tadmor's marble
+waste," and certainly a most solemn memorial of the morning twilight of
+time. Broken arch, storm-stained pillar, and shattered column are here
+shrouded with moss and ivy; and should you chance to see them as the
+evening shadows deepen and the evening wind sighs mournfully in the
+grass your fancy will not fail to drink in the perfect illusion that one
+of the stateliest structures of antiquity has slowly crumbled where now
+its fragments remain.
+
+"Quaint" is a descriptive epithet that has been much abused, but it may,
+with absolute propriety, be applied to Windsor. The devious little
+streets there visible, and the carved and timber-crossed buildings,
+often of great age, are uncommonly rich in the expressiveness of
+imaginative character. The emotions and the fancy, equally with the
+sense of necessity and the instinct of use, have exercised their
+influence and uttered their spirit in the shaping and adornment of the
+town. While it constantly feeds the eye--with that pleasing irregularity
+of lines and forms which is so delicious and refreshing--it quite as
+constantly nurtures the sense of romance that ought to play so large a
+part in our lives, redeeming us from the tyranny of the commonplace and
+intensifying all the high feelings and noble aspirations that are
+possible to human nature. England contains many places like Windsor;
+some that blend in even richer amplitude the elements of quaintness,
+loveliness, and magnificence. The meaning of them all is the same: that
+romance, beauty, and gentleness are forever vital; that their forces are
+within our souls, and ready and eager to find their way into our
+thoughts, actions, and circumstances, and to brighten for every one of
+us the face of every day; that they ought neither to be relegated to the
+distant and the past nor kept for our books and day-dreams alone;
+but--in a calmer and higher mood than is usual in this age of universal
+mediocrity, critical scepticism, and miscellaneous tumult--should be
+permitted to flow forth into our architecture, adornments, and customs,
+to hallow and preserve our antiquities, to soften our manners, to give
+us tranquillity, patience, and tolerance, to make our country loveable
+for our own hearts, and so to enable us to bequeath it, sure of love and
+reverence, to succeeding ages.
+
+Illustration: "The Sign of the Swan."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER
+
+
+The American who, having been a careful and interested reader of English
+history, visits London for the first time, half expects to find the
+ancient city in a state of mild decay; and consequently he is a little
+startled at first, upon realising that the present is quite as vital as
+ever the past was, and that London antiquity is, in fact, swathed in the
+robes of everyday action and very much alive. When, for example, you
+enter Westminster Hall--"the great hall of William Rufus"--you are
+beneath one of the most glorious canopies in the world--one that was
+built by Richard the Second, whose grave, chosen by himself, is in the
+Abbey, just across the street from where you stand. But this old hall is
+now only a vestibule to the palace of Westminster. The Lords and the
+Commons of England, on their way to the Houses of Parliament, pass every
+day over the spot on which Charles the First was tried and condemned,
+and on which occurred the trial of Warren Hastings.
+
+Illustration: "Westminster Hall."
+
+It is a mere thoroughfare--glorious though it be, alike in structure and
+historic renown. The Palace Yard, near by, was the scene of the
+execution of Sir Walter Raleigh. In Bishopsgate Street stands Crosby
+House; the same to which, in Shakespeare's tragedy, the Duke of Gloster
+requests the retirement of Lady Anne. It is a restaurant now, and you
+may dine in the veritable throne-room of Richard the Third. The house of
+Cardinal Wolsey in Fleet Street is now a shop. Milton once lived in
+Golden Lane, and Golden Lane was a sweet and quiet spot. It is a dingy
+and dismal street now, and the visitor is glad to get out of it. To-day
+makes use of yesterday, all the world over. It is not in London,
+certainly, that you find anything--except old churches--mouldering in
+silence, solitude, and neglect.
+
+Those who see every day during the Parliamentary session the mace
+that is borne through the lobby of the House of Commons, although they
+are obliged, on every occasion, to uncover as it passes, do not,
+probably, view that symbol with much interest. Yet it is the same mace
+that Oliver Cromwell insulted¹ when he dissolved the Parliament and
+cried out, "Take away that bauble!"
+
+¹ An error. The House of Commons has had three maces. The first one
+disappeared after the judicial slaughter of Charles the First. The
+Cromwell mace was carried to the island of Jamaica, and is there
+preserved in a museum at Kingston. The third is the one now in use.
+
+Illustration: "The Mace."
+
+I saw it one day, on its passage to the table of the Commons, and was
+glad to remove the hat of respect to what it signifies--the power and
+majesty of the free people of England. The Speaker of the House was
+walking behind it, very grand in his wig and gown, and the members
+trooped in at his heels to secure their places by being present at the
+opening prayer. A little later I was provided with a seat, in a dim
+corner, in that august assemblage of British senators, and could observe
+at ease their management of the public business. The Speaker was on his
+throne; the mace was on its table; the hats of the Commons were on their
+heads; and over this singular, animated, impressive scene the waning
+light of a summer afternoon poured softly down, through the high,
+stained, and pictured windows of one of the most symmetrical halls in
+the world. It did not happen to be a day of excitement. The Irish
+members had not then begun to impede the transaction of business, for
+the sake of drawing attention to the everlasting wrongs of Ireland. Yet
+it was a lively day. Curiosity on the part of the Opposition and a
+respectful incertitude on the part of Her Majesty's ministers were the
+prevailing conditions. I had never before heard so many questions
+asked--outside of the French grammar--and asked to so little purpose.
+Everybody wanted to know, and nobody wanted to tell. Each inquirer took
+off his hat when he rose to ask, and put it on again when he sat down to
+be answered. Each governmental sphinx bared his brow when he emerged to
+divulge, and covered it again when he subsided without divulging. The
+superficial respect of these interlocutors for each other steadily
+remained, however, of the most deferential and considerate description;
+so that--without discourtesy--it was impossible not to think of Byron's
+"mildest mannered man that ever scuttled ship or cut a throat."
+Underneath this velvety, purring, conventional manner the observer could
+readily discern the fires of passion, prejudice, and strong antagonism.
+They make no parade in the House of Commons. They attend to their
+business. And upon every topic that is brought before their notice they
+have definite ideas, strong convictions, and settled purposes. The topic
+of Army Estimates upon this day seemed especially to arouse their
+ardour. Discussion of this was continually diversified by cries of "Oh!"
+and of "Hear!" and of "Order!" and sometimes those cries savoured more
+of derision than of compliment. Many persons spoke, but no person spoke
+well. An off-hand, matter-of-fact, shambling method of speech would seem
+to be the fashion in the British House of Commons. I remembered the
+anecdote that De Quincey tells, about Sheridan and the young member who
+quoted Greek. It was easy to perceive how completely out of place the
+sophomore orator would be, in that assemblage. Britons like better to
+make speeches than to hear them, and they will never be slaves to bad
+oratory. The moment a windy gentleman got the floor, and began to read a
+manuscript respecting the Indian Government, as many as forty Commons
+arose and noisily walked out of the House. Your pilgrim likewise hailed
+the moment of his deliverance and was glad to escape to the open air.
+
+Books have been written to describe the Palace of Westminster; but it is
+observable that this structure, however much its magnificence deserves
+commemorative applause, is deficient, as yet, in the charm of
+association. The old Palace of St. James, with its low, dusky walls, its
+round turrets, and its fretted battlements, is more impressive, because
+history has freighted it with meaning and time has made it beautiful.
+But the Palace of Westminster is a splendid structure. It covers eight
+acres of ground, on the bank of the Thames; it contains eleven
+quadrangles and five hundred rooms; and when its niches for statuary
+have been filled it will contain two hundred and twenty-six statues. The
+monuments in St. Stephen's Hall--into which you pass from Westminster
+Hall, which has been incorporated into the Palace and is its only
+ancient and therefore its most interesting feature--indicate, very
+eloquently, what a superb art gallery this will one day become. The
+statues are the images of Selden, Hampden, Falkland, Clarendon, Somers,
+Walpole, Chatham, Mansfield, Burke, Fox, Pitt, and Grattan. Those of
+Mansfield and Grattan present, perhaps, the most of character and power,
+making you feel that they are indubitably accurate portraits, and
+winning you by the charm of personality. There are statues, also, in
+Westminster Hall, commemorative of the Georges, William and Mary, and
+Anne; but it is not of these you think, nor of any local and everyday
+object, when you stand beneath the wonderful roof of Richard the Second.
+Nearly eight hundred years "their cloudy wings expand" above that
+fabric, and copiously shed upon it the fragrance of old renown. Richard
+the Second was deposed there: Cromwell was there installed Lord
+Protector of England: John Fisher, Sir Thomas More, and Strafford were
+there condemned: and it was there that the possible, if not usual,
+devotion of woman's heart was so touchingly displayed by her
+
+     "Whose faith drew strength from death,
+     And prayed her Russell up to God."
+
+No one can realise, without personal experience, the number and variety
+of pleasures accessible to the resident of London. These may not be
+piquant to him who has them always within his reach. I met with several
+residents of the British capital who had always intended to visit the
+Tower but had never done so. But to the stranger they possess a constant
+and keen fascination. The Derby this year [1877] was thought to be
+comparatively a tame race; but I know of one spectator who saw it from
+the top of the grand stand and who thought that the scene it presented
+was wonderfully brilliant. The sky had been overcast with dull clouds
+till the moment when the race was won; but just as Archer, rising in his
+saddle, lifted his horse forward and gained the goal alone, the sun
+burst forth and shed upon the downs a sheen of gold, and lit up all the
+distant hills, and all the far-stretching roads that wind away from the
+region of Epsom like threads of silver through the green.
+Carrier-pigeons were instantly launched off to London, with the news of
+the victory of Silvio. There was one winner on the grand stand who had
+laid bets on Silvio, for no other reason than because that horse bore
+the prettiest name in the list. The Derby, like Christmas, comes but
+once a year; but other allurements are almost perennial.
+
+Illustration: "Greenwich Hospital."
+
+Greenwich, for instance, with its white-bait dinner, invites the epicure
+during the best part of the London season. A favourite tavern is the
+Trafalgar--in which each room is named after some magnate of the old
+British navy; and Nelson, Hardy, and Rodney are household words. Another
+cheery place of resort is The Ship. The Hospitals are at Greenwich that
+Dr. Johnson thought to be too fine for a charity; and back of
+these--which are ordinary enough now, in comparison with modern
+structures erected for a kindred purpose--stands the famous Observatory
+that keeps time for Europe. This place is hallowed also by the grave of
+Clive and by that of Wolfe--to the latter of whom, however, there is a
+monument in Westminster Abbey. Greenwich makes one think of Queen
+Elizabeth, who was born there, who often held her court there, and who
+often sailed thence, in her barge, up the river to Richmond--her
+favourite retreat and the scene of her last days and her pathetic death.
+Few spots can compare with Richmond, in brilliancy of landscape. That
+place--the Shene of old times--was long a royal residence. The woods and
+meadows that you see from the terrace of the Star and Garter
+tavern--spread upon a rolling plain as far as the eye can reach--sparkle
+like emeralds; and the Thames, dotted with little toy-like boats, shines
+with all the deep lustre of the blackest onyx. Richmond, for those who
+honour genius and who love to walk in the footsteps of renown, is full
+of interest. Dean Swift once had a house there, the site of which is
+still indicated. Pope's rural home was in the adjacent village of
+Twickenham,--where it may still be seen. Horace Walpole's stately
+mansion of Strawberry Hill is not far off. The poet Thomson long resided
+at Richmond, in a house now used as an hospital, and there he died.
+Edmund Kean and the once famous Mrs. Yates rest beneath Richmond church,
+and there also are the ashes of Thomson. As I drove through the sweetly
+sylvan Park of Richmond, in the late afternoon of a breezy summer day,
+and heard the whispering of the great elms, and saw the gentle, trustful
+deer couched at ease in the golden glades, I heard all the while, in the
+still chambers of thought, the tender lament of Collins--which is now a
+prophecy fulfilled:
+
+     "Remembrance oft shall haunt the shore,
+          When Thames in summer wreaths is drest;
+     And oft suspend the dashing oar,
+          To bid his gentle spirit rest."
+
+Illustration: "Queen Elizabeth's Cradle."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+WARWICK AND KENILWORTH
+
+
+All the way from London to Warwick it rained; not heavily, but with a
+gentle fall. The gray clouds hung low over the landscape and softly
+darkened it; so that meadows of scarlet and emerald, the shining foliage
+of elms, gray turret, nestled cottage and limpid river were as
+mysterious and evanescent as pictures seen in dreams. At Warwick the
+rain had fallen and ceased, and the walk from the station to the inn was
+on a road--or on a footpath by the roadside--still hard and damp with
+the water it had absorbed. A fresh wind blew from the fields, sweet with
+the rain and fragrant with the odour of leaves and flowers. The streets
+of the ancient town--entered through an old Norman arch--were deserted
+and silent. It was Sunday when I first came to the country of
+Shakespeare; and over all the region there brooded a sacred stillness
+peculiar to the time and harmonious beyond utterance with the sanctity
+of the place. As I strive, after many days, to call back and to fix in
+words the impressions of that sublime experience, the same awe falls
+upon me now that fell upon me then. Nothing else upon earth--no natural
+scene, no relic of the past, no pageantry of the present--can vie with
+the shrine of Shakespeare, in power to impress, to humble, and to exalt
+the devout spirit that has been nurtured at the fountain of his
+transcendent genius.
+
+A fortunate way to approach Stratford-on-Avon is by Warwick and
+Kenilworth. Those places are not on a direct line of travel; but the
+scenes and associations that they successively present are such as
+assume a symmetrical order, increase in interest, and grow to a
+delightful culmination. Objects that Shakespeare himself must have seen
+are still visible there; and little by little, in contact with these,
+the pilgrim through this haunted region is mentally saturated with that
+atmosphere of serenity and romance in which the youth of Shakespeare was
+passed, and by which his works and his memory are embalmed. No one
+should come abruptly upon the poet's home. The mind needs to be prepared
+for the impression that awaits it; and in this gradual approach it finds
+preparation, both suitable and delicious. The luxuriance of the country,
+its fertile fields, its brilliant foliage, its myriads of wild-flowers,
+its pomp of colour and of physical vigour and bloom, do not fail to
+announce, to every mind, howsoever heedless, that this is a fit place
+for the birth and nurture of a great man. But this is not all. As you
+stroll in the quaint streets of Warwick, as you drive to Kenilworth, as
+you muse in that poetic ruin, as you pause in the old graveyard in the
+valley below, as you meditate over the crumbling fragments of the
+ancient abbey, at every step of the way you are haunted by a vague sense
+of an impending grandeur; you are aware of a presence that fills and
+sanctifies the scene. The emotion that is thus inspired is very
+glorious; never to be elsewhere felt; and never to be forgotten.
+
+Illustration: "Warwick Castle."
+
+The cyclopædias and the guide-books dilate, with much particularity and
+characteristic eloquence, upon Warwick Castle and other great features
+of Warwickshire, but the attribute that all such records omit is the
+atmosphere; and this, perhaps, is rather to be indicated than described.
+The prevailing quality of it is a certain high and sweet solemnity--a
+feeling kindred with the placid, happy melancholy that steals over the
+mind, when, on a sombre afternoon in autumn, you stand in the
+churchyard, and listen, amid rustling branches and sighing grass, to the
+low music of distant organ and chanting choir. Peace, haunted by
+romance, dwells here, in reverie. The great tower of Warwick, based in
+silver Avon and pictured in its slumbering waters, seems musing upon the
+centuries over which it has watched, and full of unspeakable knowledge
+and thought. The dark and massive gateways of the town and the
+timber-crossed fronts of its antique houses live on in the same strange
+dream and perfect repose; and all along the drive to Kenilworth are
+equal images of rest--of a rest in which there is nothing supine or
+sluggish, no element of death or decay, but in which passion,
+imagination, beauty, and sorrow, seized at their topmost poise, seem
+crystallised in eternal calm. What opulence of splendid life is vital
+for ever in Kenilworth's crumbling ruin there are no words to say. What
+pomp of royal banners! what dignity of radiant cavaliers! what
+loveliness of stately and exquisite ladies! what magnificence of
+banquets! what wealth of pageantry! what lustre of illumination! The
+same festal music that the poet Gascoigne heard there, three hundred
+years ago, is still sounding on, to-day. The proud and cruel Leicester
+still walks in his vaulted hall. The imperious face of the Virgin Queen
+still from her dais looks down on plumed courtiers and jewelled dames;
+and still the moonlight, streaming through the turret-window, falls on
+the white bosom and the great, startled, black eyes of Amy Robsart,
+waiting for her lover. The gaze of the pilgrim, indeed, rests only upon
+old, gray, broken walls, overgrown with green moss and ivy, and pierced
+by irregular casements through which the sun shines, and the winds blow,
+and the rains drive, and the birds fly, amid utter desolation. But
+silence and ruin are here alike eloquent and awful; and, much as the
+place impresses you by what remains, it impresses you far more by what
+has vanished. Ambition, love, pleasure, power, misery, tragedy--these
+are gone; and being gone they are immortal. I plucked, in the garden of
+Kenilworth, one of the most brilliant red roses that ever grew; and as I
+pressed it to my lips I seemed to touch the lips of that superb,
+bewildering beauty who outweighed England's crown (at least in story),
+and whose spirit is the everlasting genius of the place.
+
+There is a row of cottages opposite to the ruins of the castle, in which
+contentment seems to have made her home. The ivy embowers them. The
+roses cluster around their little windows. The greensward slopes away,
+in front, from big, flat stones that are embedded in the mossy sod
+before their doors. Down in the valley, hard by, your steps stray
+through an ancient graveyard--in which stands the parish church, a
+carefully restored building of the eleventh century, with tower, and
+clock, and bell--and past a few fragments of the Abbey and Monastery of
+St. Mary, destroyed in 1538. At many another point, on the roads betwixt
+Warwick and Kenilworth and Stratford, I came upon such nests of cosy,
+rustic quiet and seeming happiness. They build their country houses low,
+in England, so that the trees overhang them, and the cool, friendly,
+flower-gemmed earth--parent, and stay, and bourne of mortal life--is
+tenderly taken into their companionship. Here, at Kenilworth, as
+elsewhere, at such places as Marlowe, Henley, Richmond, Maidenhead,
+Cookham, and the region round about Windsor, I saw many a sweet nook
+where tired life might be content to lay down its burden and enter into
+its rest. In all true love of country--a passion that seems to be more
+deeply felt in England than anywhere else upon the globe--there is love
+for the literal soil itself: and surely that sentiment in the human
+heart is equally natural and pious which inspires and perpetuates man's
+desire that where he found his cradle he may also find his grave.
+
+Illustration: "Old Inn."
+
+Under a cloudy sky and through a landscape still wet and shining with
+recent rain the drive to Stratford was a pleasure so exquisite that at
+last it became a pain. Just as the carriage reached the junction of the
+Warwick and Snitterfield roads a ray of sunshine, streaming through a
+rift in the clouds, fell upon the neighbouring hillside, scarlet with
+poppies, and lit the scene as with the glory of a celestial benediction.
+This sunburst, neither growing larger nor coming nearer, followed all
+the way to Stratford; and there, on a sudden, the clouds were lifted and
+dispersed, and "fair daylight" flooded the whole green countryside. The
+afternoon sun was still high in heaven when I alighted at the Red Horse
+and entered the little parlour of Washington Irving. They keep the room
+much as it was when he left it; for they are proud of his gentle genius
+and grateful for his commemorative words. In a corner stands [1877] the
+small, old-fashioned haircloth arm-chair in which he sat, on that night
+of memory and of musing which he has described in _The Sketch-Book. _A
+brass plate is affixed to it, bearing his name; and the visitor
+observes, in token of its age and service, that the hair-cloth of its
+seat is considerably worn and frayed. Every American pilgrim to
+Stratford sits in that chair; and looks with tender interest on the old
+fireplace; and reads the memorials of Irving that are hung upon the
+walls: and it is no small comfort there to reflect that our illustrious
+countryman--whose name will be remembered with honour, as long as
+literature is prized among men--was the first, in modern days, to
+discover the beauties and to interpret the poetry of the birthplace of
+Shakespeare.
+
+Illustration: "Washington Irving's Parlour."
+
+Illustration: "From the Warwick Shield."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD-ON-AVON
+
+
+Once again, as it did on that delicious summer afternoon which is for
+ever memorable in my life, the golden glory of the westering sun burns
+on the gray spire of Stratford church, and on the ancient graveyard
+below,--wherein the mossy stones lean this way and that, in sweet and
+orderly confusion,--and on the peaceful avenue of limes, and on the
+burnished water of silver Avon. The tall, pointed, many-coloured windows
+of the church glint in the evening light. A cool and fragrant wind is
+stirring the branches and the grass. The small birds, calling to their
+mates or sporting in the wanton pleasure of their airy life, are
+circling over the church roof or hiding in little crevices of its walls.
+On the vacant meadows across the river stretch away the long and level
+shadows of the pompous elms. Here and there, upon the river's brink, are
+pairs of what seem lovers, strolling by the reedy marge, or sitting upon
+the low tombs, in the Sabbath quiet. As the sun sinks and the dusk
+deepens, two figures of infirm old women, clad in black, pass with slow
+and feeble steps through the avenue of limes, and vanish around an angle
+of the church--that now stands all in shadow: and no sound is heard but
+the faint rustling of the leaves.
+
+Illustration: "Holy Trinity Church."
+
+Once again, as on that sacred night, the streets of Stratford are
+deserted and silent under the star-lit sky, and I am standing, in the
+dim darkness, at the door of the cottage in which Shakespeare was born.
+It is empty, dark, and still; and in all the neighbourhood there is no
+stir nor sign of life; but the quaint casements and gables of this
+haunted house, its antique porch, and the great timbers that cross its
+front are luminous as with a light of their own, so that I see them with
+perfect vision. I stand there a long time, and I know that I am to
+remember these sights for ever, as I see them now. After a while, with
+lingering reluctance, I turn away from this marvellous spot, and,
+presently passing through a little, winding lane, I walk in the High
+Street of the town, and mark, at the end of the prospect, the
+illuminated clock in the tower of the chapel of the Holy Cross. A few
+chance-directed steps bring me to what was New Place once, where
+Shakespeare died; and there again I pause, and long remain in
+meditation, gazing into the enclosed garden, where, under screens of
+wire, are certain strange fragments of lime and stone. These--which I do
+not then know--are the remains of the foundation of Shakespeare's house.
+The night wanes; and still I walk in Stratford streets; and by and by I
+am standing on the bridge that spans the Avon, and looking down at the
+thick-clustering stars reflected in its black and silent stream. At
+last, under the roof of the Red Horse, I sink into a troubled slumber,
+from which soon a strain of celestial music--strong, sweet, jubilant,
+and splendid--awakens me in an instant; and I start up in my bed--to
+find that all around me is still as death; and then, drowsily, far-off,
+the bell strikes three, in its weird and lonesome tower.
+
+Every pilgrim to Stratford knows, in a general way, what he will there
+behold. Copious and frequent description of its Shakespearean
+associations has made the place familiar to all the world. Yet these
+Shakespearean associations keep a perennial freshness, and are equally a
+surprise to the sight and a wonder to the soul. Though three centuries
+old they are not stricken with age or decay. The house in Henley Street,
+in which, according to accepted tradition, Shakespeare was born, has
+been from time to time repaired; and so it has been kept sound, without
+having been materially changed from what it was in Shakespeare's youth.
+The kind ladies, Miss Maria and Miss Caroline Chataway, who take care of
+it [1877], and with so much pride and courtesy show it to the visitor,
+called my attention to a bit of the ceiling of the upper chamber--the
+room of Shakespeare's birth--which had begun to droop, and had been
+skilfully secured with little iron laths. It is in this room that the
+numerous autographs are scrawled over the ceiling and walls. One side of
+the chimneypiece here is called "The Actor's Pillar," so richly is it
+adorned with the names of actors; Edmund Kean's signature being among
+them, and still legible. On one of the window-panes, cut with a diamond,
+is the name of "W. Scott"; and all the panes are scratched with
+signatures--making you think of Douglas Jerrold's remark on bad
+Shakespearean commentators, that they resemble persons who write on
+glass with diamonds, and obscure the light with a multitude of
+scratches. The floor of this room, uncarpeted and almost snow-white with
+much washing, seems still as hard as iron; yet its boards have been
+hollowed by wear, and the heads of the old nails that fasten it down
+gleam like polished silver.
+
+Illustration: "The Inglenook."
+
+You can sit in an antique chair, in a corner of this room, and think
+unutterable things. There is, certainly, no word that can even remotely
+suggest the feeling with which you are then overwhelmed. You can sit
+also in the room below, in the seat, in the corner of the wide
+fireplace, that Shakespeare himself must often have occupied. They keep
+but a few sticks of furniture in any part of the cottage. One room is
+devoted to Shakespearean relics--more or less authentic; one of which is
+a schoolboy's desk that was obtained from the old grammar-school in
+Church Street in which Shakespeare was once a pupil. At the back of the
+cottage, now isolated from contiguous structures, is a pleasant garden,
+and at one side is a cosy, luxurious little cabin--the home of order and
+of pious decorum--for the ladies who are custodians of the Shakespeare
+House. If you are a favoured visitor, you may receive from that garden,
+at parting, all the flowers, prettily mounted upon a sheet of paper,
+that poor Ophelia names, in the scene of her madness. "There's rosemary,
+that's for remembrance: and there is pansies, that's for thoughts:
+there's fennel for you, and columbines: there's rue for you: there's a
+daisy:--I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my
+father died."
+
+The minute knowledge that Shakespeare had of plants and flowers, and the
+loving appreciation with which he describes pastoral scenery, are
+explained to the rambler in Stratford, by all that he sees and hears.
+There is a walk across the fields to Shottery that the poet must often
+have taken, in the days of his courtship of Anne Hathaway. The path to
+this hamlet passes through pastures and gardens, necked everywhere with
+those brilliant scarlet poppies that are so radiant and so bewitching in
+the English landscape. To have grown up amid such surroundings, and,
+above all, to have experienced amid them the passion of love, must have
+been, for Shakespeare, the intuitive acquirement of ample and specific
+knowledge of their manifold beauties. It would be hard to find a sweeter
+rustic retreat than Anne Hathaway's cottage is, even now. Tall trees
+embower it; and over its porches, and all along its picturesque,
+irregular front, and on its thatched roof, the woodbine and the ivy
+climb, and there are wild roses and the maiden's blush. For the young
+poet's wooing no place could be fitter than this. He would always
+remember it with tender-joy.
+
+Illustration: "Approach to Shottery."
+
+They show you, in that cottage, an old settle, by the fireside, whereon
+the lovers may have sat together: it formerly stood outside the door:
+and in the rude little chamber next the roof an antique, carved
+bedstead, that Anne Hathaway once owned. This, it is thought, continued
+to be Anne's home for several years of her married life--her husband
+being absent in London, and sometimes coming down to visit her, at
+Shottery. "He was wont," says John Aubrey, the antiquary, writing in
+1680, "to go to his native country once a year." The last surviving
+descendant of the Hathaway family--Mrs. Baker--lives in the house now,
+and welcomes with homely hospitality the wanderers, from all lands, who
+seek--in a sympathy and reverence most honourable to human nature--the
+shrine of Shakespeare's love. There is one such wanderer who will never
+forget the farewell clasp of that kind woman's hand, and who has never
+parted with her gift of woodbine and roses from the porch of Anne
+Hathaway's cottage.
+
+In England it is living, more than writing about it, that is esteemed by
+the best persons. They prize good writing, but they prize noble living
+far more. This is an ingrained principle, and not an artificial habit,
+and this principle doubtless was as potent in Shakespeare's age as it is
+to-day. Nothing could be more natural than that this great writer should
+think less of his works than of the establishment of his home. He would
+desire, having won a fortune, to dwell in his native place, to enjoy the
+companionship and esteem of his neighbours, to participate in their
+pleasures, to help them in their troubles, to aid in the improvement and
+embellishment of the town, to deepen his hold upon the affections of all
+around him, and to feel that, at last, honoured and lamented, his ashes
+would be laid in the village church where he had worshipped--
+
+     "Among familiar names to rest,
+     And in the places of his youth."
+
+It was in 1597, twelve years after he went to London, that the poet
+began to buy property in Stratford, and it was about eight years after
+his first purchase that he finally settled there, at New Place. [J. O.
+Halliwell-Phillips says that it was in 1609: There is a record alleging
+that as late as that year Shakespeare still retained a residence in
+Clink Street, Southwark.] This mansion was altered by Sir Hugh Clopton,
+who owned it toward the middle of the eighteenth century, and
+it was destroyed by the Rev. Francis Gastrell, in 1759. The grounds,
+which have been reclaimed,--chiefly through the zeal of J. O.
+Halliwell-Phillips,--are laid out according to the model they are
+supposed to have presented when Shakespeare owned them. His lawn, his
+orchard, and his garden are indicated; and a scion of his mulberry is
+growing on the spot where that famous tree once flourished. You can see
+a part of the foundation of the old house. It was made of brick and
+timber, it seems to have had gables, and no doubt it was fashioned with
+the beautiful curves and broken lines of the Tudor architecture. They
+show, upon the lawn, a stone of considerable size, that surmounted its
+door. The site--still a central and commodious one--is on the corner of
+Chapel Street and Chapel Lane; and on the opposite corner stands now, as
+it has stood for eight hundred years, the chapel of the Holy Cross, with
+square, dark tower, fretted parapet, pointed casements, and Norman
+porch--one of the most romantic and picturesque little churches in
+England. It was easy, when musing on that storied spot, to fancy
+Shakespeare, in the gloaming of a summer day, strolling on the lawn,
+beneath his elms, and listening to the soft and solemn music of the
+chapel organ; or to think of him as stepping forth from his study, in
+the late and lonesome hours of the night, and pausing to "count the
+clock," or note the "exhalations whizzing in the air."
+
+The funeral train of Shakespeare, on that dark day when it moved from
+New Place to Stratford Church, had but a little way to go. The river,
+surely, must have seemed to hush its murmurs, the trees to droop their
+branches, the sunshine to grow dim--as that sad procession passed! His
+grave is under the gray pavement of the chancel, near the altar, and his
+wife and one of his daughters are buried beside him. The pilgrim who
+reads upon the gravestone those rugged lines of grievous entreaty and
+awful imprecation that guard the poet's rest feels no doubt that he is
+listening to his living voice--for he has now seen the enchanting beauty
+of the place, and he has now felt what passionate affection it can
+inspire. Feeling and not manner would naturally have prompted that
+abrupt, agonised supplication and threat. Nor does such a pilgrim doubt,
+when gazing on the painted bust, above the grave,--made by Gerard
+Jonson, stonecutter,--that he beholds the authentic face of Shakespeare.
+It is not the heavy face of the portraits that represent it. There is a
+rapt, transfigured quality in it, that those copies do not convey. It is
+thoughtful, austere, and yet benign. Shakespeare was a hazel-eyed man,
+with auburn hair, and the colours that he wore were scarlet and black.
+Being painted, and also being set up at a considerable height on the
+church wall, the bust does not disclose what is sufficiently perceptible
+in a cast from it--that it is the copy of a mask from the dead face. One
+of the cheeks is a little swollen and the tongue, slightly protruded, is
+caught between the lips. The idle theory that the poet was not a
+gentleman of consideration in his own time and place falls utterly and
+for ever from the mind when you stand at his grave. No man could have a
+more honourable or sacred place of sepulture; and while it illustrates
+the profound esteem of the community in which he lived it testifies to
+the religious character by which that esteem was confirmed. "I commend
+my soul into the hands of God, my Creator, hoping, and assuredly
+believing, through the only merits of Jesus Christ, my Saviour, to be
+made partaker of life everlasting." So said Shakespeare, in his last
+Will, bowing in humble reverence the mightiest mind--as vast and
+limitless in the power to comprehend as to express!--that ever wore the
+garments of mortality.¹
+
+¹ It ought perhaps to be remarked that this prelude to Shakespeare's
+Will may not have been intended by him as a profession of faith, but may
+have been signed simply as a legal formula. His works denote a mind of
+high and broad spiritual convictions, untrammelled by creed or doctrine.
+His inclination, probably, was toward the Roman Catholic church, because
+of the poetry that is in it: but such a man as Shakespeare would have
+viewed all religious beliefs in a kindly spirit, and would have made no
+emphatic professions. The Will was executed on March 25, 1616. It covers
+three sheets of paper; it is not in Shakespeare's hand-writing, but each
+sheet bears his signature. It is in the British Museum.
+
+Once again there is a sound of organ music, very low and soft, in
+Stratford Church, and the dim light, broken by the richly stained
+windows, streams across the dusky chancel, filling the still air with
+opal haze and flooding those gray gravestones with its mellow radiance.
+Not a word is spoken; but, at intervals, the rustle of the leaves is
+audible in a sighing wind. What visions are these, that suddenly fill
+the region! What royal faces of monarchs, proud with power, or pallid
+with anguish! What sweet, imperial women, gleeful with happy youth and
+love, or wide-eyed and rigid in tearless woe! What warriors, with
+serpent diadems, defiant of death and hell! The mournful eyes of Hamlet;
+the wild countenance of Lear; Ariel with his harp, and Prospero with his
+wand! Here is no death! All these, and more, are immortal shapes; and he
+that made them so, although his mortal part be but a handful of dust in
+yonder crypt, is a glorious angel beyond the stars.
+
+Illustration: "Distant View of Stratford."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+LONDON NOOKS AND CORNERS
+
+
+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 of _Bleak
+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.¹ 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.² 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.
+
+¹ That place has been renovated and is no longer a disgrace.
+
+² 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.
+
+Illustration: "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.
+
+Illustration: "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 his _Life 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 combined
+     Erase thy image, Mary, from my mind,
+     Or bid me hope from others to receive
+     The fond affection thou alone couldst give?
+     Ah no, my best beloved, thou still shalt be
+     My 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.
+
+Illustration: "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.
+
+Illustration: "The Crown Inn, Dulwich."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+RELICS OF LORD BYRON
+
+
+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.
+
+Illustration: "Oriel Window."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+WESTMINSTER ABBEY
+
+
+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."
+
+Illustration: "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.
+
+Illustration: "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.
+
+Illustration: "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.
+
+Illustration: "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's _Fortunes 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.
+
+Illustration: "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.
+
+Illustration: "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!
+
+Illustration: "Dome of St. Paul's"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+SHAKESPEARE'S HOME
+
+
+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.
+
+Illustration: "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.
+
+Illustration: "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,¹ Rogers, Thackeray, Kean, Tennyson, and Dickens are among the
+votaries there and thus recorded.
+
+¹ 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 beautiful _Sketch-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 in _As 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 hoarse
+     That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
+     Under 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,--
+
+                    "Daffodils
+     That come before the swallow dares, and take
+     The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
+     But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes
+     Or 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.
+
+Illustration: "Anne Hathaway's Cottage."
+
+The old foot-path across the fields to Shottery remains accessible.
+Wild-flowers are blooming along its margin. The gardens and meadows
+through which it winds are sprinkled with the gorgeous scarlet of the
+poppy. The hamlet of Shottery is less than a mile from Stratford,
+stepping toward the sunset; and there, nestled beneath the elms, and
+almost embowered in vines and roses, stands the cottage in which Anne
+Hathaway was wooed and won. This is even more antiquated in appearance
+than the birthplace of Shakespeare, and more obviously a relic of the
+distant past. It is built of wood and plaster, ribbed with massive
+timbers, and covered with a thatch roof. It fronts southward, presenting
+its eastern end to the road. Under its eaves, peeping through embrasures
+cut in the thatch, are four tiny casements, round which the ivy twines
+and the roses wave softly in the wind of June. The western end of the
+structure is higher than the eastern, and the old building, originally
+divided into two tenements, is now divided into three. In front of it is
+a straggling garden. There is a comfortable air of wildness, yet not of
+neglect, in its appointments and surroundings. The place is still the
+abode of labour and lowliness. Entering its parlour you see a stone
+floor, a wide fireplace, a broad, hospitable hearth, with cosy
+chimney-corners, and near this an old wooden settle, much decayed but
+still serviceable, on which Shakespeare may often have sat, with Anne at
+his side. The plastered walls of this room here and there reveal
+portions of an oak wainscot. The ceiling is low. This evidently was the
+farm-house of a substantial yeoman, in the days of Henry the Eighth. The
+Hathaways had lived in Shottery for forty years prior to Shakespeare's
+marriage. The poet, then undistinguished, had just turned eighteen,
+while his bride was nearly twenty-six, and it has been foolishly said
+that she acted ill in wedding her boy-lover. They were married in
+November, 1582, and their first child, Susanna, came in the following
+May. Anne Hathaway must have been a wonderfully fascinating woman, or
+Shakespeare would not so have loved her; and she must have loved him
+dearly--as what woman, indeed, could help it?--or she would not thus
+have yielded to his passion. There is direct testimony to the beauty of
+his person; and in the light afforded by his writings it requires no
+extraordinary penetration to conjecture that his brilliant mind,
+sparkling humour, tender fancy, and impetuous spirit must have made him,
+in his youth, a paragon of enchanters. It is not known where they lived
+during the first years after their marriage. Perhaps in this cottage at
+Shottery. Perhaps with Hamnet and Judith Sadler, for whom their twins,
+born in 1585, were named Hamnet and Judith. Her father's house assuredly
+would have been chosen for Anne's refuge, when presently (in 1585-86),
+Shakespeare was obliged to leave his wife and children, and go away to
+London to seek his fortune. He did not buy New Place till 1597, but it
+is known that in the meantime he came to his native town once every
+year. It was in Stratford that his son Hamnet died, in 1596. Anne and
+her children probably had never left the town. They show a bedstead and
+other bits of furniture, together with certain homespun sheets of
+everlasting linen, that are kept as heirlooms in the garret of the
+Shottery cottage. Here is the room that may often have welcomed the poet
+when he came home from his labours in the great city. It is a homely and
+humble place, but the sight of it makes the heart thrill with a strange
+and incommunicable awe. You cannot wish to speak when you are standing
+there. You are scarcely conscious of the low rustling of the leaves
+outside, the far-off sleepy murmur of the brook, or the faint fragrance
+of woodbine and maiden's-blush that is wafted in at the open casement
+and that swathes in nature's incense a memory sweeter than itself.
+
+Associations may be established by fable as well as by fact. There is
+but little reason to believe the legendary tale, first recorded by Rowe,
+that Shakespeare, having robbed the deer-park of Sir Thomas Lucy of
+Charlecote (there was not a park at Charlecote then, but there was one
+at Fullbrooke), was so severely persecuted by that magistrate that he
+was compelled to quit Stratford and shelter himself in London. Yet the
+story has twisted itself into all the lives of Shakespeare, and whether
+received or rejected has clung to the house of Charlecote. That noble
+mansion--a genuine specimen, despite a few modern alterations, of the
+architecture of Queen Elizabeth's time--is found on the west bank of the
+Avon, about three miles north-east from Stratford. It is a long,
+rambling, three-storied palace--as finely quaint as old St. James's in
+London, and not altogether unlike that edifice, in general
+character--with octagon turrets, gables, balustrades, Tudor casements,
+and great stacks of chimneys, so closed in by elms of giant growth that
+you can scarce distinguish it, through the foliage, till you are close
+upon it.
+
+Illustration: "Charlecote."
+
+It was erected in 1558 by Thomas Lucy, who in 1578 was Sheriff of
+Warwickshire, who was elected to the Parliaments of 1571 and 1584, and
+who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1565. The porch to this building
+was designed by John of Padua. There is a silly ballad in existence,
+idly attributed to Shakespeare, which, it is said, was found affixed to
+Lucy's gate, and gave him great offence. He must have been more than
+commonly sensitive to low abuse if he could have been annoyed by such a
+manifestly scurrilous ebullition of the blackguard and the
+blockhead,--supposing, indeed, that he ever saw it. The ballad,
+proffered as the work of Shakespeare, is a forgery. There is but one
+existing reason to think that the poet ever cherished a grudge against
+the Lucy family, and that is the coarse allusion to the "luces" which is
+found in the _Merry Wives of Windsor. _There was apparently, a second
+Sir Thomas Lucy, later than the Sheriff, who was more of the Puritanic
+breed, while Shakespeare evidently was a Cavalier. It is possible that
+in a youthful frolic the poet may have poached on Sheriff Lucy's
+preserves. Even so, the affair was trivial. It is possible, too, that in
+after years he may have had reason to dislike the ultra-Puritanical
+neighbour. Some memory of the tradition will, of course, haunt the
+traveller's thoughts as he strolls by Hatton Rock and through the
+villages of Hampton and Charlecote. But this discordant recollection is
+soon smoothed away by the peaceful loveliness of the ramble--past aged
+hawthorns that Shakespeare himself may have seen, and under the boughs
+of beeches, limes, and drooping willows, where every footstep falls on
+wild-flowers, or on a cool green turf that is softer than Indian silk
+and as firm and elastic as the sand of the sea-beaten shore. Thought of
+Sir Thomas Lucy will not be otherwise than kind, either, when the
+stranger in Charlecote church reads the epitaph with which the old
+knight commemorated his wife: "All the time of her Lyfe a true and
+faithfull servant of her good God; never detected of any crime or vice;
+in religion most sound; in love to her husband most faithfull and true.
+In friendship most constant. To what in trust was committed to her most
+secret; in wisdom excelling; in governing her House and bringing up of
+Youth in the feare of God that did converse with her most rare and
+singular; a great maintainer of hospitality; greatly esteemed of her
+betters; misliked of none unless the envious. When all is spoken that
+can be said, a Woman so furnished and garnished with Virtue as not to be
+bettered, and hardly to be equalled of any; as she lived most
+virtuously, so she dyed most godly. Set down by him that best did know
+what hath been written to be true. Thomas Lucy." A narrow formalist he
+may have been, and a severe magistrate in his dealings with scapegrace
+youths, and perhaps a haughty and disagreeable neighbour; but there is a
+touch of manhood, high feeling, and virtuous and self-respecting
+character in those lines, that instantly wins the response of sympathy.
+If Shakespeare really shot the deer of Thomas Lucy the injured gentleman
+had a right to feel annoyed. Shakespeare, boy or man, was not a saint,
+and those who so account him can have read his works to but little
+purpose. He can bear the full brunt of his faults. He does not need to
+be canonised.
+
+The ramble to Charlecote--one of the prettiest walks about
+Stratford--was, it may surely be supposed, often taken by Shakespeare.
+Many another ramble was possible to him and no doubt was made. He would
+cross the mill bridge (new in 1599), which spans the Avon a little way
+to the south of the church. A quaint, sleepy mill no doubt it
+was--necked with moss and ivy--and the gaze of Shakespeare assuredly
+dwelt on it with pleasure.
+
+Illustration: "Meadow Walk by the Avon."
+
+His footsteps may be traced, also, in fancy, to the region of the old
+college building, demolished in 1799, which stood in the southern part
+of Stratford, and was the home of his friend John Combe, factor of Fulke
+Greville, Earl of Warwick. Still another of his walks must have tended
+northward through Welcombe, where he was the owner of land, to the
+portly manor of Clopton, or to the home of William, nephew of
+John-a-Combe, which stood where the Phillips mansion stands now. On what
+is called the Ancient House, which stands on the west side of High
+Street, he may often have looked, as he strolled past to the Red Horse.
+That picturesque building, dated 1596, survives, notwithstanding some
+modern touches of rehabilitation, as a beautiful specimen of Tudor
+architecture in one at least of its most charming traits, the carved and
+timber-crossed gable. It is a house of three stories, containing
+parlour, sitting-room, kitchen, and several bedrooms, besides cellars
+and brew-shed; and when sold at auction, August 23, 1876, it brought
+£400. In that house was born John Harvard, who founded Harvard
+University. There are other dwellings fully as old in Stratford, but
+they have been covered with stucco and otherwise changed. This is a
+genuine piece of antiquity and it vies with the grammar-school and the
+hall of the Guild, under the pent-house of which the poet would pass
+whenever he went abroad from New Place. Julius Shaw, one of the five
+witnesses to his will, lived in the house next to the present New Place
+Museum, and there, it is reasonable to think, Shakespeare would often
+pause, for a word with his friend and neighbour. In the little streets
+by the riverside, which are ancient and redolent of the past, his image
+seems steadily familiar. In Dead Lane (once also called Walker Street,
+now called Chapel Lane) he owned a cottage, bought of Walter Getley in
+1602, and only destroyed within the present century. These and kindred
+shreds of fact, suggesting the poet as a living man and connecting him,
+however vaguely, with our everyday experience, are seized with peculiar
+zest by the pilgrim in Stratford. Such a votary, for example, never
+doubts that Shakespeare was a frequenter, in leisure or convivial hours,
+of the ancient Red Horse inn. It stood there, in his day, as it stands
+now, on the north side of Bridge Street, westward from the Avon. There
+are many other taverns in the town--the Shakespeare, a delightful
+resort, the Falcon, the Rose and Crown, the old Red Lion, and the Swan's
+Nest, being a few of them,---but the Red Horse takes precedence of all
+its kindred, in the fascinating because suggestive attribute of
+antiquity. Moreover it was the Red Horse that harboured Washington
+Irving, the pioneer of American worshippers at the shrine of
+Shakespeare; and the American explorer of Stratford would cruelly
+sacrifice his peace of mind if he were to repose under any other roof.
+The Red Horse is a rambling, three-story building, entered through an
+archway that leads into a long, straggling yard, adjacent to offices and
+stables. On one side of the entrance is found the smoking-room; on the
+other is the coffee-room. Above are the bed-rooms. It is a thoroughly
+old-fashioned inn--such a one as we may suppose the Boar's Head to have
+been, in the time of Prince Henry; such a one as untravelled Americans
+only know in the pages of Dickens. The rooms are furnished in neat,
+homelike style, and their associations readily deck them with the
+fragrant garlands of memory. When Drayton and Jonson came down to visit
+"gentle Will" at Stratford they could scarcely have omitted to quaff the
+humming ale of Warwickshire in that cosy parlour. When Queen Henrietta
+Maria was ensconced at New Place the general of the royal forces
+quartered himself at the Red Horse, and then doubtless there was enough
+and to spare of revelry within its walls. A little later the old house
+was soundly peppered by Roundhead bullets and the whole town was overrun
+with the close-cropped, psalm-singing soldiers of the Commonwealth. In
+1742 Garrick and Macklin lodged in the Red Horse, and thither again came
+Garrick in 1769, to direct the Shakespeare Jubilee, which was then most
+dismally accomplished but which is always remembered to the great
+actor's credit and honour. Betterton, no doubt, lodged there when he
+came to Stratford in quest of reminiscences of Shakespeare. The visit of
+Washington Irving, supplemented with his delicious chronicle, has led to
+what might be called almost the consecration of the parlour in which he
+sat and the chamber (No. 15) in which he slept. They still keep the
+poker--now marked "Geoffrey Crayon's sceptre"--with which, as he sat
+there in long, silent, ecstatic meditation, he prodded the fire in the
+narrow, tiny grate. They keep also the chair in which he sat--a plain,
+straight-backed arm-chair, with a haircloth seat, marked, on a brass
+plate, with his renowned and treasured name. Thus genius can sanctify
+even the humblest objects,
+
+     "And shed a something of celestial light
+     Round the familiar face of every day."
+
+To pass rapidly in review the little that is known of Shakespeare's life
+is, nevertheless, to be impressed not only by its incessant and amazing
+literary fertility but by the quick succession of its salient incidents.
+The vitality must have been enormous that created in so short a time
+such a number and variety of works of the first class. The same quick
+spirit would naturally have kept in agitation all the elements of his
+daily experience. Descended from an ancestor who had fought for the Red
+Rose on Bosworth Field, he was born to repute as well as competence, and
+during his early childhood he received instruction and training in a
+comfortable home. He escaped the plague that was raging in Stratford
+when he was an infant, and that took many victims. He went to school
+when seven years old and left it when about fourteen. He then had to
+work for his living--his once opulent father having fallen into
+misfortune--and he became an apprentice to a butcher, or else a lawyer's
+clerk (there were seven lawyers in Stratford at that time), or else a
+schoolteacher. Perhaps he was all three--and more. It is conjectured
+that he saw the players who from time to time acted in the Guildhall,
+under the auspices of the corporation of Stratford; that he attended the
+religious entertainments that were customarily given in the not distant
+city of Coventry; and that in particular he witnessed the elaborate and
+sumptuous pageants with which in 1575 the Earl of Leicester welcomed
+Queen Elizabeth to Kenilworth Castle. He married at eighteen; and,
+leaving a wife and three children in Stratford, he went up to London at
+twenty-two. His entrance into theatrical life followed--in what capacity
+it is impossible to say. One dubious account says that he held horses
+for the public at the theatre door; another that he got employment as a
+prompter to the actors. It is certain that he had not been in the
+theatrical business long before he began to make himself known. At
+twenty-eight he was a prosperous author. At twenty-nine he had acted
+with Burbage before Queen Elizabeth; and while Spenser had extolled him
+in the "Tears of the Muses," the hostile Greene had disparaged him in
+the "Groat's-worth of Wit." At thirty-three he had acquired wealth
+enough to purchase New Place, the principal residence in his native
+town, where now he placed his family and established his home,--himself
+remaining in London, but visiting Stratford at frequent intervals. At
+thirty-four he was heard of as the actor of Knowell in Ben Jonson's
+comedy of _Every Man in his Humour_¹ and he received the glowing
+encomium of Meres in _Wits Treasury. _At thirty-eight he had written
+_Hamlet _and _As You Like It, _and moreover he had now become the owner
+of more estate in Stratford, costing £320. At forty-one he made his
+largest purchase, buying for £440 the "unexpired term of a moiety of the
+interest in a lease granted in 1554 for ninety-two years of the tithes
+of Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe." In the meantime he had smoothed
+the declining years of his father and had followed him with love and
+duty to the grave. Other domestic bereavements likewise befell him, and
+other worldly cares and duties were laid upon his hands, but neither
+grief nor business could check the fertility of his brain. Within the
+next ten years he wrote, among other great plays, _Othello, Lear,
+Macbeth, _and _Coriolanus._
+
+¹ Jonson's famous comedy was first acted in 1598, "By the then Lord
+Chamberlain his servants." Knowell is designated as "an old gentleman."
+The Jonson Folio of 1692 names as follows the principal comedians who
+acted in that piece: "Will. Shakespeare. Aug. Philips. Hen. Condel.
+Will. Slye. Will. Kempe. Ric. Burbadge. Joh. Hemings. Tho. Pope. Chr.
+Beston. Joh. Duke."
+
+
+At about forty-eight he seems to have disposed of his interest in the
+two London theatres with which he had been connected, the Blackfriars
+and the Globe, and shortly afterwards, his work as we possess it being
+well-nigh completed, he retired finally to his Stratford home. That he
+was the comrade of many bright spirits who glittered in "the spacious
+times" of Elizabeth several of them have left personal testimony. That
+he was the king of them all is shown in his works. The Sonnets seem to
+disclose that there was a mysterious, almost a tragical, passage in his
+life, and that he was called to bear the burden of a great and perhaps a
+calamitous personal grief--one of those griefs, which, being caused by
+sinful love, are endless in the punishment they entail. Happily,
+however, no antiquarian student of Shakespeare's time has yet succeeded
+in coming near to the man. While he was in London he used to frequent
+the Falcon Tavern, in Southwark, and the Mermaid, and he lived at one
+time in St. Helen's parish, Aldersgate, and at another time in Clink
+Street, Southwark. As an actor his name has been associated with his
+characters of Adam, Friar Lawrence, and the Ghost of King Hamlet, and a
+contemporary reference declared him "excellent in the quality he
+professes." Some of his manuscripts, it is possible, perished in the
+fire that consumed the Globe theatre in 1613. He passed his last days in
+his home at Stratford, and died there, somewhat suddenly, on his
+fifty-second birthday. That event, it may be worth while to observe,
+occurred within thirty-three years of the execution of Charles the
+First, under the Puritan Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell. The Puritan
+spirit, intolerant of the play-house and of all its works, must then
+have been gaining formidable strength. His daughter Susanna, aged
+thirty-three at the time of his death, survived him thirty-three years.
+His daughter Judith, aged thirty-one at the time of his death, survived
+him forty-six years. The whisper of tradition says that both were
+Puritans. If so the strange and seemingly unaccountable disappearance of
+whatever play-house papers he may have left at Stratford should not be
+obscure. This suggestion is likely to have been made before; and also it
+is likely to have been supplemented with a reference to the great fire
+in London in 1666--(which in consuming St. Paul's cathedral burned an
+immense quantity of books and manuscripts that had been brought from all
+the threatened parts of the city and heaped beneath its arches for
+safety)--as probably the final and effectual holocaust of almost every
+piece of print or writing that might have served to illuminate the
+history of Shakespeare. In his personality no less than in the
+fathomless resources of his genius he baffles scrutiny and stands for
+ever alone.
+
+     "Others abide our question; thou art free:
+     We ask, and ask; thou smilest and art still--
+     Out-topping knowledge."
+
+It is impossible to convey an adequate suggestion of the prodigious and
+overwhelming sense of peace that falls upon the soul of the pilgrim in
+Stratford church. All the cares and struggles and trials of mortal life,
+all its failures, and equally all its achievements, seem there to pass
+utterly out of remembrance. It is not now an idle reflection that "the
+paths of glory lead but to the grave." No power of human thought ever
+rose higher or went further than the thought of Shakespeare. No human
+being, using the best weapons of intellectual achievement, ever
+accomplished so much. Yet here he lies--who was once so great! And here
+also, gathered around him in death, lie his parents, his children, his
+descendants, and his friends. For him and for them the struggle has long
+since ended. Let no man fear to tread the dark pathway that Shakespeare
+has trodden before him. Let no man, standing at this grave, and seeing
+and feeling that all the vast labours of that celestial genius end here
+at last in a handful of dust, fret and grieve any more over the puny and
+evanescent toils of to-day, so soon to be buried in oblivion! In the
+simple performance of duty and in the life of the affections there may
+be permanence and solace. The rest is an "insubstantial pageant." It
+breaks, it changes, it dies, it passes away, it is forgotten; and though
+a great name be now and then for a little while remembered, what can the
+remembrance of mankind signify to him who once wore it? Shakespeare,
+there is reason to believe, set precisely the right value alike upon
+contemporary renown and the homage of posterity. Though he went forth,
+as the stormy impulses of his nature drove him, into the great world of
+London, and there laid the firm hand of conquest upon the spoils of
+wealth and power, he came back at last to the peaceful home of his
+childhood; he strove to garner up the comforts and everlasting treasures
+of love at his hearthstone; he sought an enduring monument in the hearts
+of friends and companions; and so he won for his stately sepulchre the
+garland not alone of glory but of affection. Through the high eastern
+window of the chancel of Holy Trinity church the morning sunshine,
+broken into many-coloured light, streams in upon the grave of
+Shakespeare and gilds his bust upon the wall above it. He lies close by
+the altar, and every circumstance of his place of burial is eloquent of
+his hold upon the affectionate esteem of his contemporaries. The line of
+graves beginning at the north wall of the chancel and extending across
+to the south seems devoted entirely to Shakespeare and his family, with
+but one exception.¹ The pavement that covers them is of that blue-gray
+slate or freestone which in England is sometimes called black marble. In
+the first grave under the north wall rests Shakespeare's wife. The next
+is that of the poet himself, bearing the world-famed words of blessing
+and imprecation. Then comes the grave of Thomas Nashe, husband to
+Elizabeth. Hall, the poet's granddaughter, who died April 4, 1647. Next
+is that of Dr. John Hall (obiit November 25, 1635), husband to his
+daughter Susanna, and close beside him rests Susanna herself, who was
+buried on July 11, 1649. The gravestones are laid east and west, and all
+but one present inscriptions. That one is under the south wall, and
+possibly it covers the dust of Judith--Mrs. Thomas Quiney--the youngest
+daughter of Shakespeare, who, surviving her three children and thus
+leaving no descendants, died in 1662. Upon the gravestone of Susanna an
+inscription has been intruded commemorative of Richard Watts, who is
+not, however, known to have had any relationship with either Shakespeare
+or his descendants.
+
+¹ "The poet knew," says J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, "that as a tithe-owner
+he would necessarily be buried in the chancel."
+
+Shakespeare's father, who died in 1601, and his mother, Mary Arden, who
+died in 1608, were buried in or near this church. (The register says,
+under Burials, "September 9, 1608, Mayry Shaxspere, wydowe.") His infant
+sisters Joan, Margaret, and Anne, and his brother Richard, who died,
+aged thirty-nine, in 1613, may also have been laid to rest in this
+place. Of the death and burial of his brother Gilbert there is no
+record. His sister Joan, the second--Mrs. Hart--would naturally have
+been placed with her relatives. His brother Edmund, dying in 1607, aged
+twenty-seven, is under the pavement of St. Saviour's church in
+Southwark. The boy Hamnet, dying before his father had risen into local
+eminence, rests, probably, in an undistinguished grave in the
+churchyard. (The register records his burial on August 11, 1596.) The
+family of Shakespeare seems to have been short-lived and it was soon
+extinguished. He himself died at fifty-two. Judith's children perished
+young. Susanna bore but one child--Elizabeth--who became successively
+Mrs. Nashe and Lady Barnard, and she, dying in 1670, was buried at
+Abingdon, near Oxford. She left no children by either husband, and in
+her the race of Shakespeare became extinct. That of Anne Hathaway also
+has nearly disappeared, the last living descendant of the Hathaways
+being Mrs. Baker, the present occupant of Anne's cottage at Shottery.
+Thus, one by one, from the pleasant gardened town of Stratford, they
+went to take up their long abode in that old church, which was ancient
+even in their infancy, and which, watching through the centuries in its
+monastic solitude on the shore of Avon, has seen their lands and houses
+devastated by flood and fire, the places that knew them changed by the
+tooth of time, and almost all the associations of their lives
+obliterated by the improving hand of destruction.
+
+One of the oldest and most interesting Shakespearean documents in
+existence is the narrative, by a traveller named Dowdall, of his
+observations in Warwickshire, and of his visit, on April 10, 1693, to
+Stratford church. He describes therein the bust and the tombstone of
+Shakespeare, and he adds these remarkable words: "The clerk that showed
+me this church is above eighty years old. He says that not one, for fear
+of the curse above said, dare touch his gravestone, though his wife and
+daughter did earnestly desire to be laid in the same grave with him."
+Writers in modern days have been pleased to disparage that inscription
+and to conjecture that it was the work of a sexton and not of the poet;
+but no one denies that it has accomplished its purpose in preserving the
+sanctity of Shakespeare's rest. Its rugged strength, its simple pathos,
+its fitness, and its sincerity make it felt as unquestionably the
+utterance of Shakespeare himself, when it is read upon the slab that
+covers him. There the musing traveller full well conceives how dearly
+the poet must have loved the beautiful scenes of his birthplace, and
+with what intense longing he must have desired to sleep undisturbed in
+the most sacred spot in their bosom. He doubtless had some premonition
+of his approaching death. Three months before it came he made his will.
+A little later he saw the marriage of his younger daughter. Within less
+than a month of his death he executed the will, and thus set his affairs
+in order. His handwriting in the three signatures to that paper
+conspicuously exhibits the uncertainty and lassitude of shattered
+nerves. He was probably quite worn out. Within the space, at the utmost,
+of twenty-five years, he had written thirty-seven plays, one hundred and
+fifty-four sonnets, and two or more long poems; had passed through much
+and painful toil and through bitter sorrow; had made his fortune as
+author and actor; and had superintended, to excellent advantage, his
+property in London and his large interests in Stratford and its
+neighbourhood. The proclamation of health with which the will begins was
+doubtless a formality of legal custom. The story that he died of
+drinking too hard at a merry meeting with Drayton and Ben Jonson is idle
+gossip. If in those last days of fatigue and presentiment he wrote the
+epitaph that has ever since marked his grave, it would naturally have
+taken the plainest fashion of speech. Such is its character; and no
+pilgrim to the poet's shrine could wish to see it changed:--
+
+"Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare,
+To digg the dvst encloased heare;
+Blese be ye man yt spares thes stones
+And cvrst be he yt moves my bones."
+
+It was once surmised that the poet's solicitude lest his bones might be
+disturbed in death grew out of his intention to take with him into the
+grave a confession that the works which now follow him were written by
+another hand. Persons have been found who actually believe that a man
+who was great enough to write _Hamlet _could be little enough to feel
+ashamed of it, and, accordingly, that Shakespeare was only hired to play
+at authorship, as a screen for the actual author. It might not, perhaps,
+be strange that a desire for singularity, which is one of the worst
+literary crazes of this capricious age, should prompt to the rejection
+of the conclusive and overwhelming testimony to Shakespeare's genius
+that has been left by Shakespeare's contemporaries, and that shines
+forth in all that is known of his life. It is strange that a doctrine
+should get itself asserted which is subversive of common reason and
+contradictory to every known law of the human mind. This conjectural
+confession of poetic imposture has never been exhumed. The grave is
+known to have been disturbed, in 1796, when alterations were made in the
+church,¹ and there came a time in the present century when, as they were
+making repairs in the chancel pavement (the chancel was renovated in
+1835), a rift was accidently made in the Shakespeare vault. Through
+this, though not without misgiving, the sexton peeped in upon the poet's
+remains. He saw nothing but dust.
+
+¹ It was the opinion--not conclusive but interesting--of the late J. O.
+Halliwell-Phillipps that at one or other of these "restorations" the
+original tombstone of Shakespeare was removed and another one, from the
+yard of a modern stone-mason, put in its place. Dr. Ingleby, in his book
+on _Shakespeare's Bones, _1883, asserts that the original stone was
+removed. I have compared Shakespeare's tombstone with that of his wife,
+and with others in the chancel, but I have not found the discrepancy
+observed by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, and I think there is no reason to
+believe that the original tombstone has ever been disturbed. The letters
+upon it were, probably, cut deeper in 1835.
+
+The antique font from which the infant Shakespeare may have received the
+water of Christian baptism is still preserved in this church. It was
+thrown aside and replaced by a new one about the middle of the
+seventeenth century. Many years afterward it was found in the
+charnel-house. When that was destroyed, in 1800, it was cast into the
+churchyard. In later times the parish clerk used it as a trough to his
+pump. It passed then through the hands of several successive owners,
+till at last, in days that had learned to value the past and the
+associations connected with its illustrious names, it found its way back
+again to the sanctuary from which it had suffered such a rude expulsion.
+It is still a handsome stone, though broken, soiled, and marred.
+
+Illustration: "Remains of the Old Font at which, probably, Shakespeare
+was christened, now in the Nave of Stratford Church."
+
+On the north wall of the chancel, above his grave and near to "the
+American window," is placed Shakespeare's monument. It is known to have
+been erected there within seven years after his death. It consists of a
+half-length effigy, placed beneath a fretted arch, with entablature and
+pedestal, between two Corinthian columns of black marble, gilded at base
+and top. Above the entablature appear the armorial bearings of
+Shakespeare--a pointed spear on a bend sable and a silver falcon on a
+tasselled helmet supporting a spear. Over this heraldic emblem is a
+death's-head, and on each side of it sits a carved cherub, one holding a
+spade, the other an inverted torch. In front of the effigy is a cushion,
+upon which both hands rest, holding a scroll and a pen. Beneath is an
+inscription in Latin and English, supposed to have been furnished by the
+poet's son-in-law, Dr. Hall. The bust was cut by Gerard Jonson, a native
+of Amsterdam and by occupation a "tomb-maker," who lived in Southwark
+and possibly had seen the poet. The material is a soft stone, and the
+work, when first set up, was painted in the colours of life. Its
+peculiarities indicate that it was copied from a mask of the features
+taken after death. Some persons believe (upon slender and dubious
+testimony) that this mask has since been found, and busts of Shakespeare
+have been based upon it, by W. R. O'Donovan and by William Page. In
+September, 1764, John Ward, grandfather of Mrs. Siddons, having come to
+Stratford with a theatrical company, gave a performance of _Othello, _in
+the Guildhall, and devoted its proceeds to reparation of the Gerard
+Jonson effigy, then somewhat damaged by time.
+
+Illustration: "Shakespeare's Monument."
+
+The original colours were then carefully restored and freshened. In
+1793, under the direction of Malone, this bust, together with the image
+of John-a-Combe--a recumbent statue upon a tomb close to the east wall
+of the chancel--was coated with white paint. From that plight it was
+extricated, in 1861, by the assiduous skill of Simon Collins, who
+immersed it in a bath which took off the white paint and restored the
+colours. The eyes are painted light hazel, the hair and pointed beard
+auburn, the face and hands flesh-tint. The dress consists of a scarlet
+doublet, with a rolling collar, closely buttoned down the front, worn
+under a loose black gown without sleeves. The upper part of the cushion
+is green, the lower part crimson, and this object is ornamented with
+gilt tassels. The stone pen that used to be in the right hand of the
+bust was taken from it, toward the end of the last century, by a young
+Oxford student, and, being dropped by him upon the pavement, was broken.
+A quill pen has been put in its place. This is the inscription beneath
+the bust:--
+
+     Ivdicio Pylivm, genio Socratem, arte Maronem,
+     Terra tegit, popvlvs mæret, Olympvs habet.
+
+     Stay, passenger, why goest thov by so fast?
+     Read, if thov canst, whom enviovs Death hath plast
+     Within this monvment: SHAKSPEARE: with whome
+     Qvick Natvre dide; whose name doth deck ys tombe
+     Far more than cost; sieth all yt he hath writt
+     Leaves living art bvt page to serve his witt.
+
+     Obiit Ano. Doi. 1616. Ætatis 53. Die. 23. Ap.
+
+The erection of the old castles, cathedrals, monasteries, and churches
+of England was accomplished, little by little, with laborious toil
+protracted through many years. Stratford church, probably more than
+seven centuries old, presents a mixture of architectural styles, in
+which Saxon simplicity and Norman grace are beautifully mingled.
+Different parts of the structure were built at different times. It is
+fashioned in the customary crucial form, with a square tower, an octagon
+stone spire, (erected in 1764, to replace a more ancient one, made of
+oak and covered with lead), and a fretted battlement all around its
+roof. Its windows are diversified, but mostly Gothic. The approach to it
+is across a churchyard thickly sown with graves, through a lovely green
+avenue of lime-trees, leading to a porch on its north side. This avenue
+of foliage is said to be the copy of one that existed there in
+Shakespeare's day, through which he must often have walked, and through
+which at last he was carried to his grave. Time itself has fallen asleep
+in that ancient place. The low sob of the organ only deepens the awful
+sense of its silence and its dreamless repose. Yews and elms grow in the
+churchyard, and many a low tomb and many a leaning stone are there, in
+the shadow, gray with moss and mouldering with age. Birds have built
+their nests in many crevices in the timeworn tower, round which at
+sunset you may see them circle, with chirp of greeting or with call of
+anxious discontent. Near by flows the peaceful river, reflecting the
+gray spire in its dark, silent, shining waters. In the long and lonesome
+meadows beyond it the primroses stand in their golden ranks among the
+clover, and the frilled and fluted bell of the cowslip, hiding its
+single drop of blood in its bosom, closes its petals as the night comes
+down.
+
+Northward, at a little distance from the Church of the Holy Trinity,
+stands, on the west bank of the Avon, the building that will always be
+famous as the Shakespeare Memorial. The idea of the Memorial was
+suggested in 1864, incidentally to the ceremonies which then
+commemorated the three-hundredth anniversary of the poet's birth. Ten
+years later the site for this structure was presented to the town by
+Charles Edward Flower, one of its most honoured inhabitants.
+Contributions of money were then asked, and were given. Americans as
+well as Englishmen contributed. On April 23, 1877, the first stone of
+the Memorial was laid. On April 23, 1880, the building was dedicated.
+The fabric comprises a theatre, a library, and a picture-gallery. In the
+theatre the plays of Shakespeare are annually represented, in a manner
+as nearly perfect as possible. In the library and picture-gallery are to
+be assembled all the books upon Shakespeare that have been published,
+and all the choice paintings that can be obtained to illustrate his life
+and his works. As the years pass this will naturally become a principal
+depository of Shakespearean objects. A dramatic college may grow up, in
+association with the Shakespeare theatre. The gardens that surround the
+Memorial will augment their loveliness in added expanse of foliage and
+in greater wealth of floral luxuriance. The mellow tinge of age will
+soften the bright tints of the red brick that mainly composes the
+building. On its cone-shaped turrets ivy will clamber and moss will
+nestle. When a few generations have passed, the old town of Stratford
+will have adopted this now youthful stranger into the race of her
+venerated antiquities. The same air of poetic mystery that rests now
+upon his cottage and his grave will diffuse itself around his Memorial;
+and a remote posterity, looking back to the men and the ideas of to-day,
+will remember with grateful pride that English-speaking people of the
+nineteenth century, although they could confer no honour upon the great
+name of Shakespeare, yet honoured themselves in consecrating this votive
+temple to his memory.
+
+Illustration: "Gable Window"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+UP TO LONDON 1882
+
+
+About the middle of the night the great ship comes to a pause, off the
+coast of Ireland, and, looking forth across the black waves and through
+the rifts in the rising mist, we see the low and lonesome verge of that
+land of trouble and misery. A beautiful white light flashes now and then
+from the shore, and at intervals the mournful booming of a solemn bell
+floats over the sea. Soon is heard the rolling click of oars, and then
+two or three dusky boats glide past the ship, and hoarse voices hail and
+answer. A few stars are visible in the hazy sky, and the breeze from the
+land brings off, in fitful puffs, the fragrant balm of grass and clover,
+mingled with the salt odours of sea-weed and slimy rocks. There is a
+sense of mystery over the whole wild scene; but we realise now that
+human companionship is near, and that the long and lonely ocean voyage
+is ended.
+
+Illustration: "Peveril Peak."
+
+Travellers who make the run from Liverpool to London by the Midland
+Railway pass through the vale of Derby and skirt around the stately Peak
+that Scott has commemorated in his novel of Peveril. It is a more rugged
+country than is seen in the transit by the Northwestern road, but not
+more beautiful. You see the storied mountain, in its delicacy of outline
+and its airy magnificence of poise, soaring into the sky--its summit
+almost lost in the smoky haze--and you wind through hillside pastures
+and meadow-lands that are curiously intersected with low, zigzag stone
+walls; and constantly, as the scene changes, you catch glimpses of green
+lane and shining river; of dense copses that cast their cool shadow on
+the moist and gleaming emerald sod; of long white roads that stretch
+away like cathedral aisles and are lost beneath the leafy arches of elm
+and oak; of little church towers embowered in ivy; of thatched cottages
+draped with roses; of dark ravines, luxuriant with a wild profusion of
+rocks and trees; and of golden grain that softly waves and whispers in
+the summer wind; while, all around, the grassy banks and glimmering
+meadows are radiant with yellow daisies, and with that wonderful scarlet
+of the poppy that gives an almost human glow of life and loveliness to
+the whole face of England. After some hours of such a pageant--so novel,
+so fascinating, so fleeting, so stimulative of eager curiosity and
+poetic desire--it is a relief at last to stand in the populous streets
+and among the grim houses of London, with its surging tides of life, and
+its turmoil of effort, conflict, exultation, and misery. How strange it
+seems--yet, at the same time, how homelike and familiar! There soars
+aloft the great dome of St. Paul's cathedral, with its golden cross that
+flashes in the sunset! There stands the Victoria tower--fit emblem of
+the true royalty of the sovereign whose name it bears. And there, more
+lowly but more august, rise the sacred turrets of the Abbey. It is the
+same old London--the great heart of the modern world--the great city of
+our reverence and love. As the wanderer writes these words he hears the
+plashing of the fountains in Trafalgar Square and the evening chimes
+that peal out from the spire of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, and he knows
+himself once more at the shrine of his youthful dreams.
+
+Illustration: "St. Paul's from Maiden Lane."
+
+To the observant stranger in London few sights can be more impressive
+than those that illustrate the singular manner in which the life of the
+present encroaches upon the memorials of the past. Old Temple Bar has
+gone,--a sculptured griffin, at the junction of Fleet Street and the
+Strand, denoting where once it stood. (It has been removed to Theobald's
+Park, near Waltham, and is now the lodge gate of the grounds of Sir
+Henry Meux.) The Midland Railway trains dash over what was once St.
+Pancras churchyard--the burial-place of Mary Wollstonecraft and William
+Godwin, and of many other British worthies--and passengers looking from
+the carriages may see the children of the neighbourhood sporting among
+the few tombs that yet remain in that despoiled cemetery. Dolly's
+Chop-House, intimately associated with the wits of the reign of Queen
+Anne, has been destroyed. The ancient tavern of The Cock, immortalised
+by Tennyson, in his poem of Will Waterproof's Monologue, is soon to
+disappear,--with its singular wooden vestibule that existed before the
+time of the Plague and that escaped the great fire of 1666. On the site
+of Northumberland House stands the Grand Hotel. The gravestones that
+formerly paved the precinct of Westminster Abbey have been removed, to
+make way for grassy lawns intersected with pathways. In Southwark,
+across the Thames, the engine-room of the brewery of Messrs. Barclay &
+Perkins occupies the site of the Globe Theatre, in which most of
+Shakespeare's plays were first produced. One of the most venerable and
+beautiful churches in London, that of St. Bartholomew the Great,--a
+gray, mouldering temple, of the twelfth century, hidden away in a corner
+of Smithfield,--is desecrated by the irruption of an adjacent shop, the
+staircase hall of which breaks cruelly into the sacred edifice and
+impends above the altar. On July 12, 1882, the present writer, walking
+in the churchyard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden,--the sepulchre of
+William Wycherley, Robert Wilks, Charles Macklin, Joseph Haines, Thomas
+King, Samuel Butler, Thomas Southerne, Edward Shuter, Dr. Arne, Thomas
+Davies, Edward Kynaston, Richard Estcourt, William Havard, and many
+other renowned votaries of literature and the stage,--found workmen
+building a new wall to sustain the enclosure, and almost every stone in
+the cemetery uprooted and leaning against the adjacent houses. Those
+monuments, it was said, would be replaced; but it was impossible not to
+consider the chances of error in a new mortuary deal--and the grim
+witticism of Rufus Choate, about dilating with the wrong emotion, came
+then into remembrance, and did not come amiss.
+
+Illustration: "The Charter House."
+
+Facts such as these, however, bid us remember that even the relics of
+the past are passing away, and that cities, unlike human creatures, may
+grow to be so old that at last they will become new. It is not wonderful
+that London should change its aspect from one decade to another, as the
+living surmount and obliterate the dead. Thomas Sutton's Charter-House
+School, founded in 1611, when Shakespeare and Ben Jonson were still
+writing, was reared upon ground in which several thousand corses were
+buried, during the time of the Indian pestilence of 1348; and it still
+stands and nourishes--though not as vigorously now as might be wished.
+Nine thousand new houses, it is said, are built in the great capital
+every year, and twenty-eight miles of new street are thus added to it.
+On a Sunday I drove for three hours through the eastern part of London
+without coming upon a single trace of the open fields. On the west, all
+the region from Kensington to Richmond is settled for most part of the
+way; while northward the city is stretching its arms toward Hampstead,
+Highgate, and tranquil and blooming Finchley. Truly the spirit of this
+age is in strong contrast with that of the time of Henry the Eighth when
+(1530), to prevent the increasing size of London, all new buildings were
+forbidden to be erected "where no former hath been known to have been."
+The march of improvement nowadays carries everything before it: even
+British conservatism is at some points giving way: and, noting the
+changes that have occurred here within only five years, I am persuaded
+that those who would see what remains of the London of which they have
+read and dreamed--the London of Dryden and Pope, of Addison, Sheridan,
+and Byron, of Betterton, Garrick, and Edmund Kean--will, as time passes,
+find more and more difficulty both in tracing the footsteps of fame, and
+in finding that sympathetic, reverent spirit which hallows the relics of
+genius and renown.
+
+Illustration: "Church Steeple Centered on Moon"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+OLD CHURCHES OF LONDON
+
+
+Sight-seeing, merely for its own sake, is not to be commended. Hundreds
+of persons roam through the storied places of England, carrying nothing
+away but the bare sense of travel. It is not the spectacle that
+benefits, but the meaning of the spectacle. In the great temples of
+religion, in those wonderful cathedrals that are the glory of the old
+world, we ought to feel, not merely the physical beauty but the perfect,
+illimitable faith, the passionate, incessant devotion, which alone made
+them possible. The cold intellect of a sceptical age, like the present,
+could never create such a majestic cathedral as that of Canterbury. Not
+till the pilgrim feels this truth has he really learned the lesson of
+such places,--to keep alive in his heart the capacity of self-sacrifice,
+of toil and of tears, for the grandeur and beauty of the spiritual life.
+At the tombs of great men we ought to feel something more than a
+consciousness of the crumbling clay that moulders within,--something
+more even than knowledge of their memorable words and deeds: we ought,
+as we ponder on the certainty of death and the evanescence of earthly
+things, to realise that art at least is permanent, and that no creature
+can be better employed than in noble effort to make the soul worthy of
+immortality. The relics of the past, contemplated merely because they
+are relics, are nothing. You tire, in this old land, of the endless
+array of ruined castles and of wasting graves; you sicken at the thought
+of the mortality of a thousand years, decaying at your feet, and you
+long to look again on roses and the face of childhood, the ocean and the
+stars. But not if the meaning of the past is truly within your sympathy;
+not if you perceive its associations as feeling equally with knowledge;
+not if you truly know that its lessons are not of death but of life!
+To-day builds over the ruins of yesterday, as well in the soul of man as
+on the vanishing cities that mark his course. There need be no regret
+that the present should, in this sense, obliterate the past.
+
+Much, however, as London has changed, and constantly as it continues to
+change, many objects still remain, and long will continue to remain,
+that startle and impress the sensitive mind. Through all its wide
+compass, by night and day, flows and beats a turbulent, resounding tide
+of activity, and hundreds of trivial and vacuous persons, sordid,
+ignorant, and commonplace tramp to and fro amid its storied antiquities,
+heedless of their existence. Through such surroundings, but finding here
+and there a sympathetic guide or a friendly suggestion, the explorer
+must make his way,--lonely in the crowd, and walking like one who lives
+in a dream. Yet he never will drift in vain through a city like this. I
+went one night into the cloisters of Westminster Abbey--that part, the
+South Walk, which is still accessible after the gates have been closed.
+The stars shone down upon the blackening walls and glimmering windows of
+the great cathedral; the grim, mysterious arches were dimly lighted; the
+stony pathways, stretching away beneath the venerable building, seemed
+to lose themselves in caverns of darkness; not a sound was heard but the
+faint rustling of the grass upon the cloister green. Every stone there
+is the mark of a sepulchre; every breath of the night wind seemed the
+whisper of a gliding ghost. There, among the crowded graves, rest Anne
+Oldfield and Anne Bracegirdle,--in Queen Anne's reign such brilliant
+luminaries of the stage,--and there was buried the dust of Aaron Hill,
+poet and dramatist, once manager of Drury Lane, who wrote _The Fair
+Inconstant_ for Barton Booth, and some notably felicitous love-songs.
+There, too, are the relics of Susanna Maria Arne (Mrs. Theo. Cibber),
+Mrs. Dancer, Thomas Betterton, and Spranger Barry. Sitting upon the
+narrow ledge that was the monks' rest, I could touch, close at hand, the
+tomb of a mitred abbot, while at my feet was the great stone that covers
+twenty-six monks of Westminster who perished by the Plague nearly six
+hundred years ago. It would scarcely be believed that the doors of
+dwellings open upon that gloomy spot; that ladies may sometimes be seen
+tending flowers upon the ledges that roof those cloister walks. Yet so
+it is; and in such a place, at such a time, you comprehend better than
+before the self-centred, serious, ruminant, romantic character of the
+English mind,--which loves, more than anything else in the world, the
+privacy of august surroundings and a sombre and stately solitude. It
+hardly need be said that you likewise obtain here a striking sense of
+the power of contrast. I was again aware of this, a little later, when,
+seeing a dim light in St. Margaret's church near by, I entered that old
+temple and found the men of the choir at their rehearsal, and presently
+observed on the wall a brass plate which announces that Sir Walter
+Raleigh was buried here, in the chancel,--after being decapitated for
+high treason in the Palace Yard outside. Such things are the surprises
+of this historic capital. This inscription begs the reader to remember
+Raleigh's virtues as well as his faults,--a plea, surely, that every man
+might well wish should be made for himself at last. I thought of the
+verses that the old warrior-poet is said to have left in his Bible, when
+they led him out to die--
+
+     "Even such is time; that takes in trust
+               Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
+     And pays us nought but age and dust;
+               Which, in the dark and silent grave,
+     When we have wandered all our ways,
+               Shuts up the story of our days.--
+     But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
+               My God shall raise me up, I trust."
+
+This church contains a window commemorative of Raleigh, presented by
+Americans, and inscribed with these lines, by Lowell--
+
+     "The New World's sons, from England's breast we drew
+               Such milk as bids remember whence we came;
+     Proud of her past, wherefrom our future grew,
+               This window we inscribe with Raleigh's name."
+
+It also contains a window commemorative of Caxton, presented by the
+printers and publishers of London, which is inscribed with these lines
+by Tennyson--
+
+     "Thy prayer was Light--more Light--while Time shall last,
+          Thou sawest a glory growing on the night,
+      But not the shadows which that light would cast
+          Till shadows vanish in the Light of Light."
+
+In St. Margaret's--a storied haunt, for shining names alike of nobles
+and poets--was also buried John Skelton, another of the old bards (obiit
+1529), the enemy and satirist of Cardinal Wolsey and Sir Thomas More,
+one of whom he described as "madde Amaleke," and the other as "dawcock
+doctor." Their renown has managed to survive those terrific shafts; but
+at least this was a falcon who flew at eagles. Here the poet Campbell
+was married,--October 11, 1803. Such old churches as this--guarding so
+well their treasures of history--are, in a special sense, the
+traveller's blessings. At St. Giles's, Cripplegate, the janitor is a
+woman; and she will point out to you the lettered stone that formerly
+marked the grave of Milton. It is in the nave, but it has been moved to
+a place about twelve feet from its original position,--the remains of
+the illustrious poet being, in fact, beneath the floor of a pew, on the
+left of the central aisle, about the middle of the church: albeit there
+is a story, possibly true, that, on an occasion when this church was
+repaired, in August, 1790, the coffin of Milton suffered profanation,
+and his bones were dispersed.
+
+Illustration: "St. Giles', Cripplegate."
+
+Among the monuments hard by is a fine marble bust of Milton, placed
+against the wall, and it is said, by way of enhancing its value, that
+George the Third came here to see it.¹ Several of the neighbouring
+inscriptions are of astonishing quaintness. The adjacent churchyard--an
+eccentric, sequestered, lonesome bit of grassy ground, teeming with
+monuments, and hemmed in with houses, terminates, at one end, in a piece
+of the old Roman wall of London (A.D. 306),--an adamantine structure of
+cemented flints--which has lasted from the days of Constantine, and
+which bids fair to last forever. I shall always remember that strange
+nook with the golden light of a summer morning shining upon it, the
+birds twittering among its graves, and all around it such an atmosphere
+of solitude and rest as made it seem, though in the heart of the great
+city, a thousand miles from any haunt of man. (It was formally opened as
+a garden for public recreation on July 8, 1891.)
+
+¹ This memorial bears the following inscription: "John Milton. Author of
+'Paradise Lost.' Born, December 1608. Died, November 1674. His father,
+John Milton, died, March 1646. They were both interred in this church."
+
+St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, an ancient and venerable temple, the church of
+the priory of the nuns of St. Helen, built in the thirteenth century, is
+full of relics of the history of England. The priory, which adjoined
+this church, has long since disappeared and portions of the building
+have been restored; but the noble Gothic columns and the commemorative
+sculpture remain unchanged. Here are the tombs of Sir John Crosby, who
+built Crosby Place (1466), Sir Thomas Gresham, who founded both Gresham
+College and the Royal Exchange in London, and Sir William Pickering,
+once Queen Elizabeth's Minister to Spain and one of the amorous
+aspirants for her royal hand; and here, in a gloomy chapel, stands the
+veritable altar at which, it is said, the Duke of Gloster received
+absolution, after the disappearance of the princes in the Tower.
+Standing at that altar, in the cool silence of the lonely church and the
+waning light of afternoon, it was easy to conjure up his slender,
+slightly misshapen form, decked in the rich apparel that he loved, his
+handsome, aquiline, thoughtful face, the drooping head, the glittering
+eyes, the nervous hand that toyed with the dagger, and the stealthy
+stillness of his person, from head to foot, as he knelt there before the
+priest and perhaps mocked both himself and heaven with the form of
+prayer.
+
+Illustration: "Sir John Crosby's Monument."
+
+Every place that Richard touched is haunted by his magnetic presence. In
+another part of the church you are shown the tomb of a person whose will
+provided that the key of his sepulchre should be placed beside his body,
+and that the door should be opened once a year, for a hundred years. It
+seems to have been his expectation to awake and arise; but the allotted
+century has passed and his bones are still quiescent.
+
+Illustration: "Gresham's Monument."
+
+How calmly they sleep--those warriors who once filled the world with the
+tumult of their deeds! If you go into St. Mary's, in the Temple, you
+will stand above the dust of the Crusaders and see the beautiful copper
+effigies of them, recumbent on the marble pavement, and feel and know,
+as perhaps you never did before, the calm that follows the tempest. St.
+Mary's was built in 1240 and restored in 1828. It would be difficult to
+find a lovelier specimen of Norman architecture--at once massive and
+airy, perfectly simple, yet rich with beauty, in every line and scroll.
+
+Illustration: "Goldsmith's House."
+
+There is only one other church in Great Britain, it is said, which has,
+like this, a circular vestibule. The stained glass windows, both here
+and at St. Helen's, are very glorious. The organ at St. Mary's was
+selected by Jeffreys, afterwards infamous as the wicked judge. The
+pilgrim who pauses to muse at the grave of Goldsmith may often hear its
+solemn, mournful tones. I heard them thus, and was thinking of Dr.
+Johnson's tender words, when he first learned that Goldsmith was dead:
+"Poor Goldy was wild--very wild--but he is so no more." The room in
+which he died, a heart-broken man at only forty-six, was but a little
+way from the spot where he sleeps.¹ The noises of Fleet Street are heard
+there only as a distant murmur. But birds chirp over him, and leaves
+flutter down upon his tomb, and every breeze that sighs around the gray
+turrets of the ancient Temple breathes out his requiem.
+
+¹ No. 2 Brick Court, Middle Temple.--In 1757-58 Goldsmith was employed
+by a chemist, near Fish Street Hill. When he wrote his Inquiry into the
+Present State of Polite Learning in Europe he was living in Green Arbour
+Court, "over Break-neck Steps." At a lodging in Wine Office Court, Fleet
+Street, he wrote The Vicar of Wakefield. Afterwards he had lodgings at
+Canonbury House, Islington, and in 1764, in the Library Staircase of the
+Inner Temple.
+
+Illustration: "A Bit from Clare Court"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+LITERARY SHRINES OF LONDON
+
+
+The mind that can reverence historic associations needs no explanation
+of the charm that such associations possess. There are streets and
+houses in London which, for pilgrims of this class, are haunted with
+memories and hallowed with an imperishable light--that not even the
+dreary commonness of everyday life can quench or dim. Almost every great
+author in English literature has here left behind him some personal
+trace, some relic that brings us at once into his living presence. In
+the time of Shakespeare,--of whom it may be noted that wherever you find
+him at all you find him in select and elegant neighbourhoods,--St.
+Helen's parish was a secluded and peaceful quarter of the town; and
+there the poet had his residence, convenient to the theatre in
+Blackfriars, in which he is known to have owned a share. It is said that
+he dwelt at number 134 Aldersgate Street (the house has been
+demolished), and in that region,--amid all the din of traffic and all
+the strange adjuncts of a new age,--those who love him are in his
+company. Milton was born in a court adjacent to Bread Street, Cheapside,
+and the explorer comes upon him as a resident in St. Bride's
+churchyard,--where the poet Lovelace was buried,--and at the house which
+is now No. 19 York Street, Westminster (in later times occupied by
+Bentham and by Hazlitt), and in Jewin Street, Aldersgate. When secretary
+to Cromwell he lived in Scotland Yard, where now is the headquarters of
+the London police. His last home was in Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields,
+but the visitor to that spot finds it covered by the Artillery barracks.
+Walking through King Street, Westminster, you will not forget Edmund
+Spenser, who died there, in grief and destitution, a victim to the same
+inhuman spirit of Irish ruffianism that is still disgracing humanity and
+troubling the peace of the world. Everybody remembers Ben Jonson's terse
+record of that calamity: "The Irish having robbed Spenser's goods and
+burnt his house and a little child new-born, he and his wife escaped,
+and after he died, for lack of bread, in King Street." Jonson himself is
+closely and charmingly associated with places that may still be seen. He
+passed his boyhood near Charing Cross--having been born in Hartshorn
+Lane, now Northumberland Street--and went to the parish school of St.
+Martin-in-the-Fields; and those who roam around Lincoln's Inn will call
+to mind that this great poet helped to build it--a trowel in one hand
+and Horace in the other. His residence, in his days of fame, was just
+outside of Temple Bar--but all that neighbourhood is new at the present
+time.
+
+The Mermaid, which he frequented--with Shakespeare, Fletcher, Herrick,
+Chapman, and Donne--was in Bread Street, but no trace of it remains; and
+a banking-house stands now on the site of the Devil Tavern, in Fleet
+Street, where the Apollo Club, which he founded, used to meet. The
+famous inscription, "O rare Ben Jonson," is three times cut in the
+Abbey--once in Poets' Corner and twice in the north aisle where he was
+buried, the smaller of the two slabs marking the place of his vertical
+grave.
+
+Illustration: "A Bit from Clare Market."
+
+Dryden once dwelt in a narrow, dingy, quaint house, in Fetter Lane,--the
+street in which Dean Swift has placed the home of Gulliver, and where
+now (1882) the famous Doomsday Book is kept,--but later he removed to a
+finer dwelling, in Gerrard Street, Soho, which was the scene of his
+death. Both buildings are marked with mural tablets and neither of them
+seems to have undergone much change. (The house in Fetter Lane is
+gone--1891.) Edmund Burke's house, also in Gerrard Street, is a
+beer-shop; but his memory hallows the place, and an inscription upon it
+proudly announces that here he lived. Dr. Johnson's house in Gough
+Square bears likewise a mural tablet, and, standing at its time-worn
+threshold, the visitor needs no effort of fancy to picture that uncouth
+figure shambling through the crooked lanes that lead into this queer,
+sombre, melancholy retreat. In that house he wrote the first Dictionary
+of the English language and the immortal letter to Lord Chesterfield. In
+Gough Square lived and died Hugh Kelly, dramatist, author of _The School
+of Wives_ and _The Man of Reason_, and one of the friends of Goldsmith,
+at whose burial he was present. The historical antiquarian society that
+has marked many of the literary shrines of London has rendered a great
+service. The houses associated with Reynolds and Hogarth, in Leicester
+Square, Byron, in Holies Street, Benjamin Franklin and Peter the Great,
+in Craven Street, Campbell, in Duke Street, St. James's, Garrick, in the
+Adelphi Terrace, Michael Farraday, in Blandford Street, and
+Mrs. Siddons, in Baker Street, are but a few of the historic spots which
+are thus commemorated. Much, however, remains to be done. One would like
+to know, for instance, in which room in "The Albany" it was that Byron
+wrote _Lara_¹ in which of the houses of Buckingham Street Coleridge had
+his lodging while he was translating _Wallenstein;_ whereabouts in
+Bloomsbury Square was the residence of Akenside, who wrote _The
+Pleasures of Imagination,_ and of Croly, who wrote _Salathiel;_ or where
+it was that Gray lived, when he established himself close by Russell
+Square, in order to be one of the first--as he continued to be one of
+the most constant--students at the then newly opened British Museum
+(1759).
+
+¹ Byron was born at No. 34 Holies Street, Cavendish Square. While he was
+at school in Dulwich Grove his mother lived in a house in Sloane
+Terrace. Other houses associated with him are No. 8 St. James Street; a
+lodging in Bennet Street; No. 2 "The Albany"--a lodging that he rented
+of Lord Althorpe, and entered on March 28, 1814; and No. 139 Piccadilly,
+where his daughter, Ada, was born, and where Lady Byron left him. This,
+at present, is the home of the genial scholar Sir Algernon Borthwick
+(1893). John Murray's house, where Byron's fragment of Autobiography was
+burned, is in Albemarle Street. Byron's body, when brought home from
+Greece, lay in state at No. 25 Great George Street, Westminster, before
+being taken north, to Hucknall-Torkard church, in Nottinghamshire, for
+burial.
+
+These, and such as these, may seem trivial things; but Nature has denied
+an unfailing source of innocent happiness to the man who can find no
+pleasure in them. For my part, when rambling in Fleet Street it is a
+special delight to remember even so slight an incident as that recorded
+of the author of the _Elegy in a Country Churchyard_,--that he once saw
+there his satirist, Dr. Johnson, rolling and puffing along the sidewalk,
+and cried out to a friend, "Here comes Ursa Major." For the true lovers
+of literature "Ursa Major" walks oftener in Fleet Street to-day than any
+living man.
+
+A good thread of literary research might be profitably followed by him
+who should trace the footsteps of all the poets that have held, in
+England, the office of laureate. John Kay was laureate in the reign of
+Edward IV.; Andrew Bernard in that of Henry VII.; John Skelton in that
+of Henry VIII.; and Edmund Spenser in that of Elizabeth.
+
+Illustration: "Fleet Street in 1780."
+
+Since then the succession has included the names of Samuel Daniel,
+Michael Drayton, Ben Jonson, Sir William Davenant, John Dryden, Thomas
+Shadwell, Nahum Tate, Nicholas Rowe, Lawrence Eusden, Colley Cibber,
+William Whitehead, Thomas Wharton, Henry James Pye, Robert Southey,
+William Wordsworth, and Alfred Tennyson--who, until his death, in 1892,
+wore, in spotless renown, that
+
+      "Laurel greener from the brows
+      Of him that utter'd nothing base."
+
+Most of those bards were intimately associated with London, and several
+of them are buried in the Abbey. It is, indeed, because so many storied
+names are written upon gravestones that the explorer of the old churches
+of London finds so rich a harvest of impressive association and lofty
+thought. Few persons visit them, and you are likely to find yourself
+comparatively alone in rambles of this kind. I went one morning into St.
+Martin--once "in the fields," now in one of the busiest thoroughfares at
+the centre of the city--and found there only a pew-opener preparing for
+the service, and an organist playing an anthem. It is a beautiful
+structure, with its graceful spire and its columns of weather-beaten
+stone, curiously stained in gray and sooty black, and it is almost as
+famous for theatrical names as St. Paul's, Covent Garden, or St.
+George's, Bloomsbury, or St. Clement Danes. Here, in a vault beneath the
+church, was buried the bewitching and affectionate Nell Gwyn; here is
+the grave of James Smith, joint author with his brother Horace--who was
+buried at Tunbridge Wells--of _The Rejected Addresses;_ here rests
+Yates, the original Sir Oliver Surface; and here were laid the ashes of
+the romantic and sprightly Mrs. Centlivre, and of George Farquhar, whom
+neither youth, genius, patient labour, nor sterling achievement could
+save from a life of misfortune and an untimely and piteous death. A
+cheerier association of this church is with Thomas Moore, the poet of
+Ireland, who was here married.
+
+Illustration: "Gray's Inn Square."
+
+At St. Giles-in-the-Fields, again, are the graves of George Chapman, who
+translated Homer, Andrew Marvel, who wrote such lovely lyrics of love,
+Rich, the manager, who brought out Gay's _Beggar's Opera_, and James
+Shirley, the fine old dramatist and poet, whose immortal couplet has
+been so often murmured in such solemn haunts as these--
+
+      "Only the actions of the just
+      Smell sweet and blossom in the dust."
+
+Shirley lived in Gray's Inn when he was writing his plays, and he was
+fortunate in the favour of queen Henrietta Maria, wife to Charles the
+First; but when the Puritan times arrived he fell into misfortune and
+poverty and became a school-teacher in Whitefriars. In 1666 he was
+living in or near Fleet Street, and his home was one of the many
+dwellings that were destroyed in the great fire. Then he fled, with his
+wife, into the parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, where, overcome with
+grief and terror, they both died, within twenty-four hours of each
+other, and were buried in the same grave.
+
+Illustration: "Shield with Gargoyle Head"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+A HAUNT OF EDMUND KEAN
+
+
+To muse over the dust of those about whom we have read so much--the
+great actors, thinkers, and writers, the warriors and statesmen for whom
+the play is ended and the lights are put out--is to come very near to
+them, and to realise more deeply than ever before their close
+relationship with our own humanity; and we ought to be wiser and better
+for this experience. It is good, also, to seek out the favourite haunts
+of our heroes, and call them up as they were in their lives. One of the
+happiest accidents of a London stroll was the finding of the Harp
+Tavern,¹ in Russell Street, Covent Garden, near the stage door of Drury
+Lane theatre, which was the accustomed resort of Edmund Kean.
+
+¹ An account of the Harp, in the _Victuallers' Gazette_, says that this
+tavern has had within its doors every actor of note since the days of
+Garrick, and many actresses, also, of the latter part of the eighteenth
+century; and it mentions, as visitants there, Dora Jordan, Nance
+Oldfield, Anne Bracegirdle, Kitty Clive, Harriet Mellon, Barton Booth,
+Quin, Cibber, Macklin, Grimaldi, Eliza Vestris, and Miss Stephens--who
+became Countess of Essex.
+
+Carpenters and masons were at work upon it when I entered, and it was
+necessary almost to creep amid heaps of broken mortar and rubbish
+beneath their scaffolds, in order to reach the interior rooms. Here, at
+the end of a narrow passage, was a little apartment, perhaps fifteen
+feet square, with a low ceiling and a bare floor, in which Kean
+habitually took his pleasure, in the society of fellow-actors and boon
+companions, long ago. A narrow, cushioned bench against the walls, a few
+small tables, a chair or two, a number of churchwarden pipes on the
+mantlepiece, and portraits of Disraeli and Gladstone, constituted the
+furniture. A panelled wainscot and dingy red paper covered the walls,
+and a few cobwebs hung from the grimy ceiling. By this time the old room
+has been made neat and comely; but then it bore the marks of hard usage
+and long neglect, and it seemed all the more interesting for that
+reason.
+
+Kean's seat is at the right, as you enter, and just above it a mural
+tablet designates the spot,--which is still further commemorated by a
+death-mask of the actor, placed on a little shelf of dark wood and
+covered with glass. No better portrait could be desired; certainly no
+truer one exists. In life this must have been a glorious face. The eyes
+are large and prominent, the brow is broad and fine, the mouth wide and
+obviously sensitive, the chin delicate, and the nose long, well set, and
+indicative of immense force of character. The whole expression of the
+face is that of refinement and of great and desolate sadness. Kean, as
+is known from the testimony of one who acted with him,¹ was always at
+his best in passages of pathos.
+
+¹ The mother of Jefferson, the comedian, described Edmund Kean in this
+way. She was a member of the company at the Walnut Street Theatre,
+Philadelphia, when he acted there, and it was she who sang for him, when
+he acted The Stranger, the well-known lines, by Sheridan,--
+
+      "I have a silent sorrow here,
+      A grief I'll ne'er impart;
+      It breathes no sigh, it sheds no tear,
+      But it consumes my heart."
+
+To hear him speak Othello's farewell was to hear the perfect music of
+heart-broken despair. To see him when, as The Stranger, he listened to
+the song, was to see the genuine, absolute reality of hopeless sorrow.
+He could, of course, thrill his hearers in the ferocious outbursts-of
+Richard and Sir Giles, but it was in tenderness and grief that he was
+supremely great; and no one will wonder at that who looks upon his noble
+face--so eloquent of self-conflict and suffering--even in this cold and
+colourless mask of death. It is easy to judge and condemn the sins of a
+weak, passionate humanity; but when we think of such creatures of genius
+as Edmund Kean and Robert Burns, we ought to consider what demons in
+their own souls those wretched men were forced to fight, and by what
+agonies they expiated their vices and errors. This little tavern-room
+tells the whole mournful story, with death to point the moral, and pity
+to breathe its sigh of unavailing regret.
+
+Many of the present frequenters of the Harp are elderly men, whose
+conversation is enriched with memories of the stage and with ample
+knowledge and judicious taste in literature and art. They naturally
+speak with pride of Kean's association with their favourite resort.
+Often in that room the eccentric genius has put himself in pawn, to
+exact from the manager of Drury Lane theatre the money needed to relieve
+the wants of some brother actor. Often his voice has been heard there,
+in the songs that he sang with so much feeling and sweetness and such
+homely yet beautiful skill. In the circles of the learned and courtly he
+never was really at home; but here he filled the throne and ruled the
+kingdom of the revel, and here no doubt every mood of his mind, from
+high thought and generous emotion to misanthropical bitterness and
+vacant levity, found its unfettered expression. They show you a broken
+panel in the high wainscot, which was struck and smashed by a pewter pot
+that he hurled at the head of a person who had given him offence; and
+they tell you at the same time,--as, indeed, is historically true,--that
+he was the idol of his comrades, the first in love, pity, sympathy, and
+kindness, and would turn his back, any day, for the least of them, on
+the nobles who sought his companionship. There is no better place than
+this in which to study the life of Edmund Kean. Old men have been met
+with here who saw him on the stage, and even acted with him. The room is
+the weekly meeting-place and habitual nightly tryst of an ancient club,
+called the City of Lushington, which has existed since the days of the
+Regency, and of which these persons are members. The City has its Mayor,
+Sheriff, insignia, record-book, and system of ceremonials; and much of
+wit, wisdom, and song may be enjoyed at its civic feasts. The names of
+its four wards--Lunacy, Suicide, Poverty, and Juniper--are written up in
+the four corners of the room, and whoever joins must select his ward.
+Sheridan was a member of it, and so was the Regent; and the present
+landlord of the Harp (Mr. M'Pherson) preserves among his relics the
+chairs in which those gay companions sat, when the author presided over
+the initiation of the prince. It is thought that this club grew out of
+the society of The Wolves, which was formed by Kean's adherents, when
+the elder Booth arose to disturb his supremacy upon the stage. But there
+is no malice in it now. Its purposes are simply convivial and literary,
+and its tone is that of thorough good-will.¹
+
+¹ A coloured print of this room may be found in that eccentric book _The
+Life of an Actor,_ by Pierce Egan: 1825.
+
+One of the gentlest and most winning traits in the English character is
+its instinct of companionship as to literature and art. Since the days
+of the Mermaid the authors and actors of London have dearly loved and
+deeply enjoyed such odd little fraternities of wit as are typified, not
+inaptly, by the City of Lushington. There are no rosier hours in my
+memory than those that were passed, between midnight and morning, in the
+cosy clubs in London. And when dark days come, and foes harass, and the
+troubles of life annoy, it will be sweet to think that in still another
+sacred retreat of friendship, across the sea, the old armour is gleaming
+in the festal lights, where one of the gentlest spirits that ever wore
+the laurel of England's love smiles kindly on his comrades and seems to
+murmur the charm of English hospitality--
+
+      "Let no one take beyond this threshold hence
+      Words uttered here in friendship's confidence."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+STOKE-POGIS AND THOMAS GRAY
+
+
+It is a cool afternoon in July, and the shadows are falling eastward on
+fields of waving grain and lawns of emerald velvet. Overhead a few light
+clouds are drifting, and the green boughs of the great elms are gently
+stirred by a breeze from the west. Across one of the more distant fields
+a flock of sable rooks--some of them fluttering and cawing--wings its
+slow and melancholy flight. There is the sound of the whetting of a
+scythe, and, near by, the twittering of many birds upon a cottage roof.
+On either side of the country road, which runs like a white rivulet
+through banks of green, the hawthorn hedges are shining and the bright
+sod is spangled with all the wild-flowers of an English summer. An odour
+of lime-trees and of new-mown hay sweetens the air for many miles
+around. Far off, on the horizon's verge, just glimmering through the
+haze, rises the imperial citadel of Windsor. And close at hand a little
+child points to a gray spire¹ peering out of a nest of ivy, and tells me
+that this is Stoke-Pogis church.
+
+¹ In Gray's time there was no spire on the church--nor is the spire an
+improvement to the tower.
+
+If peace dwells anywhere upon the earth its dwelling-place is here. You
+come into this little churchyard by a pathway across the park and
+through a wooden turnstile; and in one moment the whole world is left
+behind and forgotten. Here are the nodding elms; here is the yew-tree's
+shade; here "heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap." All these
+graves seem very old. The long grass waves over them, and some of the
+low stones that mark them are entirely shrouded with ivy. Many of the
+"frail memorials" are made of wood. None of them is neglected or
+forlorn, but all of them seem to have been scattered here, in that sweet
+disorder which is the perfection of rural loveliness. There never, of
+course, could have been any thought of creating this effect; yet here it
+remains, to win your heart forever. And here, amid this mournful beauty,
+the little church itself nestles close to the ground, while every tree
+that waves its branches around it, and every vine that clambers on its
+surface, seems to clasp it in the arms of love. Nothing breaks the
+silence but the sighing of the wind in the great yew-tree at the church
+door,--beneath which was the poet's favourite seat, and where the brown
+needles, falling, through many an autumn, have made a dense carpet on
+the turf. Now and then there is a faint rustle in the ivy; a fitful
+bird-note serves but to deepen the stillness; and from a rose-tree near
+at hand a few leaves flutter down, in soundless benediction on the dust
+beneath.
+
+Illustration: "Stoke-Pogis Church."
+
+Gray was laid in the same grave with his mother, "the careful, tender
+mother of many children, one alone of whom," as he wrote upon her
+gravestone, "had the misfortune to survive her." Their tomb--a low,
+oblong, brick structure, covered with a large slab--stands a few feet
+away from the church wall, upon which is a small tablet to denote its
+place. The poet's name has not been inscribed above him. There was no
+need here of "storied urn or animated bust." The place is his monument,
+and the majestic Elegy--giving to the soul of the place a form of
+seraphic beauty and a voice of celestial music--is his immortal epitaph.
+
+     "There scatter'd oft, the earliest of ye Year,
+          By hands unseen are showers of vi'lets found;
+     The Redbreast loves to build & warble there,
+          And little Footsteps lightly print the ground."
+
+There is a monument to Gray in Stoke Park, about two hundred yards from
+the church; but it seems commemorative of the builder rather than the
+poet. They intend to set a memorial window in the church, to honour him,
+and the visitor finds there a money-box for the reception of
+contributions in aid of this pious design. Nothing will be done amiss
+that serves to direct closer attention to his life. It was one of the
+best lives ever recorded in the history of literature. It was a life
+singularly pure, noble, and beautiful. In two qualities, sincerity and
+reticence, it was exemplary almost beyond a parallel; and those are
+qualities that literary character in the present day has great need to
+acquire. Gray was averse to publicity. He did not sway by the censure of
+other men; neither did he need their admiration as his breath of life.
+Poetry, to him, was a great art, and he added nothing to literature
+until he had first made it as nearly perfect as it could be made by the
+thoughtful, laborious exertion of his best powers, superadded to the
+spontaneous impulse and flow of his genius. More voluminous writers,
+Charles Dickens among the rest, have sneered at him because he wrote so
+little. The most colossal form of human complacency is that of the
+individual who thinks all other creatures inferior who happen to be
+unlike himself. This reticence on the part of Gray was, in fact, the
+emblem of his sincerity and the compelling cause of his imperishable
+renown. There is a better thing than the great man who is always
+speaking; and that is the great man who only speaks when he has a great
+word to say. Gray has left only a few poems; but of his principal works
+each is perfect in its kind, supreme and unapproachable. He did not test
+merit by reference to ill-formed and capricious public opinion, but he
+wrought according to the highest standards of art that learning and
+taste could furnish. His letters form an English classic. There is no
+purer prose in existence; there is not much that is so pure. But the
+crowning glory of Gray's nature, the element that makes it so
+impressive, the charm that brings the pilgrim to Stoke-Pogis church to
+muse upon it, was the self-poised, sincere, and lovely exaltation of its
+contemplative spirit. He was a man whose conduct of life would, first of
+all, purify, expand, and adorn the temple of his own soul, out of which
+should afterward flow, in their own free way, those choral harmonies
+that soothe, guide, and exalt the human race. He lived before he wrote.
+The soul of the Elegy is the soul of the man. It was his thought--which
+he has somewhere expressed in better words than these--that human beings
+are only at their best while such feelings endure as are engendered when
+death has just taken from us the objects of our love. That was the point
+of view from which he habitually looked upon the world; and no man who
+has learned the lessons of experience can doubt that he was right.
+
+Gray was twenty-six years old when he wrote the first draft of the
+Elegy. He began that poem in 1742, at Stoke-Pogis, and he finished and
+published it in 1751. No visitor to this churchyard can miss either its
+inspiration or its imagery. The poet has been dead more than a hundred
+years, but the scene of his rambles and reveries has suffered no
+material change. One of his yew-trees, indeed, much weakened with age,
+was some time since blown down, in a storm, and its fragments have been
+carried away. The picturesque manor house not far distant was once the
+home of Admiral Penn, father of William Penn the famous Quaker.¹
+
+¹ William Penn and his children are buried in the little Jordans
+graveyard, not many miles away. The visitor to Stoke-Pogis should not
+omit a visit to Upton church, Burnham village, and Binfield. Pope lived
+at Binfield when he wrote his poem on Windsor Forest. Upton claims to
+have had a share in the inspiration of the Elegy, but Stoke-Pogis was
+unquestionably his place of residence when he wrote it. Langley Marish
+ought to be visited also, and Horton--where Milton wrote "L'Allegro,"
+"II Penseroso," and "Comus." Chalfont St. Peter is accessible, where
+still is standing the house in which Milton finished _Paradise Lost_ and
+began _Paradise Regained;_ and from there a short drive will take you to
+Beaconsfield, where you may see Edmund Burke's tablet, in the church,
+and the monument to Waller, in the churchyard.
+
+All the trees of the region have, of course, waxed and expanded,--not
+forgetting the neighbouring beeches of Burnham, among which he loved to
+wander, and where he might often have been found, sitting with his book,
+at some gnarled wreath of "old fantastic roots." But in its general
+characteristics, its rustic homeliness and peaceful beauty, this
+"glimmering landscape," immortalised in his verse, is the same on which
+his living eyes have looked. There was no need to seek for him in any
+special spot. The house in which he once lived might, no doubt, be
+discovered; but every nook and vista, every green lane and upland lawn
+and ivy-mantled tower of this delicious solitude is haunted with his
+presence.
+
+The night is coming on and the picture will soon be dark; but never
+while memory lasts can it fade out of the heart. What a blessing would
+be ours, if only we could hold forever that exaltation of the spirit,
+that sweet, resigned serenity, that pure freedom from all the passions
+of nature and all the cares of life, which comes upon us in such a place
+as this! Alas, and again alas! Even with the thought this golden mood
+begins to melt away; even with the thought comes our dismissal from its
+influence. Nor will it avail us anything now to linger at the shrine.
+Fortunate is he, though in bereavement and regret, who parts from beauty
+while yet her kiss is warm upon his lips,--waiting not for the last
+farewell word, hearing not the last notes of the music, seeing not the
+last gleams of sunset as the light dies from the sky. It was a sad
+parting, but the memory of the place can never now be despoiled of its
+loveliness. As I write these words I stand again in the cool and dusky
+silence of the poet's church, with its air of stately age and its
+fragrance of cleanliness, while the light of the western sun, broken
+into rays of gold and ruby, streams through the painted windows and
+softly falls upon the quaint little galleries and decorous pews; and,
+looking forth through the low, arched door, I see the dark and
+melancholy boughs of the dreaming yew-tree, and, nearer, a shadow of
+rippling leaves in the clear sunshine of the churchway path. And all the
+time a gentle voice is whispering, in the chambers of thought--
+
+     "No farther seek his merits to disclose,
+          Or draw his frailties from their dread abode:
+     (There they alike in trembling hope repose),
+          The bosom of his Father and his God."
+
+Illustration: "Old Church."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+AT THE GRAVE OF COLERIDGE
+
+
+Among the deeply meditative, melodious, and eloquent poems of Wordsworth
+there is one---about the burial of Ossian--that glances at the question
+of fitness in a place of sepulchre. Not always, for the illustrious
+dead, has the final couch of rest been rightly chosen. We think with
+resignation, and with a kind of pride, of Keats and Shelley in the
+little Protestant burial-ground at Rome. Every heart is touched at the
+spectacle of Garrick and Johnson sleeping side by side in Westminster
+Abbey. It was right that the dust of Dean Stanley should mingle with the
+dust of poets and of kings; and to see--as the present writer did, only
+a little while ago--fresh flowers on the stone that covers him, in the
+chapel of Henry the Seventh, was to feel a tender gladness and solemn
+content. Shakespeare's grave, in the chancel of Stratford church,
+awakens the same ennobling awe and melancholy pleasure; and it is with
+kindred feeling that you linger at the tomb of Gray. But who can be
+content that poor Letitia Landon should sleep beneath the pavement of a
+barrack, with soldiers trampling over her dust? One might almost think,
+sometimes, that the spirit of calamity, which follows certain persons
+throughout the whole of life, had pursued them even in death, to haunt
+about their repose and to mar all the gentleness of association that
+ought to hallow it. Chatterton, a pauper and a suicide, was huddled into
+a workhouse graveyard, the very place of which--in Shoe Lane, covered
+now by Farringdon Market--has disappeared. Otway, miserable in his love
+for Elizabeth Barry, the actress, and said to have starved to death in
+the Minories, near the Tower of London, was laid in a vault of St.
+Clement Danes, in the middle of the Strand, where never the green leaves
+rustle, but where the roar of the mighty city pours on in continual
+tumult. That church holds also the remains of William Mountfort, the
+actor, slain in a brawl by Lord Mohun; of Nat Lee, "the mad poet"; of
+George Powell, the tragedian, of brilliant and deplorable memory; and of
+the handsome Hildebrand Horden, cut off by a violent death in the
+springtime of his youth. Hildebrand Horden was the son of a clergyman of
+Twickenham and lived in the reign of William and Mary. Dramatic
+chronicles say that he was possessed of great talent as an actor, and of
+remarkable personal beauty. He was stabbed, in a quarrel, at the Rose
+Tavern; and after he had been laid out for the grave, such was the
+lively feminine interest in his handsome person, many ladies came, some
+masked and others openly, to view him in his shroud. This is mentioned
+in Colley Cibber's _Apology._ Charles Coffey, the dramatist, author of
+_The Devil upon Two Sticks,_ and other plays, lies in the vaults of St.
+Clement; as likewise does Thomas Rymer, historiographer for William
+III., successor to Shadwell, and author of Foedera, in seventeen
+volumes. In the church of St. Clement you may see the pew in which Dr.
+Johnson habitually sat when he attended divine service there. It was his
+favourite church. The pew is in the gallery; and to those who honour the
+passionate integrity and fervent, devout zeal of the stalwart old
+champion of letters, it is indeed a sacred shrine. Henry Mossop, one of
+the stateliest of stately actors, perishing, by slow degrees, of penury
+and grief,--which he bore in proud silence,--found a refuge, at last, in
+the barren gloom of Chelsea churchyard. Theodore Hook, the cheeriest
+spirit of his time, the man who filled every hour of life with the
+sunshine of his wit and was wasted and degraded by his own brilliancy,
+rests, close by Bishop Sherlock, in Fulham churchyard,--one of the
+dreariest spots in the suburbs of London. Perhaps it does not much
+signify, when once the play is over, in what oblivion our crumbling
+relics are hidden away. Yet to most human creatures these are sacred
+things, and many a loving heart, for all time to come, will choose a
+consecrated spot for the repose of the dead, and will echo the tender
+words of Longfellow,--so truly expressive of a universal and reverent
+sentiment--
+
+     "Take them, O Grave, and let them lie
+          Folded upon thy narrow shelves,
+     As garments by the soul laid by
+          And precious only to ourselves."
+
+One of the most impressive of the many literary pilgrimages that I have
+made was that which brought me to the house in which Coleridge died, and
+the place where he was buried. The student needs not to be told that
+this poet, born in 1772, the year after Gray's death, bore the white
+lilies of pure literature till 1834, when he too entered into his rest.
+The last nineteen years of the life of Coleridge were spent in a house
+at Highgate; and there, within a few steps of each other, the visitor
+may behold his dwelling and his tomb. The house is one in a block of
+dwellings, situated in what is called the Grove--a broad, embowered
+street, a little way from the centre of the village. There are gardens
+attached to these houses, both in the front and the rear, and the smooth
+and peaceful roadside walks in the Grove itself are pleasantly shaded by
+elms of noble size and abundant foliage. These were young trees when
+Coleridge saw them, and all this neighbourhood, in his day, was but
+thinly settled. Looking from his chamber window he could see the dusky
+outlines of sombre London, crowned with the dome of St. Paul's on the
+southern horizon, while, more near, across a fertile and smiling valley,
+the gray spire of Hampstead church would bound his prospect, rising
+above the verdant woodland of Caen.¹ In front were beds of flowers, and
+all around he might hear the songs of birds that filled the fragrant air
+with their happy, careless music. Not far away stood the old church of
+Highgate, long since destroyed, in which he used to worship, and close
+by was the Gate House inn, primitive, quaint, and cosy, which still is
+standing, to comfort the weary traveller with its wholesome hospitality.
+
+¹ "Come in the first stage, so as either to walk, or to be driven in
+Mr. Gilman's gig, to Caen wood and its delicious groves and alleys, the
+finest in England, a grand cathedral aisle of giant lime-trees, Pope's
+favourite composition walk, when with the old Earl."--_Coleridge to
+Crabb Robinson. Highgate, June_ 1817
+
+Illustration: "The White Hart."
+
+Highgate, with all its rural peace, must have been a bustling place in
+the old times, for all the travel went through it that passed either
+into or out of London by the great north road,--that road in which
+Whittington heard the prophetic summons of the bells, and where may
+still be seen, suitably and rightly marked, the site of the stone on
+which he sat to rest. Here, indeed, the coaches used to halt, either to
+feed or to change horses, and here the many neglected little taverns
+still remaining, with their odd names and their swinging signs, testify
+to the discarded customs of a bygone age. Some years ago a new road was
+cut, so that travellers might wind around the hill, and avoid climbing
+the steep ascent to the village; and since then the grass has begun to
+grow in the streets. But such bustle as once enlivened the solitude of
+Highgate could never have been otherwise than agreeable diversion to its
+inhabitants; while for Coleridge himself, as we can well imagine, the
+London coach was welcome indeed, that brought to his door such
+well-loved friends as Charles Lamb, Joseph Henry Green, Crabb Robinson,
+Wordsworth, or Talfourd.
+
+To this retreat the author of _The Ancient Mariner_ withdrew in 1815, to
+live with his friend James Gilman, a surgeon, who had undertaken to
+rescue him from the demon of opium, but who, as De Quincey intimates,
+was lured by the poet into the service of the very fiend whom both had
+striven to subdue. It was his last refuge, and he never left it till he
+was released from life. As you ramble in that quiet neighbourhood your
+fancy will not fail to conjure up his placid figure,--the silver hair,
+the pale face, the great, luminous, changeful blue eyes, the somewhat
+portly form clothed in black raiment, the slow, feeble walk, the sweet,
+benignant manner, the voice that was perfect melody, and the
+inexhaustible talk that was the flow of a golden sea of eloquence and
+wisdom. Coleridge was often seen walking there, with a book in his hand;
+and the children of the village knew him and loved him. His presence is
+impressed forever upon the place, to haunt and to hallow it. He was a
+very great man. The wings of his imagination wave easily in the opal air
+of the highest heaven. The power and majesty of his thought are such as
+establish forever in the human mind the conviction of personal
+immortality. Yet how forlorn the ending that this stately soul was
+enforced to make! For more than thirty years he was the slave of opium.
+It blighted his home; it alienated his wife; it ruined his health; it
+made him utterly wretched. "I have been, through a large portion of my
+later life," he wrote, in 1834, "a sufferer, sorely afflicted with
+bodily pains, languor, and manifold infirmities." But behind all
+this,--more dreadful still and harder to bear,--was he not the slave of
+some ingrained perversity of the mind itself, some helpless and hopeless
+irresolution of character, some enervating spell of that sublime yet
+pitiable dejection of Hamlet, which kept him forever at war with
+himself, and, last of all, cast him out upon the homeless ocean of
+despair, to drift away into ruin and death? There are shapes more awful
+than his, in the records of literary history,--the ravaged, agonising
+form of Swift, for instance, and the wonderful, desolate face of Byron;
+but there is no figure more forlorn and pathetic.
+
+This way the memory of Coleridge came upon me, standing at his grave. He
+should have been laid in some wild, free place, where the grass could
+grow above him and the trees could wave their branches over his head.
+They placed him in a ponderous tomb, of gray stone, in Highgate
+churchyard, and in later times they have reared a new building above
+it,--the grammar-school of the village,--so that now the tomb, fenced
+round with iron, is in a cold, barren, gloomy crypt, accessible indeed
+from the churchyard, through several arches, but grim and doleful in all
+its surroundings; as if the evil and cruel fate that marred his life
+were still triumphant over his ashes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+ON BARNET BATTLE-FIELD
+
+
+In England, as elsewhere, every historic spot is occupied; and of course
+it sometimes happens, at such a spot, that its association is marred and
+its sentiment almost destroyed by the presence of the persons and the
+interests of to-day. The visitor to such places must carry with him not
+only knowledge and sensibility but imagination and patience. He will not
+find the way strewn with roses nor the atmosphere of poetry ready-made
+for his enjoyment. That atmosphere, indeed, for the most
+part--especially in the cities--he must himself supply. Relics do not
+robe themselves for exhibition. The Past is utterly indifferent to its
+worshippers. All manner of little obstacles, too, will arise before the
+pilgrim, to thwart him in his search. The mental strain and
+bewilderment, the inevitable physical weariness, the soporific influence
+of the climate, the tumult of the streets, the frequent and
+disheartening spectacle of poverty, squalor, and vice, the capricious
+and untimely rain, the inconvenience of long distances, the ill-timed
+arrival and consequent disappointment, the occasional nervous sense of
+loneliness and insecurity, the inappropriate boor, the ignorant,
+garrulous porter, the extortionate cabman, and the jeering
+bystander--all these must be regarded with resolute indifference by him
+who would ramble, pleasantly and profitably, in the footprints of
+English history. Everything depends, in other words, upon the eyes with
+which you observe and the spirit which you impart. Never was a keener
+truth uttered than in the couplet of Wordsworth--
+
+      "Minds that have nothing to confer
+      Find little to perceive."
+
+To the philosophic stranger, however, even this prosaic occupancy of
+historic places is not without its pleasurable, because humorous,
+significance. Such an observer in England will sometimes be amused as
+well as impressed by a sudden sense of the singular incidental position
+into which--partly through the lapse of years, and partly through a
+peculiarity of national character--the scenes of famous events, not to
+say the events themselves, have gradually drifted. I thought of this one
+night, when, in Whitehall Gardens, I was looking at the statue of James
+the Second, and a courteous policeman came up and silently turned the
+light of his bull's-eye upon the inscription. A scene of more
+incongruous elements, or one suggestive of a more serio-comic contrast,
+could not be imagined. I thought of it again when standing on the
+village green near Barnet, and viewing, amid surroundings both pastoral
+and ludicrous, the column which there commemorates the defeat and death
+of the great Earl of Warwick, and, consequently, the final triumph of
+the Grown over the last of the Barons of England.
+
+It was toward the close of a cool summer day, and of a long drive
+through the beautiful hedgerows of sweet and verdurous Middlesex, that I
+came to the villages of Barnet and Hadley, and went over the field of
+King Edward's victory,--that fatal glorious field, on which Gloster
+showed such resolute valour, and where Neville, supreme and magnificent
+in disaster, fought on foot, to make sure that himself might go down in
+the stormy death of all his hopes. More than four hundred years have
+drifted by since that misty April morning when the star of Warwick was
+quenched in blood, and ten thousand men were slaughtered to end the
+strife between the Barons and the Crown; yet the results of that
+conflict are living facts in the government of England now, and in the
+fortunes of her inhabitants. If you were unaware of the solid simplicity
+and proud reticence of the English character,--leading it to merge all
+its shining deeds in one continuous fabric of achievement, like jewels
+set in a cloth of gold,--you might expect to find this spot adorned with
+a structure of more than common splendour. What you actually do find
+there is a plain monument, standing in the middle of a common, at the
+junction of several roads,--the chief of which are those leading to
+Hatfield and St. Albans, in Hertfordshire,--and on one side of this
+column you may read, in letters of faded black, the comprehensive
+statement that "Here was fought the famous battle between Edward the
+Fourth and the Earl of Warwick, April 14th, anno 1471, in which the Earl
+was defeated and slain."¹
+
+¹ The words "stick no bills" have been intrusively added, just below
+this inscription.
+
+Illustration: "Column on Barnet Battle-Field."
+
+In my reverie, standing at the foot of this humble, weather-stained
+monument, I saw the long range of Barnet hills, mantled with grass and
+flowers and with the golden haze of a morning in spring, swarming with
+gorgeous horsemen and glittering with spears and banners; and I heard
+the vengeful clash of arms, the horrible neighing of maddened steeds,
+the furious shouts of onset, and all the nameless cries and groans of
+battle, commingled in a thrilling yet hideous din. Here rode King
+Edward, intrepid, handsome, and stalwart, with his proud, cruel smile
+and his long, yellow hair. There Warwick swung his great two-handed
+sword, and mowed his foes like grain. And there the fiery form of
+Richard, splendid in burnished steel, darted like the scorpion, dealing
+death at every blow; till at last, in fatal mischance, the sad star of
+Oxford, assailed by its own friends, was swept out of the field, and the
+fight drove, raging, into the valleys of Hadley. How strangely, though,
+did this fancied picture contrast with the actual scene before me! At a
+little distance, all around the village green, the peaceful, embowered
+cottages kept their sentinel watch. Over the careless, straggling grass
+went the shadow of the passing cloud. Not a sound was heard, save the
+rustle of leaves and the low laughter of some little children, playing
+near the monument. Close by and at rest was a flock of geese, couched
+upon the cool earth, and, as their custom is, supremely contented with
+themselves and all the world.
+
+And at the foot of the column, stretched out at his full length, in
+tattered garments that scarcely covered his nakedness, reposed the
+British labourer, fast asleep upon the sod. No more Wars of the Roses
+now; but calm retirement, smiling plenty, cool western winds, and sleep
+and peace--
+
+      "With a red rose and a white rose
+      Leaning, nodding at the wall."
+
+Illustration: "Farm-house."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+A GLIMPSE OF CANTERBURY
+
+
+One of the most impressive spots on earth, and one that especially
+teaches--with silent, pathetic eloquence and solemn admonition--the
+great lesson of contrast, the incessant flow of the ages and the
+inevitable decay and oblivion of the past, is the ancient city of
+Canterbury. Years and not merely days of residence there are essential
+to the adequate and right comprehension of that wonderful place. Yet
+even an hour passed among its shrines will teach you, as no printed word
+has ever taught, the measureless power and the sublime beauty of a
+perfect religious faith; while, as you stand and meditate in the shadow
+of the gray cathedral walls, the pageant of a thousand years of history
+will pass before you like a dream. The city itself, with its bright,
+swift river (the Stour), its opulence of trees and flowers, its narrow
+winding streets, its numerous antique buildings, its many towers, its
+fragments of ancient wall and gate, its formal decorations, its air of
+perfect cleanliness and thoughtful gravity, its beautiful, umbrageous
+suburbs,--where the scarlet of the poppies and the russet red of the
+clover make one vast rolling sea of colour and of fragrant
+delight,--and, to crown all, its stately character of wealth without
+ostentation and industry without tumult, must prove to you a deep and
+satisfying comfort. But, through all this, pervading and surmounting it
+all, the spirit of the place pours in upon your heart, and floods your
+whole being with the incense and organ music of passionate, jubilant
+devotion.
+
+Illustration: "Falstaff Inn and West Gate, Canterbury."
+
+It was not superstition that reared those gorgeous fanes of worship
+which still adorn, even while they no longer consecrate, the
+ecclesiastic cities of the old world. In the age of Augustine, Dunstan,
+and Ethelnoth humanity had begun to feel its profound and vital need of
+a sure and settled reliance on religious faith. The drifting spirit,
+worn with sorrow, doubt, and self-conflict, longed to be at
+peace--longed for a refuge equally from the evils and tortures of its
+own condition and the storms and perils of the world. In that longing it
+recognised its immortality and heard the voice of its Divine Parent; and
+out of the ecstatic joy and utter abandonment of its new-born,
+passionate, responsive faith, it built and consecrated those stupendous
+temples,--rearing them with all its love no less than all its riches and
+all its power. There was no wealth that it would not give, no toil that
+it would not perform, and no sacrifice that it would not make, in the
+accomplishment of its sacred task. It was grandly, nobly, terribly in
+earnest, and it achieved a work that is not only sublime in its poetic
+majesty but measureless in the scope and extent of its moral and
+spiritual influence. It has left to succeeding ages not only a legacy of
+permanent beauty, not only a sublime symbol of religious faith, but an
+everlasting monument to the loveliness and greatness that are inherent
+in human nature. No creature with a human heart in his bosom can stand
+in such a building as Canterbury cathedral without feeling a greater
+love and reverence than he ever felt before, alike for God and man.
+
+Illustration: "Butchery Lane, Canterbury."
+
+On a day (July 27, 1882) when a class of the boys of the King's School
+of Canterbury was graduated the present writer chanced to be a listener
+to the impressive and touching sermon that was preached before them, in
+the cathedral; wherein they were tenderly admonished to keep unbroken
+their associations with their school-days and to remember the lessons of
+the place itself. That counsel must have sunk deep into every mind. It
+is difficult to understand how any person reared amid such scenes and
+relics could ever cast away their hallowing influence. Even to the
+casual visitor the bare thought of the historic treasures that are
+garnered in this temple is, by itself, sufficient to implant in the
+bosom a memorable and lasting awe. For more than twelve hundred years
+the succession of the Archbishops of Canterbury has remained
+substantially unbroken. There have been ninety-three "primates of all
+England," of whom fifty-three were buried in the cathedral, and here the
+tombs of fifteen of them are still visible. Here was buried the
+sagacious, crafty, inflexible, indomitable Henry the Fourth,--that
+Hereford whom Shakespeare has described and interpreted with matchless,
+immortal eloquence,--and here, cut off in the morning of his greatness,
+and lamented to this day in the hearts of the English people, was laid
+the body of Edward the Black Prince, who to a dauntless valour and
+terrible prowess in war added a high-souled, human, and tender
+magnanimity in conquest, and whom personal virtues and shining public
+deeds united to make the ideal hero of chivalry. In no other way than by
+personal observance of such memorials can historic reading be invested
+with a perfect and permanent reality. Over the tomb of the Black Prince,
+with its fine recumbent effigy of gilded brass, hang the gauntlets that
+he wore; and they tell you that his sword formerly hung there, but that
+Oliver Cromwell--who revealed his iconoclastic and unlovely character in
+making a stable of this cathedral--carried it away. Close at hand is the
+tomb of the wise, just, and gentle Cardinal Pole, simply inscribed
+"Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord"; and you may touch a
+little, low mausoleum of gray stone, in which are the ashes of John
+Morton, that Bishop of Ely from whose garden in Holborn the strawberries
+were brought for the Duke of Gloster, on the day when he condemned the
+accomplished Hastings, and who "fled to Richmond," in good time, from
+the standard of the dangerous Protector. Standing there, I could almost
+hear the resolute, scornful voice of Richard, breathing out, in clear,
+implacable accents--
+
+      "Ely with Richmond troubles me more near
+      Than Buckingham and his rash-levied strength."
+
+The astute Morton, when Bosworth was over and Richmond had assumed the
+crown and Bourchier had died, was made Archbishop of Canterbury; and as
+such, at a great age, he passed away.
+
+Illustration: "Flying Horse Inn, Canterbury."
+
+A few hundred yards from his place of rest, in a vault beneath the
+Church of St. Dunstan, is the head of Sir Thomas More (the body being in
+St. Peter's, at the Tower of London), who in his youth had been a member
+of Morton's ecclesiastical household, and whose greatness that prelate
+had foreseen and prophesied. Did no shadow of the scaffold ever fall
+across the statesman's thoughts, as he looked upon that handsome, manly
+boy, and thought of the troublous times that were raging about them?
+Morton, aged ninety, died in 1500; More, aged fifty-five, in 1535.
+Strange fate, indeed, was that, and as inscrutable as mournful, which
+gave to those who in life had been like father and son such a ghastly
+association in death!¹ They show you the place where Becket was
+murdered, and the stone steps, worn hollow by the thousands upon
+thousands of devout pilgrims who, in the days before the Reformation,
+crept up to weep and pray at the costly, resplendent shrine of St.
+Thomas. The bones of Becket, as all the world knows, were, by command of
+Henry the Eighth, burnt, and scattered to the winds, while his shrine
+was pillaged and destroyed. Neither tomb nor scutcheon commemorates him
+here,--but the cathedral itself is his monument.
+
+¹ St. Dunstan's church was connected with the Convent of St. Gregory.
+The Roper family, in the time of Henry the Fourth, founded a chapel in
+it, in which are two marble tombs, commemorative of them, and underneath
+which is their burial vault. Margaret Roper, Sir Thomas More's daughter,
+obtained her father's head, after his execution, and buried it here. The
+vault was opened in 1835,--when a new pavement was laid in the chancel
+of this church,--and persons descending into it saw the head, in a
+leaden box shaped like a beehive, open in front, set in a niche in the
+wall, behind an iron grill.
+
+Illustration: "Canterbury Cathedral."
+
+There it stands, with its grand columns and glorious arches, its towers
+of enormous size and its long vistas of distance, so mysterious and
+awful, its gloomy crypt where once the silver lamps sparkled and the
+smoking censers were swung, its tombs of mighty warriors and statesmen,
+its frayed and crumbling banners, and the eternal, majestic silence with
+which it broods over the love, ambition, glory, defeat, and anguish of a
+thousand years, dissolved now and ended in a little dust! As the organ
+music died away I looked upward and saw where a bird was wildly flying
+to and fro, through the vast spaces beneath its lofty roof, in the vain
+effort to find some outlet of escape. Fit emblem, truly, of the human
+mind which strives to comprehend and to utter the meaning of this
+marvellous fabric!
+
+Illustration: "Alladin's Lamp"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE SHRINES OF WARWICKSHIRE 1882
+
+
+Night, in Stratford-upon-Avon--a summer night, with large, solemn stars,
+a cool and fragrant breeze, and the stillness of perfect rest. From this
+high and grassy bank I look forth across the darkened meadows and the
+smooth and shining river, and see the little town where it lies asleep.
+Hardly a light is anywhere visible. A few great elms, near by, are
+nodding and rustling in the wind, and once or twice a drowsy bird-note
+floats up from the neighbouring thicket that skirts the vacant, lonely
+road. There, at some distance, are the dim arches of Clopton's Bridge.
+In front--a graceful, shapely mass, indistinct in the starlight--rises
+the fair Memorial, Stratford's honour and pride. Further off, glimmering
+through the tree-tops, is the dusky spire of Trinity, keeping its sacred
+vigil over the dust of Shakespeare. Nothing here is changed. The same
+tranquil beauty, as of old, hallows this place; the same sense of awe
+and mystery broods over its silent shrines of everlasting renown. Long
+and weary the years have been since last I saw it; but to-night they are
+remembered only as a fleeting and troubled dream. Here, once more, is
+the highest and noblest companionship this world can give. Here, once
+more, is the almost visible presence of the one magician who can lift
+the soul out of the infinite weariness of common things and give it
+strength and peace. The old time has come back, and the bloom of the
+heart that I thought had all faded and gone. I stroll again to the
+river's brink, and take my place in the boat, and, trailing my hand in
+the dark waters of the Avon, forget every trouble that ever I have
+known.
+
+Illustration: "Stratford-upon-Avon."
+
+It is often said, with reference to memorable places, that the best view
+always is the first view. No doubt the accustomed eye sees blemishes. No
+doubt the supreme moments of human life are few and come but once; and
+neither of them is ever repeated. Yet frequently it will be found that
+the change is in ourselves and not in the objects we behold. Scott has
+glanced at this truth, in a few mournful lines, written toward the close
+of his heroic and beautiful life. Here at Stratford, however, I am not
+conscious that the wonderful charm of the place is in any degree
+impaired. The town still preserves its old-fashioned air, its
+quaintness, its perfect cleanliness and order. At the Shakespeare
+cottage, in the stillness of the room where he was born, the spirits of
+mystery and reverence still keep their imperial state. At the ancient
+grammar-school, with its pent-house roof and its dark, sagging rafters,
+you still may see, in fancy, the unwilling schoolboy gazing upward
+absently at the great, rugged timbers, or looking wistfully at the
+sunshine, where it streams through the little lattice windows of his
+prison. New Place, with its lovely lawn, its spacious garden, the
+ancestral mulberry and the ivy-covered well, will bring the poet before
+you, as he lived and moved, in the meridian of his greatness.
+_Cymbeline, The Tempest,_ and _A Winter's Tale,_ the last of his works,
+undoubtedly were written here; and this alone should make it a hallowed
+spot. Here he blessed his young daughter on her wedding day; here his
+eyes closed in the long last sleep; and from this place he was carried
+to his grave in the chancel of Stratford church. I pass once again
+through the fragrant avenue of limes, the silent churchyard with its
+crumbling monuments, the dim porch, the twilight of the venerable
+temple, and kneel at last above the ashes of Shakespeare. What majesty
+in this triumphant rest! All the great labour accomplished. The
+universal human heart interpreted with a living voice. The memory and
+the imagination of mankind stored forever with words of sublime
+eloquence and images of immortal beauty. The noble lesson of
+self-conquest--the lesson of the entire adequacy of the resolute,
+virtuous, patient human will--set forth so grandly that all the world
+must see its meaning and marvel at its splendour. And, last of all,
+death itself shorn of its terrors and made a trivial thing.
+
+Illustration: "Stratford Church."
+
+There is a new custodian at New Place, and he will show you the little
+museum that is kept there--including the shovel-board from the old
+Falcon tavern across the way, on which the poet himself might have
+played--and he will lead you through the gardens, and descant on the
+mulberry and on the ancient and still unforgiven vandalism of the Rev.
+Francis Gastrell, by whom the Shakespeare mansion was destroyed (1759),
+and will pause at the well, and at the fragments of the foundation,
+covered now with stout screens of wire. There is a fresh and fragrant
+beauty all about these grounds, an atmosphere of sunshine, life, comfort
+and elegance of state, that no observer can miss. This same keeper also
+has the keys of the guild chapel, opposite, on which Shakespeare looked
+from his windows and his garden, and in which he was the holder of two
+sittings. You will enter it by the same porch through which he walked,
+and see the arch and columns and tall, mullioned windows on which his
+gaze has often rested. The interior is cold and barren now, for the
+scriptural wall-paintings, discovered there in 1804, under a thick
+coating of whitewash, have been obliterated and the wooden pews, which
+are modern, have not yet been embrowned by age. Yet this church, known
+beyond question as one of Shakespeare's personal haunts, will hold you
+with the strongest tie of reverence and sympathy. At his birthplace
+everything remains unchanged. The gentle ladies who have so long guarded
+and shown it still have it in their affectionate care. The ceiling of
+the room in which the poet was born--the room that contains "the Actor's
+Pillar" and the thousands of signatures on walls and windows--is slowly
+crumbling to pieces. Every morning little particles of the plaster are
+found upon the floor. The area of tiny, delicate iron laths, to sustain
+this ceiling, has more than doubled (1882) since I first saw it, in
+1877. It was on the ceiling that Lord Byron wrote his name, but this has
+flaked off and disappeared. In the museum hall, once the Swan inn, they
+are forming a library; and there you may see at least one Shakespearean
+relic of extraordinary interest. This is the MS. letter of Richard
+Quiney--whose son Thomas became, in 1616, the husband of Shakespeare's
+youngest daughter, Judith--asking the poet for the loan of thirty
+pounds. It is enclosed between plates of glass in a frame, and usually
+kept covered with a cloth, so that the sunlight may not fade the ink.
+The date of this letter is October 25, 1598, and thirty English pounds
+then was a sum equivalent to about six hundred dollars of American money
+now. This is the only letter known to be in existence that Shakespeare
+received. Miss Caroline Chataway, the younger of the ladies who keep
+this house, will recite to you its text, from memory--giving a delicious
+old-fashioned flavour to its quaint phraseology and fervent spirit, as
+rich and strange as the odour of the wild thyme and rosemary that grow
+in her garden beds. This antique touch adds a wonderful charm to the
+relics of the past. I found it once more when sitting in the
+chimney-corner of Anne Hathaway's kitchen; and again in the lovely
+little church at Charlecote, where a simple, kindly woman, not ashamed
+to reverence the place and the dead, stood with me at the tomb of the
+Lucys, and repeated from memory the tender, sincere, and eloquent
+epitaph with which Sir Thomas Lucy thereon commemorates his wife. The
+lettering is small and indistinct on the tomb, but having often read it
+I well knew how correctly it was then spoken. Nor shall I ever read it
+again without thinking of that kindly, pleasant voice, the hush of the
+beautiful church, the afternoon sunlight streaming through the oriel
+window, and--visible through the doorway arch--the roses waving among
+the churchyard graves.
+
+In the days of Shakespeare's courtship, when he strolled across the
+fields to Anne Hathaway's cottage at Shottery, his path, we may be sure,
+ran through wild pasture-land and tangled thicket. A fourth part of
+England at that time was a wilderness, and the entire population of that
+country did not exceed five millions of persons. The Stratford-upon-Avon
+of to-day is still possessed of some of its ancient features; but the
+region round about it then must have been rude and wild in comparison
+with what it is at present. If you walk in the foot-path to Shottery now
+you will pass between low fences and along the margin of gardens,--now
+in the sunshine, and now in the shadow of larch and chestnut and elm,
+while the sweet air blows upon your face and the expeditious rook makes
+rapid wing to the woodland, cawing as he flies. In the old cottage, with
+its roof of thatch, its crooked rafters, its odorous hedges and climbing
+vines, its leafy well and its tangled garden, everything remains the
+same. Mrs. Mary Taylor Baker, the last living descendant of the
+Hathaways, born in this house, always a resident here, and now an
+elderly woman, still has it in her keeping, and still displays to you
+the ancient carved bedstead in the garret, the wooden settle by the
+kitchen fireside, the hearth at which Shakespeare sat, the great
+blackened chimney with its adroit iron "fish-back" for the better
+regulation of the tea-kettle, and the brown and tattered Bible, with the
+Hathaway family record. Sitting in an old arm-chair, in the corner of
+Anne Hathaway's bedroom, I could hear, in the perfumed summer stillness,
+the low twittering of birds, whose nest is in the covering thatch and
+whose songs would awaken the sleeper at the earliest light of dawn. A
+better idea can be obtained in this cottage than in either the
+birthplace or any other Shakespearean haunt of what the real life
+actually was of the common people of England in Shakespeare's day. The
+stone floor and oak timbers of the Hathaway kitchen, stained and
+darkened in the slow decay of three hundred years, have lost no particle
+of their pristine character. The occupant of the cottage has not been
+absent from it more than a week during upward of half a century. In such
+a nook the inherited habits of living do not alter. "The thing that has
+been is the thing that shall be," and the customs of long ago are the
+customs of to-day.
+
+The Red Horse inn is now in the hands of William Gardner Colbourne, who
+has succeeded his uncle Mr. Gardner, and it is brighter than of
+old--without, however, having parted with either its antique furniture
+or its delightful antique ways. The old mahogany and wax-candle period
+has not ended yet in this happy place, and you sink to sleep on a
+snow-white pillow, soft as down and fragrant as lavender. One important
+change is especially to be remarked. They have made a niche in a corner
+of Washington Irving's parlour, and in it have placed his arm-chair,
+re-cushioned and polished, and sequested from touch by a large sheet of
+plate-glass. The relic may still be seen, but the pilgrim can sit upon
+it no more. Perhaps it might be well to enshrine "Geoffrey Crayon's
+Sceptre" in a somewhat similar way. It could be fastened to a shield,
+displaying the American colours, and placed in this storied room. At
+present it is the tenant of a starred and striped bag, and keeps its
+state in the seclusion of a bureau; nor is it shown except upon
+request--like the beautiful marble statue of Donne, in his shroud,
+niched in the chancel wall of St. Paul's cathedral.¹
+
+¹ A few effigies are all that remain of old St. Paul's. The most
+important and interesting of them is that shrouded statue of the poet
+John Donne, who was Dean of St. Paul's from 1621 to 1631, dying in the
+latter year, aged 58. This is in the south aisle of the chancel, in a
+niche in the wall. You will not see it unless you ask the privilege. The
+other relics are in the crypt and in the churchyard. There is nothing to
+indicate the place of the grave of John of Gaunt or that of Sir Philip
+Sidney. Old St. Paul's was burned September 2, 1666.
+
+Illustration: "Washington Irving's Chair."
+
+One of the strongest instincts of the English character is the instinct
+of permanence. It acts involuntarily, it pervades the national life,
+and, as Pope said of the universal soul, it operates unspent.
+Institutions seem to have grown out of human nature in this country, and
+are as much its expression as blossoms, leaves, and flowers are the
+expression of inevitable law. A custom, in England, once established, is
+seldom or never changed. The brilliant career, the memorable
+achievement, the great character, once fulfilled, takes a permanent
+shape in some kind of outward and visible memorial, some absolute and
+palpable fact, which thenceforth is an accepted part of the history of
+the land and the experience of its people. England means stability--the
+fireside and the altar, home here and heaven hereafter; and this is the
+secret of the power that she wields in the affairs of the world, and the
+charm that she diffuses over the domain of thought. Such a temple as St.
+Paul's cathedral, such a palace as Hampton Court, such a castle as that
+of Windsor or that of Warwick, is the natural, spontaneous expression of
+the English instinct of permanence; and it is in memorials like these
+that England has written her history, with symbols that can perish only
+with time itself. At intervals her latent animal ferocity breaks
+loose--as it did under Henry the Eighth, under Mary, under Cromwell, and
+under James the Second,--and for a brief time ramps and bellows,
+striving to deface and deform the surrounding structure of beauty that
+has been slowly and painfully reared out of her deep heart and her sane
+civilisation. But the tears of human pity soon quench the fire of
+Smithfield, and it is only for a little while that the Puritan soldiers
+play at nine-pins in the nave of St. Paul's. This fever of animal
+impulse, this wild revolt of petulant impatience, is soon cooled; and
+then the great work goes on again, as calmly and surely as before--that
+great work of educating mankind to the level of constitutional liberty,
+in which England has been engaged for well-nigh a thousand years, and in
+which the American Republic, though sometimes at variance with her
+methods and her spirit, is, nevertheless, her follower and the
+consequence of her example. Our Declaration was made in 1776: the
+Declaration to the Prince of Orange is dated 1689, and the Bill of
+Rights 1628, while Magna Charta was secured in 1215.
+
+Throughout every part of this sumptuous and splendid domain of
+Warwickshire the symbols of English stability and the relics of historic
+times are numerous and deeply impressive. At Stratford the reverence of
+the nineteenth century takes its practical, substantial form, not alone
+in the honourable preservation of the ancient Shakespearean shrines, but
+in the Shakespeare Memorial. That fabric, though mainly due to the
+fealty of England, is also, to some extent, representative of the
+practical sympathy of America. Several Americans--Edwin Booth, Herman
+Vezin, M. D. Conway, and W. H. Reynolds among them--were contributors to
+the fund that built it, and an American gentlewoman, Miss Kate Field,
+has worked for its cause with excellent zeal, untiring fidelity, and
+good results. (Miss Mary Anderson acted--1885--in the Memorial Theatre,
+for its benefit, presenting for the first time in her life the character
+of Rosalind.) It is a noble monument. It stands upon the margin of the
+Avon, not distant from the church of the Holy Trinity, which is
+Shakespeare's grave; so that these two buildings are the conspicuous
+points of the landscape, and seem to confront each other with
+sympathetic greeting, as if conscious of their sacred trust. The vacant
+land adjacent, extending between the road and the river, is a part of
+the Memorial estate, and is to be converted into a garden, with
+pathways, shade-trees, and flowers,--by means of which the prospect will
+be made still fairer than now it is, and will be kept forever unbroken
+between the Memorial and the Church. Under this ample roof are already
+united a theatre, a library, and a hall of pictures. The drop-curtain,
+illustrating the processional progress of Queen Elizabeth when "going to
+the Globe Theatre," is gay but incorrect. The divisions of seats are in
+conformity with the inconvenient arrangements of the London theatre of
+to-day. Queen Elizabeth heard plays in the hall of the Middle Temple,
+the hall of Hampton Palace, and at Greenwich and at Richmond; but she
+never went to the Globe Theatre. In historic temples there should be no
+trifling with historic themes; and surely, in a theatre of the
+nineteenth century, dedicated to Shakespeare, while no fantastic regard
+should be paid to the usages of the past, it would be tasteful and
+proper to blend the best of ancient ways with all the luxury and
+elegance of these times. It is much, however, to have built what can
+readily be made a lovely theatre; and meanwhile, through the
+affectionate generosity of friends in all parts of the world, the
+library shelves are continually gathering treasures, and the hall of
+paintings is growing more and more the imposing expository that it was
+intended to be, of Shakespearean poetry and the history of the English
+stage.
+
+Illustration: "The Stratford Memorial."
+
+Many faces of actors appear upon those walls--from Garrick to Edmund
+Kean, from Macready to Henry Irving, from Kemble to Edwin Booth, from
+Mrs. Siddons to Ellen Terry, Ada Rehan, and Mary Anderson. Prominent
+among the pictures is a spirited portrait of Garrick and his wife,
+playing at cards, wherein the lovely, laughing lady archly discloses
+that her hands are full of hearts. Not otherwise, truly, is it with
+sweet and gentle Stratford herself, where peace and beauty and the most
+hallowed and hallowing of poetic associations garner up, forever and
+forever, the hearts of all mankind.
+
+In previous papers upon this subject I have tried to express the
+feelings that are excited by personal contact with the relics of
+Shakespeare--the objects that he saw and the fields through which he
+wandered. Fancy would never tire of lingering in this delicious region
+of flowers and of dreams. From the hideous vileness of the social
+condition of London in the time of James the First, Shakespeare must
+indeed have rejoiced to depart into this blooming garden of rustic
+tranquillity. Here also he could find the surroundings that were needful
+to sustain him amid the vast and overwhelming labours of his final
+period. No man, however great his powers, can ever, in this world,
+escape from the trammels under which nature enjoins and permits the
+exercise of the brain. Ease, in the intellectual life, is always
+visionary. The higher a man's faculties the higher are his
+ideals,--toward which, under the operation of a divine law, he must
+perpetually strive, but to the height of which he will never absolutely
+attain. So, inevitably, it was with Shakespeare.
+
+Illustration: "Mary Arden Cottage."
+
+But, although genius cannot escape from itself and is no more free than
+the humblest toiler in the vast scheme of creation, it may--and it
+must--sometimes escape from the world: and this wise poet, of all men
+else, would surely recognise and strongly grasp the great privilege of
+solitude amid the sweetest and most soothing adjuncts of natural beauty.
+That privilege he found in the sparkling and fragrant gardens of
+Warwick, the woods, fields and waters of the Avon, where he had played
+as a boy, and where love had laid its first kiss upon his lips and
+poetry first opened upon his inspired vision the eternal glories of her
+celestial world. It still abides there, for every gentle soul that can
+feel its influence--to deepen the glow of noble passion, to soften the
+sting of grief, and to touch the lips of worship with a fresh sacrament
+of patience and beauty.
+
+      ------
+
+     THE ANNE HATHAWAY COTTAGE.
+
+_April,_ 1892.--A record that all lovers of the Shakespeare shrines have
+long wished to make can at last be made. The Anne Hathaway Cottage has
+been bought for the British Nation, and that building will henceforth be
+one of the Amalgamated Trusts that are guarded by the corporate
+authorities of Stratford. The other Trusts are the Birthplace, the
+Museum, and New Place. The Mary Arden Cottage, the home of Shakespeare's
+mother, is yet to be acquired.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+A BORROWER OF THE NIGHT
+
+
+      _"I must become a borrower of the night,
+      For a dark hour or twain."_--MACBETH.
+
+Midnight has just sounded from the tower of St. Martin. It is a peaceful
+night, faintly lit with stars, and in the region round about Trafalgar
+Square a dream-like stillness broods over the darkened city, now slowly
+hushing itself to its brief and troubled rest. This is the centre of the
+heart of modern civilisation, the middle of the greatest city in the
+world--the vast, seething alembic of a grand future, the stately
+monument of a deathless past. Here, alone, in my quiet room of this old
+English inn, let me meditate a while on some of the scenes that are near
+me--the strange, romantic, sad, grand objects that I have seen, the
+memorable figures of beauty, genius, and renown that haunt this classic
+land.
+
+Illustration: "Church of St. Martin."
+
+How solemn and awful now must be the gloom within the walls of the
+Abbey! A walk of only a few minutes would bring me to its gates--the
+gates of the most renowned mausoleum on earth. No human foot to-night
+invades its sacred precincts. The dead alone possess it. I see, upon its
+gray walls, the marble figures, white and spectral, staring through the
+darkness. I hear the night-wind moaning around its lofty towers and
+faintly sobbing in the dim, mysterious spaces beneath its fretted roof.
+Here and there a ray of starlight, streaming through the sumptuous rose
+window, falls and lingers, in ruby or emerald gleam, on tomb, or pillar,
+or dusky pavement. Rustling noises, vague and fearful, float from those
+dim chapels where the great kings lie in state, with marble effigies
+recumbent above their bones. At such an hour as this, in such a place,
+do the dead come out of their graves? The resolute, implacable Queen
+Elizabeth, the beautiful, ill-fated Queen of Scots, the royal boys that
+perished in the Tower, Charles the Merry and William the Silent--are
+these, and such as these, among the phantoms that fill the haunted
+aisles? What a wonderful company it would be, for human eyes to behold!
+And with what passionate love or hatred, what amazement, or what haughty
+scorn, its members would look upon each other's faces, in this
+miraculous meeting? Here, through the glimmering, icy waste, would pass
+before the watcher the august shades of the poets of five hundred years.
+Now would glide the ghosts of Chaucer, Spenser, Jonson, Beaumont,
+Dryden, Cowley, Congreve, Addison, Prior, Campbell, Garrick, Burke,
+Sheridan, Newton, and Macaulay--children of divine genius, that here
+mingled with the earth. The grim Edward, who so long ravaged Scotland;
+the blunt, chivalrous Henry, who conquered France; the lovely,
+lamentable victim at Pomfret, and the harsh, haughty, astute victor at
+Bosworth; James with his babbling tongue, and William with his
+impassive, predominant visage--they would all mingle with the spectral
+multitude and vanish into the gloom. Gentler faces, too, might here once
+more reveal their loveliness and their grief--Eleanor de Bohun,
+brokenhearted for her murdered lord; Elizabeth Claypole, the meek,
+merciful, beloved daughter of Cromwell; Matilda, Queen to Henry the
+First, and model of every grace and virtue; and sweet Anne Neville,
+destroyed--if his enemies told the truth--by the politic craft of
+Gloster. Strange sights, truly, in the lonesome Abbey to-night!
+
+In the sombre crypt beneath St. Paul's cathedral how thrilling now must
+be the heavy stillness! No sound can enter there. No breeze from the
+upper world can stir the dust upon those massive sepulchres. Even in
+day-time that shadowy vista, with its groined arches and the black tombs
+of Wellington and Nelson and the ponderous funeral-car of the Iron Duke,
+is seen with a shudder. How strangely, how fearfully the mind would be
+impressed, of him who should wander there to-night! What sublime
+reflections would be his, standing beside the ashes of the great
+admiral, and thinking of that fiery, dauntless spirit--so simple,
+resolute, and true--who made the earth and the sea alike resound with
+the splendid tumult of his deeds. Somewhere beneath this pavement is the
+dust of Sir Philip Sidney--buried here before the destruction of the old
+cathedral, in the great fire of 1666--and here, too, is the nameless
+grave of the mighty Duke of Lancaster, John of Gaunt. Shakespeare was
+only twenty-two years old when Sidney fell, at the battle of Zutphen,
+and, being then resident in London, he might readily have seen, and
+doubtless did see, the splendid funeral procession with which the
+body of that heroic gentleman--radiant and immortal example of
+perfect chivalry--was borne to the tomb. Hither came Henry of
+Hereford--returning from exile and deposing the handsome, visionary,
+useless Richard--to mourn over the relics of his father, dead of sorrow
+for his son's absence and his country's shame. Here, at the venerable
+age of ninety-one, the glorious brain of Wren found rest at last,
+beneath the stupendous temple that himself had reared. The watcher in
+the crypt tonight would see, perchance, or fancy that he saw, those
+figures from the storied past. Beneath this roof--the soul and the
+perfect symbol of sublimity!--are ranged more than fourscore monuments
+to heroic martial persons who have died for England, by land or sea.
+Here, too, are gathered in everlasting repose the honoured relics of men
+who were famous in the arts of peace. Reynolds and Opie, Lawrence and
+West, Landseer, Turner, Cruikshank, and many more, sleep under the
+sculptured pavement where now the pilgrim walks. For fifteen centuries a
+Christian church has stood upon this spot, and through it has poured,
+with organ strains and glancing lights, an endless procession of
+prelates and statesmen, of poets and warriors and kings. Surely this is
+hallowed and haunted ground! Surely to him the spirits of the mighty
+dead would be very near, who--alone, in the darkness--should stand
+to-night 'within those sacred walls, and hear, beneath that awful dome,
+the mellow thunder of the bells of God.
+
+Illustration: "Westminster Abbey."
+
+How looks, to-night, the interior of the chapel of the Foundling
+hospital? Dark and lonesome, no doubt, with its heavy galleries and
+sombre pews, and the great organ--Handel's gift--standing there, mute
+and grim, between the ascending tiers of empty seats. But never, in my
+remembrance, will it cease to present a picture more impressive and
+touching than words can say. Scores of white-robed children, rescued
+from shame and penury by this noble benevolence, were ranged around that
+organ when I saw it, and, with artless, frail little voices, singing a
+hymn of praise and worship. Well-nigh one hundred and fifty years have
+passed since this grand institution of charity--the sacred work and
+blessed legacy of Captain Thomas Coram--was established in this place.
+What a divine good it has accomplished, and continues to accomplish, and
+what a pure glory hallows its founder's name! Here the poor mother,
+betrayed and deserted, may take her child and find for it a safe and
+happy home and a chance in life--nor will she herself be turned adrift
+without sympathy and help. The poet and novelist George Croly was once
+chaplain of the Foundling hospital, and he preached some noble sermons
+there; but these were thought to be above the comprehension of his usual
+audience, and he presently resigned the place. Sidney Smith often spoke
+in this pulpit, when a young man. It was an aged clergyman who preached
+there within my hearing, and I remember he consumed the most part of an
+hour in saying that a good way in which to keep the tongue from speaking
+evil is to keep the heart kind and pure. Better than any sermon, though,
+was the spectacle of those poor children, rescued out of their
+helplessness and reared in comfort and affection. Several fine works of
+art are owned by this hospital and shown to visitors--paintings by
+Gainsborough and Reynolds, and a portrait of Captain Coram, by Hogarth.
+May the turf lie lightly on him, and daisies and violets deck his
+hallowed grave! No man ever did a better deed than he, and the darkest
+night that ever was cannot darken his fame.
+
+Illustration: "Middle Temple Lane."
+
+How dim and silent now are all those narrow and dingy little streets and
+lanes around Paul's churchyard and the Temple, where Johnson and
+Goldsmith loved to ramble! More than once have I wandered there, in the
+late hours of the night, meeting scarce a human creature, but conscious
+of a royal company indeed, of the wits and poets and players of a
+far-off time. Darkness now, on busy Smithfield, where once the frequent,
+cruel flames of bigotry shed forth a glare that sickened the light of
+day. Murky and grim enough to-night is that grand processional walk in
+St. Bartholomew's church, where the great gray pillars and splendid
+Norman arches of the twelfth century are mouldering in neglect and
+decay. Sweet to fancy and dear in recollection, the old church comes
+back to me now, with the sound of children's voices and the wail of the
+organ strangely breaking on its pensive rest. Stillness and peace over
+arid Bunhill Fields---the last haven of many a Puritan worthy, and
+hallowed to many a pilgrim as the resting-place of Bunyan and of Watts.
+In many a park and gloomy square the watcher now would hear only a
+rustling of leaves or the fretful twitter of half-awakened birds. Around
+Primrose Hill and out toward Hampstead many a night-walk have I taken,
+that seemed like rambling in a desert--so dark and still are the walled
+houses, so perfect is the solitude. In Drury Lane, even at this late
+hour, there would be some movement; but cold and dense as ever the
+shadows are resting on that little graveyard behind it, where Lady
+Dedlock went to die. To walk in Bow Street now,--might it not be to meet
+the shades of Waller and Wycherley and Betterton, who lived and died
+there; to have a greeting from the silver-tongued Barry; or to see, in
+draggled lace and ruffles, the stalwart figure and flushed and
+roystering countenance of Henry Fielding? Very quiet now are those grim
+stone chambers in the terrible Tower of London, where so many tears have
+fallen and so many noble hearts been split with sorrow. Does Brackenbury
+still kneel in the cold, lonely, vacant chapel of St. John; or the sad
+ghost of Monmouth hover in the chancel of St. Peter's? How sweet tonight
+would be the rustle of the ivy on the dark walls of Hadley church, where
+late I breathed the rose-scented air and heard the warbling thrush, and
+blessed, with a grateful heart, the loving kindness that makes such
+beauty in the world! Out there on the hillside of Highgate, populous
+with death, the starlight gleams on many a ponderous tomb and the white
+marble of many a sculptured statue, where dear and famous names will
+lure the traveller's footsteps for years to come. There Lyndhurst rests,
+in honour and peace, and there is hushed the tuneful voice of
+Dempster--never to be heard any more, either when snows are flying or
+"when green leaves come again." Not many days have passed since I stood
+there, by the humble gravestone of poor Charles Harcourt, that fine
+actor, and remembered all the gentle enthusiasm with which (1877) he
+spoke to me of the character of Jaques--which he loved--and how well he
+repeated the immortal lines upon the drama of human life. For him the
+"strange, eventful history" came early and suddenly to an end.
+
+Illustration: "The Castle Inn."
+
+In that ground, too, I saw the sculptured medallion of the well-beloved
+George Honey--"all his frolics o'er" and nothing left but this. Many a
+golden moment did we have, old friend, and by me thou art not forgotten!
+The lapse of a few years changes the whole face of life; but nothing can
+ever take from us our memories of the past. Here, around me, in the
+still watches of the night, are the faces that will never smile again,
+and the voices that will speak no more--Sothern, with his silver hair
+and bright and kindly smile, from the spacious cemetery of Southampton;
+and droll Harry Beckett and poor Adelaide Neilson from dismal Brompton.
+And if I look from yonder window I shall not see either the lions of
+Landseer or the homeless and vagrant wretches who sleep around them; but
+high in her silver chariot, surrounded with all the pomp and splendour
+that royal England knows, and marching to her coronation in Westminster
+Abbey, the beautiful figure of Anne Boleyn, with her dark eyes full of
+triumph and her torrent of golden hair flashing in the sun. On this spot
+is written the whole history of a mighty empire. Here are garnered up
+such loves and hopes, such memories and sorrows, as can never be spoken.
+Pass, ye shadows! Let the night wane and the morning break.
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Shakespeare's England, by William Winter
+
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+<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
+<html lang="en">
+<head>
+<meta name="generator" content=
+"HTML Tidy for Windows (vers 25 March 2009), see www.w3.org">
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Shakespeare's England by
+William Winter</title>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content=
+"text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
+<style type="text/css">
+  p.pg1 {text-align: center;}
+</style>
+</head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Shakespeare's England, by William Winter
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Shakespeare's England
+
+Author: William Winter
+
+Release Date: January 28, 2011 [EBook #35105]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jim Adcock, Special Thanks to the Internet
+Archive, American Libraries.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<h1 align="center">SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND</h1>
+<p class="pg1"><big>BY<br>
+<br>
+WILLIAM WINTER<br>
+<br></big></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_PWW" id="a_PWW"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0008.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Crayon Drawing of the Author"></p>
+<br>
+<p class="pg1"><br>
+<br>
+<big>SHAKESPEARE'S<br>
+<br>
+ENGLAND<br>
+<br>
+BY<br>
+<br>
+WILLIAM WINTER<br>
+<br></big></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CHS" id="a_CHS"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0011.jpg" width="60%" alt=
+"Church Spire"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="pg1"><small>New Edition, Revised, with
+Illustrations</small><br>
+<br>
+<i>New York</i><br>
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br>
+LONDON: MACMILLAN &amp; CO., LTD.<br>
+1898<br>
+<br>
+<small><i>All rights reserved</i></small><br>
+<br>
+Copyright, 1892,<br>
+BY MACMILLAN AND CO.<br>
+<br>
+&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br>
+<br>
+<i>Illustrated Edition,</i><br>
+<small>COPYRIGHT, 1893,<br>
+BY MACMILLAN AND CO.<br>
+<br>
+&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br>
+<br>
+First published elsewhere.<br>
+Set up and electrotyped by Macmillan &amp; Co., April, 1892.
+Reprinted<br>
+November, 1892; January, 1893.<br>
+<br>
+Illustrated edition, revised throughout, in crown 8v0, set up and<br>
+Electrotyped June, 1893. Reprinted October, 1893; August, 1895;
+September,<br>
+1898.<br>
+<br>
+<i>Norwood Press</i><br>
+J. S. Cushing &amp; Co.&mdash;Berwick &amp; Smith<br>
+Norwood Mass. U.S.A.<br></small><br>
+<br></p>
+<p class="pg1">To<br>
+<br>
+<big><i><b>Whitelaw Reid</b></i><br>
+<br></big> <small>IN HONOUR OF EXALTED VIRTUES<br>
+<br>
+ADORNING A LIFE OF<br>
+<br>
+NOBLE ACHIEVEMENT AND PATIENT KINDNESS<br>
+<br>
+AND IN REMEMBRANCE OF<br>
+<br>
+FAITHFUL AND GENTLE FRIENDSHIP<br>
+<br>
+I DEDICATE THIS BOOK<br></small><br>
+<br>
+&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br>
+<br>
+<i>"Tum meae, si quid loquar audiendum,<br>
+Vocis accedet bona pars"</i></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_ROS" id="a_ROS"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0014.jpg" width="20%" alt=
+"Rose"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2 align="center"><a name="a_PIE" id="a_PIE"></a>PREFACE TO THE
+ILLUSTRATED EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND</h2>
+<br>
+<p class="pg1">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+<br>
+<p><i>The favour with which this book has been received, alike in
+Great Britain and America, is thought to warrant a reproduction of it
+with pictorial embellishment, and accordingly it is offered in the
+present form. I have revised the text for this reprint, and my friend
+Mr. George P. Brett, of the house of Messrs. Macmillan and
+Company,&mdash;at whose suggestion the pictorial edition was
+undertaken,&mdash;has supervised the choice of pictures for its
+adornment. The approval that the work has elicited is a source of
+deep gratification. It signifies that my endeavour to reflect the
+gentle sentiment of English landscape and the romantic character of
+English rural life has not proved altogether in vain. It also shows
+that an appeal may confidently be made,&mdash;irrespective of
+transitory literary fashions and of popular caprice,&mdash;to the
+love of the ideal, the taste for simplicity, and the sentiment of
+veneration. In these writings there is, I hope, a profound practical
+deference to the perfect standard of style that is represented by
+such illustrious exemplars as Addison, Goldsmith, Sterne, and Gray.
+This frail fabric may perish: that standard is immortal; and whatever
+merit this book may possess is due to an instinctive and passionate
+devotion to the ideal denoted by those shining names. These sketches
+were written out of love for the subject. The first book of them,
+called</i> The Trip to England, <i>reprinted, with changes, from
+the</i> New York Tribune, <i>was made for me, at the De Vinne Press.
+The subsequent growth of the work is traced in the earlier Preface,
+herewith reprinted. The title of</i> Shakespeare's England <i>was
+given to it when the first English edition was published, by Mr.
+David Douglas, of Edinburgh. It has been my privilege to make various
+tours of the British islands, since those of</i> 1877 <i>and</i>
+1882, <i>recorded here; and my later books,</i> Gray Days and Gold,
+<i>and</i> Old Shrines and Ivy, <i>should be read in association with
+this one, by those persons who care for a wider glimpse of the same
+delightful field, in the same companionship, and especially by those
+who like to follow the record of exploration and change in
+Shakespeare's home. As to the question of accuracy,&mdash;and indeed,
+as to all other questions,&mdash;it is my wish that this book may be
+judged by the text of the present edition, which is the latest and
+the best.</i></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>
+<blockquote><i>W. W.</i></blockquote>
+June 6, 1893.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_PRE" id="a_PRE"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0017.jpg" width="75%" alt=
+"Preface"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2 align="center"><a name="a_OPF" id="a_OPF"></a>PREFACE</h2>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p><i>Beautiful and storied scenes that have soothed and elevated the
+mind naturally inspire a feeling of gratitude. Prompted by that
+feeling the present author has written this record of his rambles in
+England. It was his wish, in dwelling upon the rural loveliness and
+the literary and historical associations of that delightful realm, to
+afford sympathetic guidance and useful suggestion to other American
+travellers who, like himself, might be attracted to roam among the
+shrines of the mother land. There is no pursuit more fascinating or
+in a high intellectual sense more remunerative; since it serves to
+define and regulate knowledge, to correct misapprehensions of fact,
+to broaden the mental vision, to ripen and refine the Judgment and
+the taste, and to fill the memory with ennobling recollections. These
+papers commemorate two visits to England, the first made in</i> 1877,
+<i>the second in</i> 1882; <i>they occasionally touch upon the same
+place or scene as observed at different times; and especially they
+describe two distinct journeys, separated by an interval of five
+years, through the region associated with the great name of
+Shakespeare. Repetitions of the same reference, which now and then
+occur, were found unavoidable by the writer, but it is hoped that
+they will not be found tedious by the reader. Those who walk twice in
+the same pathways should be pleased, and not pained, to find the same
+wild-flowers growing beside them. The first American edition of this
+work consisted of two volumes, published in</i> 1879, 1881,
+<i>and</i> 1884, <i>called</i> The Trip to England <i>and</i> English
+Rambles. <i>The former book was embellished with poetic illustrations
+by Joseph Jefferson, the famous comedian, my life-long friend. The
+paper on</i> Shakespeare's Home,&mdash;<i>written to record for
+American readers the dedication of the Shakespeare Memorial at
+Stratford,</i>&mdash;<i>was first printed in</i> Harper's Magazine,
+<i>in May</i> 1879. <i>with delicate illustrative pictures from the
+graceful pencil of Edwin Abbey. This compendium of the</i> Trip
+<i>and the</i> Rambles, <i>with the title of</i> Shakespeare's
+England, <i>was first published by David Douglas of Edinburgh. That
+title was chosen for the reason that the book relates largely to
+Warwickshire and because it depicts not so much the England of fact
+as the England created and hallowed by the spirit of her poetry, of
+which Shakespeare is the soul. Several months after the publication
+of</i> Shakespeare's England <i>the writer was told of a work,
+published many years ago, bearing a similar title, though relating to
+a different theme&mdash;the physical state of England in
+Shakespeare's time. He had never heard of it and has never seen it.
+The text for the present reprint has been carefully revised. To his
+British readers the author would say that it is neither from lack of
+sympathy with the happiness around him nor from lack of faith in the
+future of his country that his writings have drifted toward the
+pathos in human experience and toward the hallowing associations of
+an old historic land. Temperament is the explanation of style: and he
+has written thus of England because she has filled his mind with
+beauty and his heart with mingled joy and sadness: and surely some
+memory of her venerable ruins, her ancient shrines, her rustic glens,
+her gleaming rivers, and her flower-spangled meadows will mingle with
+the last thoughts that glimmer through his brain, when the shadows of
+the eternal night are falling and the ramble of life is done.</i></p>
+<blockquote>
+<blockquote><i>W. W.</i></blockquote>
+1892.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0021.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Floral Border"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2 align="center">CONTENTS</h2>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3 align="center"><a name="a_sub_PIE" href="#a_PIE" id=
+"a_sub_PIE">Preface To Illustrated Edition</a></h3>
+<br>
+<h3 align="center"><a name="a_sub_OPF" href="#a_OPF" id=
+"a_sub_OPF">Old Preface</a></h3>
+<br>
+<h3 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHI" href="#a_CHI" id=
+"a_sub_CHI">CHAPTER I.</a></h3>
+<h4 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHIb" href="#a_CHIb" id=
+"a_sub_CHIb">The Voyage</a></h4>
+<br>
+<h3 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHII" href="#a_CHII" id=
+"a_sub_CHII">CHAPTER II.</a></h3>
+<h4 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHIIb" href="#a_CHIIb" id=
+"a_sub_CHIIb">The Beauty Of England</a></h4>
+<br>
+<h3 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHIII" href="#a_CHIII" id=
+"a_sub_CHIII">CHAPTER III.</a></h3>
+<h4 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHIIIb" href="#a_CHIIIb" id=
+"a_sub_CHIIIb">Great Historic Places</a></h4>
+<br>
+<h3 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHIV" href="#a_CHIV" id=
+"a_sub_CHIV">CHAPTER IV.</a></h3>
+<h4 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHIVb" href="#a_CHIVb" id=
+"a_sub_CHIVb">Rambles In London</a></h4>
+<br>
+<h3 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHV" href="#a_CHV" id=
+"a_sub_CHV">CHAPTER V.</a></h3>
+<h4 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHVb" href="#a_CHVb" id=
+"a_sub_CHVb">A Visit To Windsor</a></h4>
+<br>
+<h3 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHVI" href="#a_CHVI" id=
+"a_sub_CHVI">CHAPTER VI.</a></h3>
+<h4 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHVIb" href="#a_CHVIb" id=
+"a_sub_CHVIb">The Palace Of Westminster.</a></h4>
+<br>
+<h3 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHVII" href="#a_CHVII" id=
+"a_sub_CHVII">CHAPTER VII.</a></h3>
+<h4 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHVIIb" href="#a_CHVIIb" id=
+"a_sub_CHVIIb">Warwick And Kenilworth</a></h4>
+<br>
+<h3 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHVIII" href="#a_CHVIII" id=
+"a_sub_CHVIII">CHAPTER VIII.</a></h3>
+<h4 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHVIIIb" href="#a_CHVIIIb" id=
+"a_sub_CHVIIIb">First View Of Stratford-Upon-Avon</a></h4>
+<br>
+<h3 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHIX" href="#a_CHIX" id=
+"a_sub_CHIX">CHAPTER IX.</a></h3>
+<h4 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHIXb" href="#a_CHIXb" id=
+"a_sub_CHIXb">London Nooks And Corners</a></h4>
+<br>
+<h3 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHX" href="#a_CHX" id=
+"a_sub_CHX">CHAPTER X.</a></h3>
+<h4 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHXb" href="#a_CHXb" id=
+"a_sub_CHXb">Relics Of Lord Byron</a></h4>
+<br>
+<h3 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHXI" href="#a_CHXI" id=
+"a_sub_CHXI">CHAPTER XI.</a></h3>
+<h4 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHXIb" href="#a_CHXIb" id=
+"a_sub_CHXIb">Westminster Abbey</a></h4>
+<br>
+<h3 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHXII" href="#a_CHXII" id=
+"a_sub_CHXII">CHAPTER XII.</a></h3>
+<h4 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHXIIb" href="#a_CHXIIb" id=
+"a_sub_CHXIIb">Shakespeare's Home</a></h4>
+<br>
+<h3 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHXIII" href="#a_CHXIII" id=
+"a_sub_CHXIII">CHAPTER XIII.</a></h3>
+<h4 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHXIIIb" href="#a_CHXIIIb" id=
+"a_sub_CHXIIIb">Up to London</a></h4>
+<br>
+<h3 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHXIV" href="#a_CHXIV" id=
+"a_sub_CHXIV">CHAPTER XIV.</a></h3>
+<h4 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHXIVb" href="#a_CHXIVb" id=
+"a_sub_CHXIVb">Old Churches of London</a></h4>
+<br>
+<h3 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHXV" href="#a_CHXV" id=
+"a_sub_CHXV">CHAPTER XV.</a></h3>
+<h4 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHXVb" href="#a_CHXVb" id=
+"a_sub_CHXVb">Literary Shrines of London</a></h4>
+<br>
+<h3 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHXVI" href="#a_CHXVI" id=
+"a_sub_CHXVI">CHAPTER XVI.</a></h3>
+<h4 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHXVIb" href="#a_CHXVIb" id=
+"a_sub_CHXVIb">A Haunt Of Edmund Kean</a></h4>
+<br>
+<h3 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHXVII" href="#a_CHXVII" id=
+"a_sub_CHXVII">CHAPTER XVII.</a></h3>
+<h4 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHXVIIb" href="#a_CHXVIIb" id=
+"a_sub_CHXVIIb">Stoke-Pogis and Thomas Gray</a></h4>
+<br>
+<h3 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHXVIII" href="#a_CHXVIII" id=
+"a_sub_CHXVIII">CHAPTER XVIII.</a></h3>
+<h4 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHXVIIIb" href="#a_CHXVIIIb" id=
+"a_sub_CHXVIIIb">At The Grave of Coleridge</a></h4>
+<br>
+<h3 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHXIX" href="#a_CHXIX" id=
+"a_sub_CHXIX">CHAPTER XIX.</a></h3>
+<h4 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHXIXb" href="#a_CHXIXb" id=
+"a_sub_CHXIXb">On Barnet Battle-field</a></h4>
+<br>
+<h3 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHXX" href="#a_CHXX" id=
+"a_sub_CHXX">CHAPTER XX.</a></h3>
+<h4 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHXXb" href="#a_CHXXb" id=
+"a_sub_CHXXb">A Glimpse Of Canterbury</a></h4>
+<br>
+<h3 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHXXI" href="#a_CHXXI" id=
+"a_sub_CHXXI">CHAPTER XXI.</a></h3>
+<h4 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHXXIb" href="#a_CHXXIb" id=
+"a_sub_CHXXIb">The Shrines Of Warwickshire</a></h4>
+<br>
+<h3 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHXXII" href="#a_CHXXII" id=
+"a_sub_CHXXII">CHAPTER XXII.</a></h3>
+<h4 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHXXIIb" href="#a_CHXXIIb" id=
+"a_sub_CHXXIIb">A Borrower of The Night</a></h4>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_ILL" id="a_ILL"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0023.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Illustrations"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2 align="center">ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+<br>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_PWW" href="#a_PWW" id=
+"a_sub_PWW">Portrait of William Winter&mdash;from a crayon by Arthur
+Jule Goodman</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_TAI" href="#a_TAI" id=
+"a_sub_TAI">The Anchor Inn</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_OHB" href="#a_OHB" id=
+"a_sub_OHB">Old House at Bridport</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_RHR" href="#a_RHR" id=
+"a_sub_RHR">Restoration House, Rochester</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHC" href="#a_CHC" id=
+"a_sub_CHC">Charing Cross</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_KNP" href="#a_KNP" id=
+"a_sub_KNP">Kensington Palace</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_TTL" href="#a_TTL" id=
+"a_sub_TTL">The Tower of London</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_OWG" href="#a_OWG" id=
+"a_sub_OWG">Old Water Gate</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_ACC" href="#a_ACC" id=
+"a_sub_ACC">Approach to Cheshire Cheese</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_SMS" href="#a_SML" id=
+"a_sub_SMS">St. Mary-le-Strand</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_TCH" href="#a_TCH" id=
+"a_sub_TCH">Temple Church</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_GMN" href="#a_GMN" id=
+"a_sub_GMN">Gower's Monument</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_AMN" href="#a_AMN" id=
+"a_sub_AMN">Andrews's Monument</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_OTI" href="#a_OTI" id=
+"a_sub_OTI">Old Tabard Inn, Southwark</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_WCH" href="#a_WCH" id=
+"a_sub_WCH">Windsor Castle</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_SGC" href="#a_SGC" id=
+"a_sub_SGC">St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_WFP" href="#a_WFP" id=
+"a_sub_WFP">Windsor Forest and Park</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_TCT" href="#a_TCT" id=
+"a_sub_TCT">The Curfew Tower</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_SOS" href="#a_SOS" id=
+"a_sub_SOS">The Sign of the Swan</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_WMH" href="#a_WMH" id=
+"a_sub_WMH">Westminster Hall</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_TMC" href="#a_TMC" id=
+"a_sub_TMC">The Mace</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_GHO" href="#a_GHO" id=
+"a_sub_GHO">Greenwich Hospital</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_QEC" href="#a_QEC" id=
+"a_sub_QEC">Queen Elizabeth's Cradle</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_WAC" href="#a_WAC" id=
+"a_sub_WAC">Warwick Castle</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_OIN" href="#a_OIN" id=
+"a_sub_OIN">Old Inn</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_WIP" href="#a_WIP" id=
+"a_sub_WIP">Washington Irving's Parlour</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_FWS" href="#a_FWS" id=
+"a_sub_FWS">From the Warwick Shield</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_HTC" href="#a_HTC" id=
+"a_sub_HTC">Holy Trinity Church, Stratford</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_ING" href="#a_ING" id=
+"a_sub_ING">The Inglenook</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_ASH" href="#a_ASH" id=
+"a_sub_ASH">Approach to Shottery</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_DVS" href="#a_DVS" id=
+"a_sub_DVS">Distant View of Stratford</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_WHG" href="#a_WHG" id=
+"a_sub_WHG">Whitehall Gateway</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_LPL" href="#a_LPL" id=
+"a_sub_LPL">Lambeth Palace</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_DCO" href="#a_DCO" id=
+"a_sub_DCO">Dulwich College</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_TCI" href="#a_TCI" id=
+"a_sub_TCI">The Crown Inn, Dulwich</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_ORW" href="#a_ORW" id=
+"a_sub_ORW">Oriel Window</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_TWA" href="#a_TWA" id=
+"a_sub_TWA">From the Triforium, Westminster Abbey</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_HVC" href="#a_HVC" id=
+"a_sub_HVC">Chapel of Henry VII.</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CEC" href="#a_CEC" id=
+"a_sub_CEC">Chapel of Edward the Confessor</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_TPC" href="#a_TPC" id=
+"a_sub_TPC">The Poets' Corner</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_TNA" href="#a_TNA" id=
+"a_sub_TNA">The North Ambulatory</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_TSH" href="#a_TSH" id=
+"a_sub_TSH">The Spaniards, Hampstead</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_DSP" href="#a_DSP" id=
+"a_sub_DSP">The Dome of St. Paul's</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_TGR" href="#a_TGR" id=
+"a_sub_TGR">The Grange</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_SHB" href="#a_SHB" id=
+"a_sub_SHB">Shakespeare's Birthplace</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_AHC" href="#a_AHC" id=
+"a_sub_AHC">Anne Hathaway's Cottage</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHR" href="#a_CHR" id=
+"a_sub_CHR">Charlecote</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_MWA" href="#a_MWA" id=
+"a_sub_MWA">Meadow Walk by the Avon</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_AFN" href="#a_AFN" id=
+"a_sub_AFN">Antique Font</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_SHM" href="#a_SHM" id=
+"a_sub_SHM">Monument</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_GAW" href="#a_GAW" id=
+"a_sub_GAW">Gable Window</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_PVP" href="#a_PVP" id=
+"a_sub_PVP">Peveril Peak</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_SPM" href="#a_SPM" id=
+"a_sub_SPM">St. Paul's, from Maiden Lane</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CHH" href="#a_CHH" id=
+"a_sub_CHH">The Charter-house</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_SGCF" href="#a_SGCF" id=
+"a_sub_SGCF">St. Giles', Cripplegate</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_SJC" href="#a_SJC" id=
+"a_sub_SJC">Sir John Crosby's Monument</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_GRMN" href="#a_GRMN" id=
+"a_sub_GRMN">Gresham's Monument</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_GOLD" href="#a_GOLD" id=
+"a_sub_GOLD">Goldsmith's House</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_BCC" href="#a_BCC" id="a_sub_BCC">A
+Bit from Clare Court</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_FS1" href="#a_FS1" id=
+"a_sub_FS1">Fleet Street in 1780</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_GIS" href="#a_GIS" id=
+"a_sub_GIS">Gray's Inn Square</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_SPC" href="#a_SPC" id=
+"a_sub_SPC">Stoke-Pogis Church</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_OCH" href="#a_OCH" id=
+"a_sub_OCH">Old Church</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_TWH" href="#a_TWH" id=
+"a_sub_TWH">The White Hart</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CBB" href="#a_CBB" id=
+"a_sub_CBB">Column on Barnet Battle-field</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_FMH" href="#a_FMH2" id=
+"a_sub_FMH">Farm-house</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_FIW" href="#a_FIW" id=
+"a_sub_FIW">Falstaff Inn and West Gate, Canterbury</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_BLC" href="#a_BLC" id=
+"a_sub_BLC">Butchery Lane, Canterbury</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_FHI" href="#a_FHI" id=
+"a_sub_FHI">Flying-horse Inn, Canterbury</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CCA" href="#a_CCA" id=
+"a_sub_CCA">Canterbury Cathedral</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_SUA" href="#a_SUA" id=
+"a_sub_SUA">Stratford-upon-Avon</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_SCH" href="#a_SCH" id=
+"a_sub_SCH">Stratford Church</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_WIC" href="#a_WIC" id=
+"a_sub_WIC">Washington Irving's Chair</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_TSM" href="#a_TSM" id=
+"a_sub_TSM">The Stratford Memorial</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_MAC" href="#a_MAC" id=
+"a_sub_MAC">Mary Arden's Cottage</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_CSM2" href="#a_CSM2" id=
+"a_sub_CSM2">Church of St. Martin</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_WES" href="#a_WES" id=
+"a_sub_WES">Westminster Abbey</a></h5>
+<h5 align="center"><a name="a_sub_MTL" href="#a_MTL" id=
+"a_sub_MTL">Middle Temple Lane</a></h5>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote><small><i>This royal throne of kings, this sceptred
+isle,</i><br>
+<i>This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,</i><br>
+<i>This other Eden, demi-paradise,</i><br>
+<i>This fortress built by Nature for herself, . . .</i><br>
+<i>This precious stone set in the silver sea, . . .</i><br>
+<i>This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, . .
+.</i><br>
+<i>This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,</i><br>
+<i>Dear for her reputation through the world!</i><br>
+<br></small>
+<blockquote>S<small>HAKESPEARE.</small></blockquote>
+<br></blockquote>
+<blockquote>
+<blockquote>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</blockquote>
+</blockquote>
+<br>
+<blockquote><small><i>All that I saw returns upon my view;</i><br>
+<i>All that I heard comes back upon my ear;</i><br>
+<i>All that I felt this moment doth renew.</i><br>
+<br>
+<i>Fair land! by Time's parental love made free,</i><br>
+<i>By Social Order's watchful arms embraced,</i><br>
+<i>With unexampled union meet in thee,</i><br>
+<i>For eye and mind, the present and the past;</i><br>
+<i>With golden prospect for futurity,</i><br>
+<i>If that be reverenced which ought to last.</i><br>
+<br></small>
+<blockquote>W<small>ORDSWORTH.</small></blockquote>
+</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_NPB" id="a_NPB"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0029.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Nepture Border"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2 align="center">SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND</h2>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CHI" id="a_CHI"></a><a name="a_CHIb" id="a_CHIb"></a>
+<h3 align="center">CHAPTER I</h3>
+<h5 align="center">THE VOYAGE</h5>
+<h5 align="center">1887</h5>
+<br>
+<p>The coast-line recedes and disappears, and night comes down upon
+the ocean. Into what dangers will the great ship plunge? Through what
+mysterious waste of waters will she make her viewless path? The black
+waves roll up around her. The strong blast fills her sails and
+whistles through her creaking cordage. Overhead the stars shine dimly
+amid the driving clouds. Mist and gloom close in the dubious
+prospect, and a strange sadness settles upon the heart of the
+voyager&mdash;who has left his home behind, and who now seeks, for
+the first time, the land, the homes, and the manners of the stranger.
+Thoughts and images of the past crowd thick upon his remembrance. The
+faces of absent friends rise before him, whom, perhaps, he is
+destined nevermore to behold. He sees their smiles; he hears their
+voices; he fancies them by familiar hearth-stones, in the light of
+the evening lamps. They are very far away now; and already it seems
+months instead of hours since the parting moment. Vain now the pang
+of regret for misunderstandings, unkindness, neglect; for golden
+moments slighted and gentle courtesies left undone. He is alone upon
+the wild sea&mdash;all the more alone because surrounded with new
+faces of unknown companions&mdash;and the best he can do is to seek
+his lonely pillow and lie down with a prayer in his heart and on his
+lips. Never before did he so clearly know&mdash;never again will he
+so deeply feel&mdash;the uncertainty of human life and the weakness
+of human nature. Yet, as he notes the rush and throb of the vast ship
+and the noise of the breaking waves around her, and thinks of the
+mighty deep beneath, and the broad and melancholy expanse that
+stretches away on every side, he cannot miss the
+impression&mdash;grand, noble, and thrilling&mdash;of human courage,
+skill, and power. For this ship is the centre of a splendid conflict.
+Man and the elements are here at war; and man makes conquest of the
+elements by using them as weapons against themselves. Strong and
+brilliant, the head-light streams over the boiling surges. Lanterns
+gleam in the tops. Dark figures keep watch upon the prow. The officer
+of the night is at his post upon the bridge. Let danger threaten
+howsoever it may, it cannot come unawares; it cannot subdue, without
+a tremendous struggle, the brave minds and hardy bodies that are here
+arrayed to meet it. With this thought, perhaps, the weary voyager
+sinks to sleep; and this is his first night at sea.</p>
+<p>There is no tediousness of solitude to him who has within himself
+resources of thought and dream, the pleasures and pains of memory,
+the bliss and the torture of imagination. It is best to have few
+acquaintances&mdash;or none&mdash;on shipboard. Human companionship,
+at some times, and this is one of them, distracts by its pettiness.
+The voyager should yield himself to nature now, and meet his own soul
+face to face. The routine of everyday life is commonplace enough,
+equally upon sea and land. But the ocean is a continual pageant,
+filling and soothing the mind with unspeakable peace. Never, in even
+the grandest words of poetry, was the grandeur of the sea expressed.
+Its vastness, its freedom, its joy, and its beauty overwhelm the
+mind. All things else seem puny and momentary beside the life that
+this immense creation unfolds and inspires. Sometimes it shines in
+the sun, a wilderness of shimmering silver. Sometimes its long waves
+are black, smooth, glittering, and dangerous. Sometimes it seems
+instinct with a superb wrath, and its huge masses rise, and clash
+together, and break into crests of foam. Sometimes it is gray and
+quiet, as if in a sullen sleep. Sometimes the white mist broods upon
+it and deepens the sense of awful mystery by which it is forever
+enwrapped. At night its surging billows are furrowed with long
+streaks of phosphorescent fire; or, it may be, the waves roll gently,
+under the soft light of stars; or all the waste is dim, save where,
+beneath the moon, a glorious pathway, broadening out to the far
+horizon, allures and points to heaven. One of the most exquisite
+delights of the voyage, whether by day or night, is to lie upon the
+deck in some secluded spot, and look up at the tall, tapering spars
+as they sway with the motion of the ship, while over them the white
+clouds float, in ever-changing shapes, or the starry constellations
+drift, in their eternal march. No need now of books, or newspapers,
+or talk! The eyes are fed by every object they behold. The great
+ship, with all her white wings spread, careening like a tiny
+sail-boat, dips and rises, with sinuous, stately grace. The clank of
+her engines&mdash;fit type of steadfast industry and
+purpose&mdash;goes steadily on. The song of the sailors&mdash;"Give
+me some time to blow the man down"&mdash;rises in cheery melody, full
+of audacious, light-hearted thoughtlessness, and strangely tinged
+with the romance of the sea. Far out toward the horizon many whales
+come sporting and spouting along. At once, out of the distant bank of
+cloud and mist, a little vessel springs into view, and with
+convulsive movement&mdash;tilting up and down like the miniature
+barque upon an old Dutch clock&mdash;dances across the vista and
+vanishes into space. Soon a tempest bursts upon the calm; and then,
+safe-housed from the fierce blast and blinding rain, the voyager
+exults over the stern battle of winds and waters and the stalwart,
+undaunted strength with which his ship bears down the furious floods
+and stems the gale. By and by a quiet hour is given, when, met
+together with the companions of his journey, he stands in the hushed
+cabin and hears the voice of prayer and the hymn of praise, and, in
+the pauses, a gentle ripple of waves against the ship, which now
+rocks lazily upon the sunny deep; and, ever and anon, as she dips, he
+can discern through her open ports the shining sea and the wheeling
+and circling gulls that have come out to welcome her to the shores of
+the old world.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_TAI" id="a_TAI"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0033.jpg" width="60%" alt=
+"The Anchor Inn."></p>
+<br>
+<p>The present writer, when first he saw the distant and dim coast of
+Britain, felt, with a sense of forlorn loneliness that he was a
+stranger; but when last he saw that coast he beheld it through a mist
+of tears and knew that he had parted from many cherished friends,
+from many of the gentlest men and women upon the earth, and from a
+land henceforth as dear to him as his own. England is a country which
+to see is to love. As you draw near to her shores you are pleased at
+once with the air of careless finish and negligent grace that
+everywhere overhangs the prospect. The grim, wind-beaten hills of
+Ireland have first been passed&mdash;hills crowned, here and there,
+with dark, fierce towers that look like strongholds of ancient bandit
+chiefs, and cleft by dim valleys that seem to promise endless mystery
+and romance, hid in their sombre depths. Passed also is white
+Queenstown, with its lovely little bay, its circle of green
+hillsides, and its valiant fort; and picturesque Fastnet, with its
+gaily painted tower, has long been left behind. It is off the noble
+crags of Holyhead that the voyager first observes with what a deft
+skill the hand of art has here moulded nature's luxuriance into forms
+of seeming chance-born beauty; and from that hour, wherever in rural
+England the footsteps of the pilgrim may roam, he will behold nothing
+but gentle rustic adornment, that has grown with the grass and the
+roses&mdash;greener grass and redder roses than ever we see in our
+western world! In the English nature a love of the beautiful is
+spontaneous, and the operation of it is as fluent as the blowing of
+the summer wind. Portions of English cities, indeed, are hard and
+harsh and coarse enough to suit the most utilitarian taste; yet even
+in those regions of dreary monotony the national love of flowers will
+find expression, and the people, without being aware of it, will, in
+many odd little ways, beautify their homes and make their
+surroundings pictorial, at least to stranger eyes. There is a tone of
+rest and homelike comfort even in murky Liverpool; and great
+magnificence is there&mdash;as well of architecture and opulent
+living as of enterprise and action. "Towered cities" and "the busy
+hum of men," however, are soon left behind by the wise traveller in
+England. A time will come for those; but in his first sojourn there
+he soon discovers the two things that are utterly to absorb
+him&mdash;which cannot disappoint&mdash;and which are the fulfilment
+of all his dreams. These things are&mdash;the rustic loveliness of
+the land and the charm of its always vital and splendid antiquity.
+The green lanes, the thatched cottages, the meadows glorious with
+wildflowers, the little churches covered with dark-green ivy, the
+Tudor gables festooned with roses, the devious footpaths that wind
+across wild heaths and long and lonesome fields, the narrow, shining
+rivers, brimful to their banks and crossed here and there with gray,
+moss-grown bridges, the stately elms whose low-hanging branches droop
+over a turf of emerald velvet, the gnarled beech-trees "that wreathe
+their old, fantastic roots so high," the rooks that caw and circle in
+the air, the sweet winds that blow from fragrant woods, the sheep and
+the deer that rest in shady places, the pretty children who cluster
+round the porches of their cleanly, cosy homes, and peep at the
+wayfarer as he passes, the numerous and often brilliant birds that at
+times fill the air with music, the brief, light, pleasant rains that
+ever and anon refresh the landscape&mdash;these are some of the
+everyday joys of rural England; and these are wrapped in a climate
+that makes life one serene ecstasy. Meantime, in rich valleys or on
+verdant slopes, a thousand old castles and monasteries, ruined or
+half in ruins, allure the pilgrim's gaze, inspire his imagination,
+arouse his memory, and fill his mind. The best romance of the past
+and the best reality of the present are his banquet now; and nothing
+is wanting to the perfection of the feast. I thought that life could
+have but few moments of content in store for me like the
+moment&mdash;never to be forgotten!&mdash;when, in the heart of
+London, on a perfect June day, I lay upon the grass in the old Green
+Park, and, for the first time, looked up to the towers of Westminster
+Abbey.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_OHB" id="a_OHB"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0034.jpg" width="75%" alt=
+"Old House at Bridport."></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_FLB" id="a_FLB"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0036.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Flower Border"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CHII" id="a_CHII"></a><a name="a_CHIIb" id="a_CHIIb"></a>
+<h3 align="center">CHAPTER II</h3>
+<h5 align="center">THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND</h5>
+<br>
+<p>It is not strange that Englishmen should be&mdash;as certainly
+they are&mdash;passionate lovers of their country; for their country
+is, almost beyond parallel, peaceful, gentle, and beautiful. Even in
+vast London, where practical life asserts itself with such prodigious
+force, the stranger is impressed, in every direction, with a
+sentiment of repose and peace. This sentiment seems to proceed in
+part from the antiquity of the social system here established, and in
+part from the affectionate nature of the English people. Here are
+finished towns, rural regions thoroughly cultivated and exquisitely
+adorned; ancient architecture, crumbling in slow decay; and a soil so
+rich and pure that even in its idlest mood it lights itself up with
+flowers, just as the face of a sleeping child lights itself up with
+smiles. Here, also, are soft and kindly manners, settled principles,
+good laws, wise customs&mdash;wise, because rooted in the universal
+attributes of human nature; and, above all, here is the practice of
+trying to live in a happy condition instead of trying to make a noise
+about it. Here, accordingly, life is soothed and hallowed with the
+comfortable, genial, loving spirit of home. It would, doubtless, be
+easily possible to come into contact here with absurd forms and
+pernicious abuses, to observe absurd individuals, and to discover
+veins of sordid selfishness and of evil and sorrow. But the things
+that first and most deeply impress the observer of England and
+English society are their potential, manifold, and abundant sources
+of beauty, refinement, and peace. There are, of course, grumblers.
+Mention has been made of a person who, even in heaven, would complain
+that his cloud was damp and his halo a misfit. We cannot have
+perfection; but the man who could not be happy in England&mdash;in so
+far, at least, as happiness depends upon external objects and
+influences&mdash;could not reasonably expect to be happy
+anywhere.</p>
+<p>Summer heat is perceptible for an hour or two each day, but it
+causes no discomfort. Fog has refrained; though it is understood to
+be lurking in the Irish sea and the English channel, and waiting for
+November, when it will drift into town and grime all the new paint on
+the London houses. Meantime, the sky is softly blue and full of
+magnificent bronze clouds; the air is cool, and in the environs of
+the city is fragrant with the scent of new-mown hay; and the grass
+and trees in the parks&mdash;those copious and splendid lungs of
+London&mdash;are green, dewy, sweet, and beautiful. Persons "to the
+manner born" were lately calling the season "backward," and they went
+so far as to grumble at the hawthorne, as being less brilliant than
+in former seasons. But, in fact, to the unfamiliar sense, this tree
+of odorous coral has been delicious. We have nothing comparable with
+it in northern America, unless, perhaps, it be the elder, of our wild
+woods; and even that, with all its fragrance, lacks equal charm of
+colour. They use the hawthorne, or some kindred shrub, for hedges in
+this country, and hence their fields are seldom disfigured with
+fences. As you ride through the land you see miles and miles of
+meadow traversed by these green and blooming hedgerows, which give
+the country a charm quite incommunicable in words. The green of the
+foliage&mdash;enriched by an uncommonly humid air and burnished by
+the sun&mdash;is in perfection, while the flowers bloom in such
+abundance that the whole realm is one glowing pageant. I saw near
+Oxford, on the crest of a hill, a single ray of at least a thousand
+feet of scarlet poppies. Imagine that glorious dash of colour in a
+green landscape lit by the afternoon sun! Nobody could help loving a
+land that woos him with such beauty.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_RHR" id="a_RHR"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0039.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Restoration House, Rochester."></p>
+<br>
+<p>English flowers are exceptional for substance and pomp. The roses,
+in particular&mdash;though some of them, it should be said, are of
+French breeds&mdash;surpass all others. It may seem an extravagance
+to say, but it is certainly true, that these rich, firm, brilliant
+flowers affect you like creatures of flesh and blood. They are, in
+this respect, only to be described as like nothing in the world so
+much as the bright lips and blushing cheeks of the handsome English
+women who walk among them and vie with them in health and loveliness.
+It is easy to perceive the source of those elements of warmth and
+sumptuousness that are so conspicuous in the results of English
+taste. It is a land of flowers. Even in the busiest parts of London
+the people decorate their houses with them, and set the sombre,
+fog-grimed fronts ablaze with scarlet and gold. These are the
+prevalent colours&mdash;radically so, for they have become
+national&mdash;and, when placed against the black tint with which
+this climate stains the buildings, they have the advantage of a vivid
+contrast that much augments their splendour. All London wears crape,
+variegated with a tracery of white, like lace upon a pall. In some
+instances the effect is splendidly pompous. There cannot be a grander
+artificial object in the world than the front of St. Paul's
+cathedral, which is especially notable for this mysterious blending
+of light and shade. It is to be deplored that a climate which can
+thus beautify should also destroy; but there can be no doubt that the
+stones of England are steadily defaced by the action of the damp
+atmosphere. Already the delicate carvings on the palace of
+Westminster are beginning to crumble. And yet, if one might judge the
+climate by this glittering July, England is a land of sunshine as
+well as of flowers. Light comes before three o'clock in the morning,
+and it lasts, through a dreamy and lovely gloaming, till nearly ten
+o'clock at night. The morning sky is usually light blue, dappled with
+slate-coloured clouds. A few large stars are visible then, lingering
+to outface the dawn. Cool winds whisper, and presently they rouse the
+great, sleepy, old elms; and then the rooks&mdash;which are the low
+comedians of the air in this region&mdash;begin to grumble; and then
+the sun leaps above the horizon, and we sweep into a day of golden,
+breezy cheerfulness and comfort, the like of which is rarely or never
+known in northern America, between June and October. Sometimes the
+whole twenty-four hours have drifted past, as if in a dream of light,
+and fragrance, and music. In a recent moonlight time there was scarce
+any darkness at all; and more than once I have lain awake all night,
+within a few miles of Charing Cross, listening to a twitter of birds
+that is like the lapse and fall of silver water. It used to be
+difficult to understand why the London season should begin in May and
+last through most of the summer; it is not difficult to understand
+the custom now.</p>
+<p>The elements of discontent and disturbance which are visible in
+English society are found, upon close examination, to be merely
+superficial. Underneath them there abides a sturdy, immutable, inborn
+love of England. Those croakings, grumblings, and bickerings do but
+denote the process by which the body politic frees itself from the
+headaches and fevers that embarrass the national health. The
+Englishman and his country are one; and when the Englishman complains
+against his country it is not because he believes that either there
+is or can be a better country elsewhere, but because his instinct of
+justice and order makes him crave perfection in his own. Institutions
+and principles are, with him, by nature, paramount to individuals;
+and individuals only possess importance&mdash;and that conditional on
+abiding rectitude&mdash;who are their representatives. Everything is
+done in England to promote the permanence and beauty of the home; and
+the permanence and beauty of the home, by a natural reaction, augment
+in the English people solidity of character and peace of life. They
+do not dwell in a perpetual fret and fume as to the acts, thoughts,
+and words of other nations: for the English there is absolutely no
+public opinion outside of their own land: they do not live for the
+sake of working, but they work for the sake of living; and, as the
+necessary preparations for living have long since been completed,
+their country is at rest. This is the secret of England's first, and
+continuous, and last, and all-pervading charm and power for the
+stranger&mdash;the charm and power to soothe.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CHC" id="a_CHC"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0041.jpg" width="65%" alt=
+"Charing Cross."></p>
+<br>
+<p>The efficacy of endeavouring to make a country a united,
+comfortable, and beautiful home for all its
+inhabitants,&mdash;binding every heart to the land by the same tie
+that binds every heart to the fireside,&mdash;is something well
+worthy to be considered, equally by the practical statesman and the
+contemplative observer. That way, assuredly, lie the welfare of the
+human race and all the tranquillity that human nature&mdash;warped as
+it is by evil&mdash;will ever permit to this world. This endeavour
+has, through long ages, been steadily pursued in England, and one of
+its results&mdash;which is also one of its indications&mdash;is the
+vast accumulation of what may be called home treasures in the city of
+London. The mere enumeration of them would fill large volumes. The
+description of them could not be completed in a lifetime. It was this
+copiousness of historic wealth and poetic association, combined with
+the flavour of character and the sentiment of monastic repose, that
+bound Dr. Johnson to Fleet Street and made Charles Lamb such an
+inveterate lover of the town. Except it be to correct a possible
+insular narrowness there can be no need that the Londoner should
+travel. Glorious sights, indeed, await him, if he journeys no further
+away than Paris; but, aside from ostentation, luxury, gaiety, and
+excitement, Paris will give him nothing that he may not find at
+home.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_KNP" id="a_KNP"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0043.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Kensington Palace."></p>
+<br>
+<p>The great cathedral of Notre Dame will awe him; but not more than
+his own Westminster Abbey. The grandeur and beauty of the Madeleine
+will enchant him; but not more than the massive solemnity and
+stupendous magnificence of St. Paul's. The embankments of the Seine
+will satisfy his taste with their symmetrical solidity; but he will
+not deem them superior in any respect to the embankments of the
+Thames. The Pantheon, the Hotel des Invalides, the Luxembourg, the
+Louvre, the Tribunal of Commerce, the Opera-House,&mdash;all these
+will dazzle and delight his eyes, arousing his remembrances of
+history and firing his imagination of great events and persons; but
+all these will fail to displace in his esteem the grand Palace of
+Westminster, so stately in its simplicity, so strong in its perfect
+grace! He will ride through the exquisite Park of Monceau,&mdash;one
+of the loveliest spots in Paris,&mdash;and onward to the Bois de
+Boulogne, with its sumptuous pomp of foliage, its romantic green
+vistas, its many winding avenues, its hillside hermitage, its
+cascades, and its affluent lakes whereon the white swans beat the
+water with their joyous wings; but still his soul will turn, with
+unshaken love and loyal preference to the sweetly sylvan solitude of
+the gardens of Kensington and Kew. He will marvel in the museums of
+the Louvre, the Luxembourg, and Cluny; and probably he will concede
+that of paintings, whether ancient or modern, the French display is
+larger and finer than the English; but he will vaunt the British
+Museum as peerless throughout the world, and he will still prize his
+National Gallery, with its originals of Hogarth, Reynolds,
+Gainsborough, and Turner, its spirited, tender, and dreamy Murillos,
+and its dusky glories of Rembrandt. He will admire, at the Théâtre
+Français, the photographic perfection of French acting; but he will
+be apt to reflect that English dramatic art, if it sometimes lacks
+finish, often has the effect of nature; and he will certainly
+perceive that the playhouse itself is not superior to either Her
+Majesty's Theatre or Covent Garden. He will luxuriate in the Champs
+Élysées, in the superb Boulevards, in the glittering pageant of
+precious jewels that blazes in the Rue de la Paix and the Palais
+Royal, and in that gorgeous panorama of shop-windows for which the
+French capital is unrivalled and famous; and he will not deny that,
+as to brilliancy of aspect, Paris is prodigious and
+unequalled&mdash;the most radiant of cities&mdash;the sapphire in the
+crown of Solomon. But, when all is seen, either that Louis the
+Fourteenth created or Buonaparte pillaged,&mdash;when he has taken
+his last walk in the gardens of the Tuileries, and mused, at the foot
+of the statue of Caesar, on that Titanic strife of monarchy and
+democracy of which France has seemed destined to be the perpetual
+theatre,&mdash;sated with the glitter of showy opulence and tired
+with the whirl of frivolous life he will gladly and gratefully turn
+again to his sombre, mysterious, thoughtful, restful old London; and,
+like the Syrian captain, though in the better spirit of truth and
+right, declare that Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, are better
+than all the waters of Israel.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_RBD" id="a_RBD"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0046.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Ribbon Border"></p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CHIII" id="a_CHIII"></a><a name="a_CHIIIb" id=
+"a_CHIIIb"></a>
+<h3 align="center">CHAPTER III</h3>
+<h5 align="center">GREAT HISTORIC PLACES</h5>
+<br>
+<p>There is so much to be seen in London that the pilgrim scarcely
+knows where to choose and certainly is perplexed by what Dr. Johnson
+called "the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness." One spot to
+which I have many times been drawn, and which the mention of Dr.
+Johnson instantly calls to mind, is the stately and solemn place in
+Westminster Abbey where that great man's ashes are buried. Side by
+side, under the pavement of the Abbey, within a few feet of earth,
+sleep Johnson, Garrick, Sheridan, Henderson, Dickens, Cumberland, and
+Handel. Garrick's wife is buried in the same grave with her husband.
+Close by, some brass letters on a little slab in the stone floor mark
+the last resting-place of Thomas Campbell. Not far off is the body of
+Macaulay; while many a stroller through the nave treads upon the
+gravestone of that astonishing old man Thomas Parr, who lived in the
+reigns of nine princes (1483-1635), and reached the great age of 152.
+All parts of Westminster Abbey impress the reverential mind. It is an
+experience very strange and full of awe suddenly to find your steps
+upon the sepulchres of such illustrious men as Burke, Pitt, Fox, and
+Grattan; and you come, with a thrill of more than surprise, upon such
+still fresh antiquity as the grave of Anne Neville, the daughter of
+Warwick and queen of Richard the Third. But no single spot in the
+great cathedral can so enthral the imagination as that strip of
+storied stone beneath which Garrick, Johnson, Sheridan, Henderson,
+Cumberland, Dickens, Macaulay, and Handel sleep, side by side. This
+writer, when lately he visited the Abbey, found a chair upon the
+grave of Johnson, and sat down there to rest and muse. The letters on
+the stone are fast wearing away; but the memory of that sturdy
+champion of thought can never perish, as long as the votaries of
+literature love their art and honour the valiant genius that
+battled&mdash;through hunger, toil, and contumely&mdash;for its
+dignity and renown. It was a tender and right feeling that prompted
+the burial of Johnson close beside Garrick. They set out together to
+seek their fortune in the great city. They went through privation and
+trial hand in hand. Each found glory in a different way; and,
+although parted afterward by the currents of fame and wealth, they
+were never sundered in affection. It was fit they should at last find
+their rest together, under the most glorious roof that greets the
+skies of England. Fortune gave me a good first day at the Tower of
+London. The sky lowered. The air was very cold. The wind blew with
+angry gusts. The rain fell, now and then, in a chill drizzle. The
+river was dark and sullen. If the spirits of the dead come back to
+haunt any place they surely come back to haunt that one; and this was
+a day for their presence. One dark ghost seemed near, at every
+step&mdash;the ominous shade of the lonely Duke of Gloster. The
+little room in which the princes are said to have been murdered, by
+his command, was shown, and the oratory where king Henry the Sixth is
+supposed to have met a violent death, and the council chamber, in
+which Richard&mdash;after listening, in an ambush behind the
+arras&mdash;denounced the wretched Hastings. The latter place is now
+used as an armoury; but the same ceiling covers it that echoed the
+bitter invective of Gloster and the rude clamour of his soldiers,
+when their frightened victim was plucked forth and dragged
+downstairs, to be beheaded on "a timber-log" in the courtyard. The
+Tower is a place for such deeds, and you almost wonder that they do
+not happen still, in its gloomy chambers. The room in which the
+princes were killed (if killed indeed they were) is particularly
+grisly in aspect. It is an inner room, small and dark. A barred
+window in one of its walls fronts a window on the other side of the
+passage by which you approach it. This is but a few feet from the
+floor, and perhaps the murderers paused to look through it as they
+went to their hellish work upon the children of king Edward. The
+entrance was indicated to a secret passage by which this apartment
+could be approached from the foot of the Tower. In one gloomy stone
+chamber the crown jewels are exhibited, in a large glass case. One of
+the royal relics is a crown of velvet and gold that was made for poor
+Anne Boleyn. You may pass across the courtyard and pause on the spot
+where that miserable woman was beheaded, and you may walk thence over
+the ground that her last trembling footsteps traversed, to the round
+tower in which, at the close, she lived. Her grave is in the chancel
+of the little antique church, close by. I saw the cell of Raleigh,
+and that direful chamber which is scrawled all over with the names
+and emblems of prisoners who therein suffered confinement and
+lingering agony, nearly always ending in death; but I saw no sadder
+place than Anne Boleyn's tower. It seemed in the strangest way
+eloquent of mute suffering. It seemed to exhale grief and to plead
+for love and pity. Yet&mdash;what woman ever had greater love than
+was lavished on her? And what woman ever trampled more royally and
+recklessly upon human hearts?</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_TTL" id="a_TTL"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0049.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"The Tower of London."></p>
+<br>
+<p>The Tower of London is degraded by being put to commonplace uses
+and by being exhibited in a commonplace manner. They use the famous
+White Tower now as a store-house for arms, and it contains about one
+hundred thousand guns, besides a vast collection of old armour and
+weapons. The arrangement of the latter was made by J. R. Planché, the
+dramatic author,&mdash;famous as an antiquarian and a herald. [That
+learned, able, brilliant, and honoured gentleman died, May 29, 1880,
+aged 84.] Under his tasteful direction the effigies and gear of
+chivalry are displayed in such a way that the observer may trace the
+changes that war fashions have undergone, through the reigns of
+successive sovereigns of England, from the earliest period until now.
+A suit of mail worn by Henry the Eighth is shown, and also a suit
+worn by Charles the First. The suggestiveness of both figures is
+remarkable. In a room on the second floor of the White Tower they
+keep many gorgeous oriental weapons, and they show the cloak in which
+General Wolfe died, on the Plains of Abraham. It is a gray garment,
+to which the active moth has given a share of his assiduous
+attention. The most impressive objects to be seen there, however, are
+the block and axe that were used in beheading the Scotch lords,
+Kilmarnock, Balmerino, and Lovat, after the defeat of the pretender,
+in 1746. The block is of ash, and there are big and cruel dents upon
+it, showing that it was made for use rather than ornament. It is
+harmless enough now, and this writer was allowed to place his head
+upon it, in the manner prescribed for the victims of decapitation.
+The door of Raleigh's bedroom is opposite to these baleful relics,
+and it is said that his <i>History of the World</i> was written in
+the room in which these implements are now such conspicuous objects
+of gloom.&dagger; The place is gloomy and cheerless beyond
+expression, and great must have been the fortitude of the man who
+bore, in that grim solitude, a captivity of thirteen years&mdash;not
+failing to improve it by producing a book so excellent for
+quaintness, philosophy, and eloquence. A "beef-eater," arrayed in a
+dark tunic, trousers trimmed with red, and a black velvet hat adorned
+with bows of blue and red ribbon, precedes each group of visitors,
+and drops information and the letter h, from point to point. The
+centre of what was once the Tower green is marked with a brass plate,
+naming Anne Boleyn and giving the date when she was there beheaded.
+They found her body in an elm-wood box, made to hold arrows, and it
+now rests, with the ashes of other noble sufferers, under the stones
+of the church of St. Peter, about fifty feet from the place of
+execution. The ghost of Anne Boleyn is said to haunt that part of the
+Tower where she lived, and it is likewise whispered that the spectre
+of Lady Jane Grey was seen, not long ago, on the anniversary of the
+day of her execution [Obiit February 12, 1554], to glide out upon a
+balcony adjacent to the room in which she lodged during nearly eight
+months, at the last of her wasted, unfortunate, but gentle and noble
+life. [That room was in the house of Thomas Brydges, brother and
+deputy of Sir John Brydges, Lieutenant of the Tower, and its windows
+command an unobstructed view of the Tower green, which was the place
+of the block.] It could serve no good purpose to relate the
+particulars of those visitations; but nobody doubts them&mdash;while
+he is in the Tower. It is a place of mystery and horror,
+notwithstanding all that the practical spirit of to-day has done to
+make it trivial and to cheapen its grim glories by association with
+the commonplace.</p>
+<p><small>&dagger; Many of these relics have since been disposed in a
+different way.&mdash;Raleigh was incarcerated in various parts of the
+Tower, in the course of his several imprisonments.</small></p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_OWG" id="a_OWG"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0055.jpg" width="60%" alt=
+"Old Water Gate."></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_BBD" id="a_BBD"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0056.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Bird Border"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CHIV" id="a_CHIV"></a><a name="a_CHIVb" id="a_CHIVb"></a>
+<h3 align="center">CHAPTER IV</h3>
+<h5 align="center">RAMBLES IN LONDON</h5>
+<br>
+<p>All old cities get rich in association, as a matter of course and
+whether they will or no; but London, by reason of its great extent,
+as well as its great antiquity, is richer in association than any
+modern place on earth. The stranger scarcely takes a step without
+encountering a new object of interest. The walk along the Strand and
+Fleet Street, in particular, is continually on storied ground. Old
+Temple Bar still stands (July 1877), though "tottering to its fall,"
+and marks the junction of the two streets. The statues of Charles the
+First and Charles the Second on its western front would be remarkable
+anywhere, as characteristic portraits. You stand beside that arch and
+quite forget the passing throng, and take no heed of the tumult
+around, as you think of Johnson and Boswell leaning against the Bar
+after midnight in the far-off times and waking the echoes of the
+Temple Garden with their frolicsome laughter. The Bar is carefully
+propped now, and they will nurse its age as long as they can; but it
+is an obstruction to travel&mdash;and it must disappear. (It was
+removed in the summer of 1878.) They will probably set it up, newly
+built, in another place. They have left untouched a little piece of
+the original scaffolding built around St. Paul's; and that fragment
+of decaying wood may still be seen, high upon the side of the
+cathedral. The Rainbow, the Mitre, the Cheshire Cheese, Dolly's
+Chop-House, the Cock, and the Round Table&mdash;taverns or
+public-houses that were frequented by the old wits&mdash;are still
+extant (1877). The Cheshire Cheese is scarcely changed from what it
+was when Johnson, Goldsmith, and their comrades ate beefsteak pie and
+drank porter there, and the Doctor "tossed and gored several
+persons," as it was his cheerful custom to do. The benches in that
+room are narrow, incommodious, penitential; mere ledges of well-worn
+wood, on which the visitor sits bolt upright, in difficult
+perpendicular; but there is, probably, nothing on earth that would
+induce the owner to alter them&mdash;and he is right.<br>
+<a name="a_ACC" id="a_ACC"></a></p>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0057.jpg" width="75%" alt=
+"Approach to Cheshire Cheese."></p>
+<br>
+<p>The conservative principle in the English mind, if it has saved
+some trash, has saved more treasure. At the foot of Buckingham
+Street, in the Strand,&mdash;where was situated an estate of George
+Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham, assassinated in 1628, whose tomb
+may be seen in the chapel of Henry the Seventh in Westminster
+Abbey,&mdash;still stands the slowly crumbling ruin of the old Water
+Gate, so often mentioned as the place where accused traitors were
+embarked for the Tower. The river, in former times, flowed up to that
+gate, but the land along the margin of the Thames has been redeemed,
+and the magnificent Victoria and Albert embankments now border the
+river for a long distance on both sides. The Water Gate, in fact,
+stands in a little park on the north bank of the Thames. Not far away
+is the Adelphi Terrace, where Garrick lived and died (Obiit January
+20, 1779, aged 63), and where, on October 1, 1822, his widow expired,
+aged 98. The house of Garrick is let in "chambers" now. If you walk
+up the Strand towards Charing Cross you presently come near to the
+Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, which is one of the works of
+James Gibbs, a pupil of Sir Christopher Wren, and entirely worthy of
+the master's hand. The fogs have stained that building with such a
+deft touch as shows the caprice of nature to be often better than the
+best design of art. Nell Gwyn's name is connected with St. Martin.
+Her funeral occurred in that church, and was pompous, and no less a
+person than Tenison (afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury) preached
+the funeral sermon.&dagger;</p>
+<p><small>&dagger; This was made the occasion of a complaint against
+him, to Queen Mary, who gently expressed her unshaken confidence in
+his goodness and truth.</small></p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_TCH" id="a_TCH"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0059.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Temple Church."></p>
+<br>
+<p>That prelate's dust reposes in Lambeth church, which can be seen,
+across the river, from this part of Westminster. If you walk down the
+Strand, through Temple Bar, you presently reach the Temple; and there
+is no place in London where the past and the present are so strangely
+confronted as they are here. The venerable church, so quaint with its
+cone-pointed turrets, was sleeping in the sunshine when first I saw
+it; sparrows were twittering around its spires and gliding in and out
+of the crevices in its ancient walls; while from within a strain of
+organ music, low and sweet, trembled forth, till the air became a
+benediction and every common thought and feeling was purified away
+from mind and heart. The grave of Goldsmith is close to the pathway
+that skirts this church, on a terrace raised above the foundation of
+the building and above the little graveyard of the Templars that
+nestles at its base. As I stood beside the resting-place of that
+sweet poet it was impossible not to feel both grieved and glad:
+grieved at the thought of all he suffered, and of all that the poetic
+nature must always suffer before it will utter its immortal music for
+mankind: glad that his gentle spirit found rest at last, and that
+time has given him the crown he would most have prized&mdash;the
+affection of true hearts. A gray stone, coffin-shaped and marked with
+a cross,&mdash;after the fashion of the contiguous tombs of the
+Templars,&mdash;is imposed upon his grave.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_SML" id="a_SML"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0061.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"St. Mary-le-Strand--The Strand."></p>
+<br>
+<p>One surface bears the inscription, "Here lies Oliver Goldsmith";
+the other presents the dates of his birth and death. (Born Nov. 10,
+1728; died April 4, 1774.) I tried to call up the scene of his
+burial, when, around the open grave, on that tearful April evening,
+Johnson, Burke, Reynolds, Beauclerk, Boswell, Davies, Kelly, Palmer,
+and the rest of that broken circle, may have gathered to witness</p>
+<blockquote><small>"The duties by the lawn-robed prelate paid,<br>
+And the last rites that dust to dust conveyed."</small></blockquote>
+<p>No place could be less romantic than Southwark is now; but there
+are few places in England that possess a greater charm for the
+literary pilgrim. Shakespeare lived there, and it was there that he
+wrote for a theatre and made a fortune. Old London Bridge spanned the
+Thames at this point, in those days, and was the only road to the
+Surrey side of the river. The theatre stood near the end of the
+bridge and was thus easy of access to the wits and beaux of London.
+No trace of it now remains; but a public-house called the Globe,
+which was its name, is standing near, and the old church of St.
+Saviour&mdash;into which Shakespeare must often have
+entered&mdash;still braves the storm and still resists the
+encroachments of time and change. In Shakespeare's day there were
+houses on each side of London Bridge; and as he walked on the bank of
+the Thames he could look across to the Tower, and to Baynard Castle,
+which had been the residence of Richard, Duke of Gloster, and could
+see, uplifted high in air, the spire of old St. Paul's. The borough
+of Southwark was then but thinly peopled. Many of its houses, as may
+be seen in an old picture of the city, were surrounded by fields or
+gardens; and life to its inhabitants must have been comparatively
+rural. Now it is packed with buildings, gridironed with railways,
+crowded with people, and to the last degree resonant and feverish
+with action and effort. Life swarms, traffic bustles, and travel
+thunders all round the cradle of the British drama. The old church of
+St. Saviour alone preserves the sacred memory of the past. I made a
+pilgrimage to that shrine, with Arthur Sketchley (George Rose), one
+of the kindliest humourists in England. (Obiit November 13, 1882.) We
+embarked at Westminster Bridge and landed close by the church in
+Southwark, and we were so fortunate as to get permission to enter it
+without a guide. The oldest part of it is the Lady
+chapel&mdash;which, in English cathedrals, is almost invariably
+placed behind the choir. Through this we strolled, alone and in
+silence. Every footstep there falls upon a grave. The pavement is one
+mass of gravestones; and through the tall, stained windows of the
+chapel a solemn light pours in upon the sculptured names of men and
+women who have long been dust. In one corner is an ancient stone
+coffin&mdash;a relic of the Roman days of Britain. This is the place
+in which Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, in the days of cruel
+Queen Mary, held his ecclesiastical court and doomed many a
+dissentient devotee to the rack and the fagot. Here was condemned
+John Rogers,&mdash;afterwards burnt at the stake, in Smithfield.
+Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth may often have entered this chapel.
+But it is in the choir that the pilgrim pauses with most of
+reverence; for there, not far from the altar, he stands at the graves
+of Edmund Shakespeare, John Fletcher, and Philip Massinger.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_GMN" id="a_GMN"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0064.jpg" width="75%" alt=
+"Gower's Monument."></p>
+<br>
+<p>They apparently rest almost side by side, and only their names and
+the dates of their death are cut in the tablets that mark their
+sepulchres. Edmund Shakespeare, the younger brother of William, was
+an actor in his company, and died in 1607, aged twenty-seven. The
+great poet must have stood at that grave, and suffered and wept
+there; and somehow the lover of Shakespeare comes very near to the
+heart of the master when he stands in that place. Massinger was
+buried there, March 18, 1638,&mdash;the parish register recording him
+as "a stranger." Fletcher&mdash;of the Beaumont and Fletcher
+alliance&mdash;was buried there, in 1625: Beaumont's grave is in the
+Abbey. The dust of Henslowe the manager also rests beneath the
+pavement of St. Saviour's. Bishop Gardiner was buried there, with
+pompous ceremonial, in 1555,&mdash;but subsequently his remains were
+removed to the cathedral at Winchester. The great prelate Lancelot
+Andrews, commemorated by Milton, found his grave there, in 1626. The
+royal poet King James the First, of Scotland, was married there, in
+1423, to Jane, daughter of the Earl of Somerset and niece of Cardinal
+Beaufort. In the south transept of the church is the tomb of John
+Gower, the old poet&mdash;whose effigy, carved and painted, reclines
+upon it and is not attractive. A formal, severe aspect he must have
+had, if he resembled that image. The tomb has been moved from the
+spot where it first stood&mdash;a proceeding made necessary by a fire
+that destroyed part of the old church. It is said that Gower caused
+the tomb to be erected during his lifetime, so that it might be in
+readiness to receive his bones. The bones are lost, but the memorial
+remains&mdash;sacred to the memory of the father of English song.
+This tomb was restored by the Duke of Sutherland, in 1832.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_AMN" id="a_AMN"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0066.jpg" width="75%" alt=
+"Andrews Monument."></p>
+<br>
+<p>It is enclosed by a little grill made of iron spears, painted
+brown and gilded at their points. I went into the new part of the
+church, and, alone, knelt in one of the pews and long remained there,
+overcome with thoughts of the past and of the transient, momentary
+nature of this our earthly life and the shadows that we pursue.</p>
+<p>One object of merriment attracts a passing glance in that old
+church. There is a tomb in a corner of it that commemorates Dr.
+Lockyer, a maker of patent physic, in the time of Charles the Second.
+This elaborate structure presents an effigy of the doctor, together
+with a sounding epitaph which declares that</p>
+<blockquote><small>"His virtues and his pills are so well known<br>
+That envy can't confine them under stone."</small></blockquote>
+<p>Shakespeare once lived in Clink Street, in the borough of
+Southwark. Goldsmith practised medicine there. Chaucer came there,
+with his Canterbury Pilgrims, and lodged at the Tabard inn, which has
+disappeared. It must have been a romantic region in the old times. It
+is anything but romantic now.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_HLN" id="a_HLN"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0067.jpg" width="40%" alt=
+"Hanging Lantern"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_OTI" id="a_OTI"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0068.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Old Tabard Inn, Southwark."></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="SGD" id="SGD"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0069.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"St. George and the Dragon Border"></p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CHV" id="a_CHV"></a><a name="a_CHVb" id="a_CHVb"></a>
+<h3 align="center">CHAPTER V</h3>
+<h5 align="center">A VISIT TO WINDSOR</h5>
+<br>
+<p>If the beauty of England were only superficial it would produce
+only a superficial effect. It would cause a passing pleasure and
+would be forgotten. It certainly would not&mdash;as now in fact it
+does&mdash;inspire a deep, joyous, serene and grateful contentment,
+and linger in the mind, a gracious and beneficent remembrance. The
+conquering and lasting potency of it resides not alone in loveliness
+of expression but in loveliness of character. Having first greatly
+blessed the British islands with the natural advantages of position,
+climate, soil, and products, nature has wrought their development and
+adornment as a necessary consequence of the spirit of their
+inhabitants. The picturesque variety and pastoral repose of the
+English landscape spring, in a considerable measure, from the
+imaginative taste and the affectionate gentleness of the English
+people. The state of the country, like its social constitution, flows
+from principles within, which are constantly suggested, and it
+steadily comforts and nourishes the mind with a sense of kindly
+feeling, moral rectitude, solidity, and permanence.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_WCH" id="a_WCH"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0070.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Windsor Castle."></p>
+<br>
+<p>Thus in the peculiar beauty of England the ideal is made the
+actual&mdash;is expressed in things more than in words, and in things
+by which words are transcended. Milton's "L'Allegro," fine as it is,
+is not so fine as the scenery&mdash;the crystallised, embodied
+poetry&mdash;out of which it arose. All the delicious rural verse
+that has been written in England is only the excess and superflux of
+her own poetic opulence: it has rippled from the hearts of her poets
+just as the fragrance floats away from her hawthorn hedges. At every
+step of his progress the pilgrim through English scenes is impressed
+with this sovereign excellence of the accomplished fact, as
+contrasted with any words that can be said in its celebration.</p>
+<p>Among representative scenes that are eloquent with this
+instructive meaning,&mdash;scenes easily and pleasurably accessible
+to the traveller in what Dickens expressively called "the green,
+English summer weather,"&mdash;is the region of Windsor. The chief
+features of it have often been described; the charm that it exercises
+can only be suggested. To see Windsor, moreover, is to comprehend as
+at a glance the old feudal system, and to feel in a profound and
+special way the pomp of English character and history. More than
+this: it is to rise to the ennobling serenity that always accompanies
+broad, retrospective contemplation of the current of human affairs.
+In this quaint, decorous town&mdash;nestled at the base of that
+mighty and magnificent castle which has been the home of princes for
+more than five hundred years&mdash;the imaginative mind wanders over
+vast tracts of the past and beholds as in a mirror the pageants of
+chivalry, the coronations of kings, the strife of sects, the battles
+of armies, the schemes of statesmen, the decay of transient systems,
+the growth of a rational civilisation, and the everlasting march of
+thought. Every prospect of the region intensifies this sentiment of
+contemplative grandeur. As you look from the castle walls your gaze
+takes in miles and miles of blooming country, sprinkled over with
+little hamlets, wherein the utmost stateliness of learning and rank
+is gracefully commingled with all that is lovely and soothing in
+rural life. Not far away rise the "antique towers" of Eton&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><small>"Where grateful science still adores<br>
+Her Henry's holy shade."</small></blockquote>
+<p>It was in Windsor Castle that her Henry was born; and there he
+often held his court; and it is in St. George's chapel that his ashes
+repose. In the dim distance stands the church of Stoke-Pogis, about
+which Gray used to wander,</p>
+<blockquote><small>"Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's
+shade."</small></blockquote>
+<p>You recognise now a deeper significance than ever before in the
+"solemn stillness" of the incomparable Elegy. The luminous twilight
+mood of that immortal poem&mdash;its pensive reverie and solemn
+passion&mdash;is inherent in the scene; and you feel that it was
+there, and there only, that the genius of its exceptional
+author&mdash;austerely gentle and severely pure, and thus in perfect
+harmony with its surroundings&mdash;could have been moved to that
+sublime strain of inspiration and eloquence. Near at hand, in the
+midst of your reverie, the mellow organ sounds from the chapel of St.
+George, where, under "fretted vault" and over "long-drawn aisle,"
+depend the ghostly, mouldering banners of ancient knights&mdash;as
+still as the bones of the dead-and-gone monarchs that crumble in the
+crypt below.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_SGC" id="a_SGC"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0073.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle."></p>
+<br>
+<p>In this church are many of the old kings and nobles of England.
+The handsome and gallant Edward the Fourth here found his grave; and
+near it is that of the accomplished Hastings&mdash;his faithful
+friend, to the last and after. Here lies the dust of the stalwart,
+impetuous, and savage Henry the Eighth, and here, at midnight, by the
+light of torches, they laid beneath the pavement the mangled body of
+Charles the First. As you stand on Windsor ramparts, pondering thus
+upon the storied past and the evanescence of "all that beauty, all
+that wealth e'er gave," your eyes rest dreamily on green fields far
+below, through which, under tall elms, the brimming and sparkling
+river flows on without a sound, and in which a few figures, dwarfed
+by distance, flit here and there, in seeming aimless idleness; while,
+warned homeward by impending sunset, the chattering birds circle and
+float around the lofty towers of the castle; and delicate perfumes of
+seringa and jasmine are wafted up from dusky, unknown depths at the
+base of its ivied steep. At such an hour I stood on those ramparts
+and saw the shy villages and rich meadows of fertile Berkshire, all
+red and golden with sunset light; and at such an hour I stood in the
+lonely cloisters of St. George's chapel, and heard the distant organ
+sob, and saw the sunlight fade up the gray walls, and felt and knew
+the sanctity of silence. Age and death have made this church
+illustrious; but the spot itself has its own innate charm of mystical
+repose.</p>
+<blockquote><small>"No use of lanterns; and in one place lay<br>
+Feathers and dust to-day and yesterday."</small></blockquote>
+<br>
+<a name="a_WFP" id="a_WFP"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0075.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Windsor Forest and Park."></p>
+<br>
+<p>The drive from the front of Windsor Castle is through a broad and
+stately avenue, three miles in length, straight as an arrow and level
+as a standing pool; and this white highway through the green and
+fragrant sod is sumptuously embowered, from end to end, with double
+rows of magnificent elms and oaks. The Windsor avenue, like the
+splendid chestnut grove at Bushey Park, long famous among the
+pageants of rural England, has often been described. It is after
+leaving this that the rambler comes upon the rarer beauties of
+Windsor Park and Forest. From the far end of the avenue&mdash;where,
+in a superb position, the equestrian statue of King George the Third
+rises on its massive pedestal of natural rock,&mdash;the road winds
+away, through shaded dell and verdant glade, past great gnarled
+beeches and under boughs of elm, and yew, and oak, till its silver
+thread is lost in the distant woods. At intervals a sinuous pathway
+strays off to some secluded lodge, half hidden in foliage&mdash;the
+property of the Crown, and the rustic residence of a scion of the
+royal race. In one of those retreats dwelt poor old George the Third,
+in the days of his mental darkness; and the memory of the agonising
+king seems still to cast a shadow on the mysterious and melancholy
+house. They show you, under glass, in one of the lodge gardens, an
+enormous grapevine, owned by the Queen&mdash;a vine which, from its
+single stalwart trunk, spreads its teeming branches, laterally, more
+than a hundred feet in each direction. So come use and thrift, hand
+in hand with romance! Many an aged oak is passed, in your progress,
+round which, "at still midnight," Herne the Hunter might yet take his
+ghostly prowl, shaking his chain "in a most hideous and dreadful
+manner." The wreck of the veritable Herne's Oak, it is said, was
+rooted out, together with other ancient and decayed trees, in the
+time of George the Third, and in somewhat too literal fulfilment of
+his Majesty's misinterpreted command.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_TCT" id="a_TCT"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0077.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"The Curfew Tower."></p>
+<br>
+<p>This great park is fourteen miles in circumference and contains
+nearly four thousand acres, and many of the youngest trees that adorn
+it are more than one hundred and fifty years old. Far in its heart
+you stroll by Virginia Water&mdash;an artificial lake, but faultless
+in its gentle beauty&mdash;and perceive it so deep and so breezy that
+a full-rigged ship-of-war, with armament, can navigate its
+wind-swept, curling billows. This lake was made by that sanguinary
+Duke of Cumberland who led the English forces at Culloden. In the dim
+groves that fringe its margin are many nests wherein pheasants are
+bred, to fall by the royal shot and to supply the royal table: those
+you may contemplate but not approach. At a point in your walk,
+sequestered and lonely, they have set up and skilfully disposed the
+fragments of a genuine ruined temple, brought from the remote
+East&mdash;relic perchance of "Tadmor's marble waste," and certainly
+a most solemn memorial of the morning twilight of time. Broken arch,
+storm-stained pillar, and shattered column are here shrouded with
+moss and ivy; and should you chance to see them as the evening
+shadows deepen and the evening wind sighs mournfully in the grass
+your fancy will not fail to drink in the perfect illusion that one of
+the stateliest structures of antiquity has slowly crumbled where now
+its fragments remain.</p>
+<p>"Quaint" is a descriptive epithet that has been much abused, but
+it may, with absolute propriety, be applied to Windsor. The devious
+little streets there visible, and the carved and timber-crossed
+buildings, often of great age, are uncommonly rich in the
+expressiveness of imaginative character. The emotions and the fancy,
+equally with the sense of necessity and the instinct of use, have
+exercised their influence and uttered their spirit in the shaping and
+adornment of the town. While it constantly feeds the eye&mdash;with
+that pleasing irregularity of lines and forms which is so delicious
+and refreshing&mdash;it quite as constantly nurtures the sense of
+romance that ought to play so large a part in our lives, redeeming us
+from the tyranny of the commonplace and intensifying all the high
+feelings and noble aspirations that are possible to human nature.
+England contains many places like Windsor; some that blend in even
+richer amplitude the elements of quaintness, loveliness, and
+magnificence. The meaning of them all is the same: that romance,
+beauty, and gentleness are forever vital; that their forces are
+within our souls, and ready and eager to find their way into our
+thoughts, actions, and circumstances, and to brighten for every one
+of us the face of every day; that they ought neither to be relegated
+to the distant and the past nor kept for our books and day-dreams
+alone; but&mdash;in a calmer and higher mood than is usual in this
+age of universal mediocrity, critical scepticism, and miscellaneous
+tumult&mdash;should be permitted to flow forth into our architecture,
+adornments, and customs, to hallow and preserve our antiquities, to
+soften our manners, to give us tranquillity, patience, and tolerance,
+to make our country loveable for our own hearts, and so to enable us
+to bequeath it, sure of love and reverence, to succeeding ages.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_SOS" id="a_SOS"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0079.jpg" width="60%" alt=
+"The Sign of the Swan."></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CHB" id="a_CHB"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0080.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Cherub Border"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CHVI" id="a_CHVI"></a><a name="a_CHVIb" id="a_CHVIb"></a>
+<h3 align="center">CHAPTER VI</h3>
+<h5 align="center">THE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER</h5>
+<br>
+<p>The American who, having been a careful and interested reader of
+English history, visits London for the first time, half expects to
+find the ancient city in a state of mild decay; and consequently he
+is a little startled at first, upon realising that the present is
+quite as vital as ever the past was, and that London antiquity is, in
+fact, swathed in the robes of everyday action and very much alive.
+When, for example, you enter Westminster Hall&mdash;"the great hall
+of William Rufus"&mdash;you are beneath one of the most glorious
+canopies in the world&mdash;one that was built by Richard the Second,
+whose grave, chosen by himself, is in the Abbey, just across the
+street from where you stand. But this old hall is now only a
+vestibule to the palace of Westminster. The Lords and the Commons of
+England, on their way to the Houses of Parliament, pass every day
+over the spot on which Charles the First was tried and condemned, and
+on which occurred the trial of Warren Hastings.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_WMH" id="a_WMH"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0081.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Westminster Hall."></p>
+<br>
+<p>It is a mere thoroughfare&mdash;glorious though it be, alike in
+structure and historic renown. The Palace Yard, near by, was the
+scene of the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh. In Bishopsgate Street
+stands Crosby House; the same to which, in Shakespeare's tragedy, the
+Duke of Gloster requests the retirement of Lady Anne. It is a
+restaurant now, and you may dine in the veritable throne-room of
+Richard the Third. The house of Cardinal Wolsey in Fleet Street is
+now a shop. Milton once lived in Golden Lane, and Golden Lane was a
+sweet and quiet spot. It is a dingy and dismal street now, and the
+visitor is glad to get out of it. To-day makes use of yesterday, all
+the world over. It is not in London, certainly, that you find
+anything&mdash;except old churches&mdash;mouldering in silence,
+solitude, and neglect.</p>
+<p>Those who see every day during the Parliamentary session the mace
+that is borne through the lobby of the House of Commons, although
+they are obliged, on every occasion, to uncover as it passes, do not,
+probably, view that symbol with much interest. Yet it is the same
+mace that Oliver Cromwell insulted&dagger; when he dissolved the
+Parliament and cried out, "Take away that bauble!"</p>
+<p><small>&dagger; An error. The House of Commons has had three
+maces. The first one disappeared after the judicial slaughter of
+Charles the First. The Cromwell mace was carried to the island of
+Jamaica, and is there preserved in a museum at Kingston. The third is
+the one now in use.</small></p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_TMC" id="a_TMC"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0082.jpg" width="20%" alt=
+"The Mace."></p>
+<br>
+<p>I saw it one day, on its passage to the table of the Commons, and
+was glad to remove the hat of respect to what it signifies&mdash;the
+power and majesty of the free people of England. The Speaker of the
+House was walking behind it, very grand in his wig and gown, and the
+members trooped in at his heels to secure their places by being
+present at the opening prayer. A little later I was provided with a
+seat, in a dim corner, in that august assemblage of British senators,
+and could observe at ease their management of the public business.
+The Speaker was on his throne; the mace was on its table; the hats of
+the Commons were on their heads; and over this singular, animated,
+impressive scene the waning light of a summer afternoon poured softly
+down, through the high, stained, and pictured windows of one of the
+most symmetrical halls in the world. It did not happen to be a day of
+excitement. The Irish members had not then begun to impede the
+transaction of business, for the sake of drawing attention to the
+everlasting wrongs of Ireland. Yet it was a lively day. Curiosity on
+the part of the Opposition and a respectful incertitude on the part
+of Her Majesty's ministers were the prevailing conditions. I had
+never before heard so many questions asked&mdash;outside of the
+French grammar&mdash;and asked to so little purpose. Everybody wanted
+to know, and nobody wanted to tell. Each inquirer took off his hat
+when he rose to ask, and put it on again when he sat down to be
+answered. Each governmental sphinx bared his brow when he emerged to
+divulge, and covered it again when he subsided without divulging. The
+superficial respect of these interlocutors for each other steadily
+remained, however, of the most deferential and considerate
+description; so that&mdash;without discourtesy&mdash;it was
+impossible not to think of Byron's "mildest mannered man that ever
+scuttled ship or cut a throat." Underneath this velvety, purring,
+conventional manner the observer could readily discern the fires of
+passion, prejudice, and strong antagonism. They make no parade in the
+House of Commons. They attend to their business. And upon every topic
+that is brought before their notice they have definite ideas, strong
+convictions, and settled purposes. The topic of Army Estimates upon
+this day seemed especially to arouse their ardour. Discussion of this
+was continually diversified by cries of "Oh!" and of "Hear!" and of
+"Order!" and sometimes those cries savoured more of derision than of
+compliment. Many persons spoke, but no person spoke well. An
+off-hand, matter-of-fact, shambling method of speech would seem to be
+the fashion in the British House of Commons. I remembered the
+anecdote that De Quincey tells, about Sheridan and the young member
+who quoted Greek. It was easy to perceive how completely out of place
+the sophomore orator would be, in that assemblage. Britons like
+better to make speeches than to hear them, and they will never be
+slaves to bad oratory. The moment a windy gentleman got the floor,
+and began to read a manuscript respecting the Indian Government, as
+many as forty Commons arose and noisily walked out of the House. Your
+pilgrim likewise hailed the moment of his deliverance and was glad to
+escape to the open air.</p>
+<p>Books have been written to describe the Palace of Westminster; but
+it is observable that this structure, however much its magnificence
+deserves commemorative applause, is deficient, as yet, in the charm
+of association. The old Palace of St. James, with its low, dusky
+walls, its round turrets, and its fretted battlements, is more
+impressive, because history has freighted it with meaning and time
+has made it beautiful. But the Palace of Westminster is a splendid
+structure. It covers eight acres of ground, on the bank of the
+Thames; it contains eleven quadrangles and five hundred rooms; and
+when its niches for statuary have been filled it will contain two
+hundred and twenty-six statues. The monuments in St. Stephen's
+Hall&mdash;into which you pass from Westminster Hall, which has been
+incorporated into the Palace and is its only ancient and therefore
+its most interesting feature&mdash;indicate, very eloquently, what a
+superb art gallery this will one day become. The statues are the
+images of Selden, Hampden, Falkland, Clarendon, Somers, Walpole,
+Chatham, Mansfield, Burke, Fox, Pitt, and Grattan. Those of Mansfield
+and Grattan present, perhaps, the most of character and power, making
+you feel that they are indubitably accurate portraits, and winning
+you by the charm of personality. There are statues, also, in
+Westminster Hall, commemorative of the Georges, William and Mary, and
+Anne; but it is not of these you think, nor of any local and everyday
+object, when you stand beneath the wonderful roof of Richard the
+Second. Nearly eight hundred years "their cloudy wings expand" above
+that fabric, and copiously shed upon it the fragrance of old renown.
+Richard the Second was deposed there: Cromwell was there installed
+Lord Protector of England: John Fisher, Sir Thomas More, and
+Strafford were there condemned: and it was there that the possible,
+if not usual, devotion of woman's heart was so touchingly displayed
+by her</p>
+<blockquote><small>"Whose faith drew strength from death,<br>
+And prayed her Russell up to God."</small></blockquote>
+<p>No one can realise, without personal experience, the number and
+variety of pleasures accessible to the resident of London. These may
+not be piquant to him who has them always within his reach. I met
+with several residents of the British capital who had always intended
+to visit the Tower but had never done so. But to the stranger they
+possess a constant and keen fascination. The Derby this year [1877]
+was thought to be comparatively a tame race; but I know of one
+spectator who saw it from the top of the grand stand and who thought
+that the scene it presented was wonderfully brilliant. The sky had
+been overcast with dull clouds till the moment when the race was won;
+but just as Archer, rising in his saddle, lifted his horse forward
+and gained the goal alone, the sun burst forth and shed upon the
+downs a sheen of gold, and lit up all the distant hills, and all the
+far-stretching roads that wind away from the region of Epsom like
+threads of silver through the green. Carrier-pigeons were instantly
+launched off to London, with the news of the victory of Silvio. There
+was one winner on the grand stand who had laid bets on Silvio, for no
+other reason than because that horse bore the prettiest name in the
+list. The Derby, like Christmas, comes but once a year; but other
+allurements are almost perennial.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_GHO" id="a_GHO"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0087.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Greenwich Hospital."></p>
+<br>
+<p>Greenwich, for instance, with its white-bait dinner, invites the
+epicure during the best part of the London season. A favourite tavern
+is the Trafalgar&mdash;in which each room is named after some magnate
+of the old British navy; and Nelson, Hardy, and Rodney are household
+words. Another cheery place of resort is The Ship. The Hospitals are
+at Greenwich that Dr. Johnson thought to be too fine for a charity;
+and back of these&mdash;which are ordinary enough now, in comparison
+with modern structures erected for a kindred purpose&mdash;stands the
+famous Observatory that keeps time for Europe. This place is hallowed
+also by the grave of Clive and by that of Wolfe&mdash;to the latter
+of whom, however, there is a monument in Westminster Abbey. Greenwich
+makes one think of Queen Elizabeth, who was born there, who often
+held her court there, and who often sailed thence, in her barge, up
+the river to Richmond&mdash;her favourite retreat and the scene of
+her last days and her pathetic death. Few spots can compare with
+Richmond, in brilliancy of landscape. That place&mdash;the Shene of
+old times&mdash;was long a royal residence. The woods and meadows
+that you see from the terrace of the Star and Garter
+tavern&mdash;spread upon a rolling plain as far as the eye can
+reach&mdash;sparkle like emeralds; and the Thames, dotted with little
+toy-like boats, shines with all the deep lustre of the blackest onyx.
+Richmond, for those who honour genius and who love to walk in the
+footsteps of renown, is full of interest. Dean Swift once had a house
+there, the site of which is still indicated. Pope's rural home was in
+the adjacent village of Twickenham,&mdash;where it may still be seen.
+Horace Walpole's stately mansion of Strawberry Hill is not far off.
+The poet Thomson long resided at Richmond, in a house now used as an
+hospital, and there he died. Edmund Kean and the once famous Mrs.
+Yates rest beneath Richmond church, and there also are the ashes of
+Thomson. As I drove through the sweetly sylvan Park of Richmond, in
+the late afternoon of a breezy summer day, and heard the whispering
+of the great elms, and saw the gentle, trustful deer couched at ease
+in the golden glades, I heard all the while, in the still chambers of
+thought, the tender lament of Collins&mdash;which is now a prophecy
+fulfilled:</p>
+<blockquote><small>"Remembrance oft shall haunt the shore,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When Thames in summer wreaths is drest;<br>
+And oft suspend the dashing oar,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To bid his gentle spirit
+rest."</small></blockquote>
+<br>
+<a name="a_QEC" id="a_QEC"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0090.jpg" width="75%" alt=
+"Queen Elizabeth's Cradle."></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_PHB" id="a_PHB"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0091.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Phoenix Border"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CHVII" id="a_CHVII"></a><a name="a_CHVIIb" id=
+"a_CHVIIb"></a>
+<h3 align="center">CHAPTER VII</h3>
+<h5 align="center">WARWICK AND KENILWORTH</h5>
+<br>
+<p>All the way from London to Warwick it rained; not heavily, but
+with a gentle fall. The gray clouds hung low over the landscape and
+softly darkened it; so that meadows of scarlet and emerald, the
+shining foliage of elms, gray turret, nestled cottage and limpid
+river were as mysterious and evanescent as pictures seen in dreams.
+At Warwick the rain had fallen and ceased, and the walk from the
+station to the inn was on a road&mdash;or on a footpath by the
+roadside&mdash;still hard and damp with the water it had absorbed. A
+fresh wind blew from the fields, sweet with the rain and fragrant
+with the odour of leaves and flowers. The streets of the ancient
+town&mdash;entered through an old Norman arch&mdash;were deserted and
+silent. It was Sunday when I first came to the country of
+Shakespeare; and over all the region there brooded a sacred stillness
+peculiar to the time and harmonious beyond utterance with the
+sanctity of the place. As I strive, after many days, to call back and
+to fix in words the impressions of that sublime experience, the same
+awe falls upon me now that fell upon me then. Nothing else upon
+earth&mdash;no natural scene, no relic of the past, no pageantry of
+the present&mdash;can vie with the shrine of Shakespeare, in power to
+impress, to humble, and to exalt the devout spirit that has been
+nurtured at the fountain of his transcendent genius.</p>
+<p>A fortunate way to approach Stratford-on-Avon is by Warwick and
+Kenilworth. Those places are not on a direct line of travel; but the
+scenes and associations that they successively present are such as
+assume a symmetrical order, increase in interest, and grow to a
+delightful culmination. Objects that Shakespeare himself must have
+seen are still visible there; and little by little, in contact with
+these, the pilgrim through this haunted region is mentally saturated
+with that atmosphere of serenity and romance in which the youth of
+Shakespeare was passed, and by which his works and his memory are
+embalmed. No one should come abruptly upon the poet's home. The mind
+needs to be prepared for the impression that awaits it; and in this
+gradual approach it finds preparation, both suitable and delicious.
+The luxuriance of the country, its fertile fields, its brilliant
+foliage, its myriads of wild-flowers, its pomp of colour and of
+physical vigour and bloom, do not fail to announce, to every mind,
+howsoever heedless, that this is a fit place for the birth and
+nurture of a great man. But this is not all. As you stroll in the
+quaint streets of Warwick, as you drive to Kenilworth, as you muse in
+that poetic ruin, as you pause in the old graveyard in the valley
+below, as you meditate over the crumbling fragments of the ancient
+abbey, at every step of the way you are haunted by a vague sense of
+an impending grandeur; you are aware of a presence that fills and
+sanctifies the scene. The emotion that is thus inspired is very
+glorious; never to be elsewhere felt; and never to be forgotten.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_WAC" id="a_WAC"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0089.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Warwick Castle."></p>
+<br>
+<p>The cyclopædias and the guide-books dilate, with much
+particularity and characteristic eloquence, upon Warwick Castle and
+other great features of Warwickshire, but the attribute that all such
+records omit is the atmosphere; and this, perhaps, is rather to be
+indicated than described. The prevailing quality of it is a certain
+high and sweet solemnity&mdash;a feeling kindred with the placid,
+happy melancholy that steals over the mind, when, on a sombre
+afternoon in autumn, you stand in the churchyard, and listen, amid
+rustling branches and sighing grass, to the low music of distant
+organ and chanting choir. Peace, haunted by romance, dwells here, in
+reverie. The great tower of Warwick, based in silver Avon and
+pictured in its slumbering waters, seems musing upon the centuries
+over which it has watched, and full of unspeakable knowledge and
+thought. The dark and massive gateways of the town and the
+timber-crossed fronts of its antique houses live on in the same
+strange dream and perfect repose; and all along the drive to
+Kenilworth are equal images of rest&mdash;of a rest in which there is
+nothing supine or sluggish, no element of death or decay, but in
+which passion, imagination, beauty, and sorrow, seized at their
+topmost poise, seem crystallised in eternal calm. What opulence of
+splendid life is vital for ever in Kenilworth's crumbling ruin there
+are no words to say. What pomp of royal banners! what dignity of
+radiant cavaliers! what loveliness of stately and exquisite ladies!
+what magnificence of banquets! what wealth of pageantry! what lustre
+of illumination! The same festal music that the poet Gascoigne heard
+there, three hundred years ago, is still sounding on, to-day. The
+proud and cruel Leicester still walks in his vaulted hall. The
+imperious face of the Virgin Queen still from her dais looks down on
+plumed courtiers and jewelled dames; and still the moonlight,
+streaming through the turret-window, falls on the white bosom and the
+great, startled, black eyes of Amy Robsart, waiting for her lover.
+The gaze of the pilgrim, indeed, rests only upon old, gray, broken
+walls, overgrown with green moss and ivy, and pierced by irregular
+casements through which the sun shines, and the winds blow, and the
+rains drive, and the birds fly, amid utter desolation. But silence
+and ruin are here alike eloquent and awful; and, much as the place
+impresses you by what remains, it impresses you far more by what has
+vanished. Ambition, love, pleasure, power, misery,
+tragedy&mdash;these are gone; and being gone they are immortal. I
+plucked, in the garden of Kenilworth, one of the most brilliant red
+roses that ever grew; and as I pressed it to my lips I seemed to
+touch the lips of that superb, bewildering beauty who outweighed
+England's crown (at least in story), and whose spirit is the
+everlasting genius of the place.</p>
+<p>There is a row of cottages opposite to the ruins of the castle, in
+which contentment seems to have made her home. The ivy embowers them.
+The roses cluster around their little windows. The greensward slopes
+away, in front, from big, flat stones that are embedded in the mossy
+sod before their doors. Down in the valley, hard by, your steps stray
+through an ancient graveyard&mdash;in which stands the parish church,
+a carefully restored building of the eleventh century, with tower,
+and clock, and bell&mdash;and past a few fragments of the Abbey and
+Monastery of St. Mary, destroyed in 1538. At many another point, on
+the roads betwixt Warwick and Kenilworth and Stratford, I came upon
+such nests of cosy, rustic quiet and seeming happiness. They build
+their country houses low, in England, so that the trees overhang
+them, and the cool, friendly, flower-gemmed earth&mdash;parent, and
+stay, and bourne of mortal life&mdash;is tenderly taken into their
+companionship. Here, at Kenilworth, as elsewhere, at such places as
+Marlowe, Henley, Richmond, Maidenhead, Cookham, and the region round
+about Windsor, I saw many a sweet nook where tired life might be
+content to lay down its burden and enter into its rest. In all true
+love of country&mdash;a passion that seems to be more deeply felt in
+England than anywhere else upon the globe&mdash;there is love for the
+literal soil itself: and surely that sentiment in the human heart is
+equally natural and pious which inspires and perpetuates man's desire
+that where he found his cradle he may also find his grave.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_OIN" id="a_OIN"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0095.jpg" width="75%" alt=
+"Old Inn."></p>
+<br>
+<p>Under a cloudy sky and through a landscape still wet and shining
+with recent rain the drive to Stratford was a pleasure so exquisite
+that at last it became a pain. Just as the carriage reached the
+junction of the Warwick and Snitterfield roads a ray of sunshine,
+streaming through a rift in the clouds, fell upon the neighbouring
+hillside, scarlet with poppies, and lit the scene as with the glory
+of a celestial benediction. This sunburst, neither growing larger nor
+coming nearer, followed all the way to Stratford; and there, on a
+sudden, the clouds were lifted and dispersed, and "fair daylight"
+flooded the whole green countryside. The afternoon sun was still high
+in heaven when I alighted at the Red Horse and entered the little
+parlour of Washington Irving. They keep the room much as it was when
+he left it; for they are proud of his gentle genius and grateful for
+his commemorative words. In a corner stands [1877] the small,
+old-fashioned haircloth arm-chair in which he sat, on that night of
+memory and of musing which he has described in <i>The
+Sketch-Book.</i> A brass plate is affixed to it, bearing his name;
+and the visitor observes, in token of its age and service, that the
+hair-cloth of its seat is considerably worn and frayed. Every
+American pilgrim to Stratford sits in that chair; and looks with
+tender interest on the old fireplace; and reads the memorials of
+Irving that are hung upon the walls: and it is no small comfort there
+to reflect that our illustrious countryman&mdash;whose name will be
+remembered with honour, as long as literature is prized among
+men&mdash;was the first, in modern days, to discover the beauties and
+to interpret the poetry of the birthplace of Shakespeare.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_WIP" id="a_WIP"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0096.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Washington Irving's Parlour."></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_FWS" id="a_FWS"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0097.jpg" width="50%" alt=
+"From the Warwick Shield."></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_RHB" id="a_RHB"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0098.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Rose Hip Border"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CHVIII" id="a_CHVIII"></a><a name="a_CHVIIIb" id=
+"a_CHVIIIb"></a>
+<h3 align="center">CHAPTER VIII</h3>
+<h5 align="center">FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD-ON-AVON</h5>
+<br>
+<p>Once again, as it did on that delicious summer afternoon which is
+for ever memorable in my life, the golden glory of the westering sun
+burns on the gray spire of Stratford church, and on the ancient
+graveyard below,&mdash;wherein the mossy stones lean this way and
+that, in sweet and orderly confusion,&mdash;and on the peaceful
+avenue of limes, and on the burnished water of silver Avon. The tall,
+pointed, many-coloured windows of the church glint in the evening
+light. A cool and fragrant wind is stirring the branches and the
+grass. The small birds, calling to their mates or sporting in the
+wanton pleasure of their airy life, are circling over the church roof
+or hiding in little crevices of its walls. On the vacant meadows
+across the river stretch away the long and level shadows of the
+pompous elms. Here and there, upon the river's brink, are pairs of
+what seem lovers, strolling by the reedy marge, or sitting upon the
+low tombs, in the Sabbath quiet. As the sun sinks and the dusk
+deepens, two figures of infirm old women, clad in black, pass with
+slow and feeble steps through the avenue of limes, and vanish around
+an angle of the church&mdash;that now stands all in shadow: and no
+sound is heard but the faint rustling of the leaves.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_HTC" id="a_HTC"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0099.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Holy Trinity Church."></p>
+<br>
+<p>Once again, as on that sacred night, the streets of Stratford are
+deserted and silent under the star-lit sky, and I am standing, in the
+dim darkness, at the door of the cottage in which Shakespeare was
+born. It is empty, dark, and still; and in all the neighbourhood
+there is no stir nor sign of life; but the quaint casements and
+gables of this haunted house, its antique porch, and the great
+timbers that cross its front are luminous as with a light of their
+own, so that I see them with perfect vision. I stand there a long
+time, and I know that I am to remember these sights for ever, as I
+see them now. After a while, with lingering reluctance, I turn away
+from this marvellous spot, and, presently passing through a little,
+winding lane, I walk in the High Street of the town, and mark, at the
+end of the prospect, the illuminated clock in the tower of the chapel
+of the Holy Cross. A few chance-directed steps bring me to what was
+New Place once, where Shakespeare died; and there again I pause, and
+long remain in meditation, gazing into the enclosed garden, where,
+under screens of wire, are certain strange fragments of lime and
+stone. These&mdash;which I do not then know&mdash;are the remains of
+the foundation of Shakespeare's house. The night wanes; and still I
+walk in Stratford streets; and by and by I am standing on the bridge
+that spans the Avon, and looking down at the thick-clustering stars
+reflected in its black and silent stream. At last, under the roof of
+the Red Horse, I sink into a troubled slumber, from which soon a
+strain of celestial music&mdash;strong, sweet, jubilant, and
+splendid&mdash;awakens me in an instant; and I start up in my
+bed&mdash;to find that all around me is still as death; and then,
+drowsily, far-off, the bell strikes three, in its weird and lonesome
+tower.</p>
+<p>Every pilgrim to Stratford knows, in a general way, what he will
+there behold. Copious and frequent description of its Shakespearean
+associations has made the place familiar to all the world. Yet these
+Shakespearean associations keep a perennial freshness, and are
+equally a surprise to the sight and a wonder to the soul. Though
+three centuries old they are not stricken with age or decay. The
+house in Henley Street, in which, according to accepted tradition,
+Shakespeare was born, has been from time to time repaired; and so it
+has been kept sound, without having been materially changed from what
+it was in Shakespeare's youth. The kind ladies, Miss Maria and Miss
+Caroline Chataway, who take care of it [1877], and with so much pride
+and courtesy show it to the visitor, called my attention to a bit of
+the ceiling of the upper chamber&mdash;the room of Shakespeare's
+birth&mdash;which had begun to droop, and had been skilfully secured
+with little iron laths. It is in this room that the numerous
+autographs are scrawled over the ceiling and walls. One side of the
+chimneypiece here is called "The Actor's Pillar," so richly is it
+adorned with the names of actors; Edmund Kean's signature being among
+them, and still legible. On one of the window-panes, cut with a
+diamond, is the name of "W. Scott"; and all the panes are scratched
+with signatures&mdash;making you think of Douglas Jerrold's remark on
+bad Shakespearean commentators, that they resemble persons who write
+on glass with diamonds, and obscure the light with a multitude of
+scratches. The floor of this room, uncarpeted and almost snow-white
+with much washing, seems still as hard as iron; yet its boards have
+been hollowed by wear, and the heads of the old nails that fasten it
+down gleam like polished silver.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_ING" id="a_ING"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0102.jpg" width="75%" alt=
+"The Inglenook."></p>
+<br>
+<p>You can sit in an antique chair, in a corner of this room, and
+think unutterable things. There is, certainly, no word that can even
+remotely suggest the feeling with which you are then overwhelmed. You
+can sit also in the room below, in the seat, in the corner of the
+wide fireplace, that Shakespeare himself must often have occupied.
+They keep but a few sticks of furniture in any part of the cottage.
+One room is devoted to Shakespearean relics&mdash;more or less
+authentic; one of which is a schoolboy's desk that was obtained from
+the old grammar-school in Church Street in which Shakespeare was once
+a pupil. At the back of the cottage, now isolated from contiguous
+structures, is a pleasant garden, and at one side is a cosy,
+luxurious little cabin&mdash;the home of order and of pious
+decorum&mdash;for the ladies who are custodians of the Shakespeare
+House. If you are a favoured visitor, you may receive from that
+garden, at parting, all the flowers, prettily mounted upon a sheet of
+paper, that poor Ophelia names, in the scene of her madness. "There's
+rosemary, that's for remembrance: and there is pansies, that's for
+thoughts: there's fennel for you, and columbines: there's rue for
+you: there's a daisy:&mdash;I would give you some violets, but they
+withered all when my father died."</p>
+<p>The minute knowledge that Shakespeare had of plants and flowers,
+and the loving appreciation with which he describes pastoral scenery,
+are explained to the rambler in Stratford, by all that he sees and
+hears. There is a walk across the fields to Shottery that the poet
+must often have taken, in the days of his courtship of Anne Hathaway.
+The path to this hamlet passes through pastures and gardens, necked
+everywhere with those brilliant scarlet poppies that are so radiant
+and so bewitching in the English landscape. To have grown up amid
+such surroundings, and, above all, to have experienced amid them the
+passion of love, must have been, for Shakespeare, the intuitive
+acquirement of ample and specific knowledge of their manifold
+beauties. It would be hard to find a sweeter rustic retreat than Anne
+Hathaway's cottage is, even now. Tall trees embower it; and over its
+porches, and all along its picturesque, irregular front, and on its
+thatched roof, the woodbine and the ivy climb, and there are wild
+roses and the maiden's blush. For the young poet's wooing no place
+could be fitter than this. He would always remember it with
+tender-joy.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_ASH" id="a_ASH"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0104.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Approach to Shottery."></p>
+<br>
+<p>They show you, in that cottage, an old settle, by the fireside,
+whereon the lovers may have sat together: it formerly stood outside
+the door: and in the rude little chamber next the roof an antique,
+carved bedstead, that Anne Hathaway once owned. This, it is thought,
+continued to be Anne's home for several years of her married
+life&mdash;her husband being absent in London, and sometimes coming
+down to visit her, at Shottery. "He was wont," says John Aubrey, the
+antiquary, writing in 1680, "to go to his native country once a
+year." The last surviving descendant of the Hathaway
+family&mdash;Mrs. Baker&mdash;lives in the house now, and welcomes
+with homely hospitality the wanderers, from all lands, who
+seek&mdash;in a sympathy and reverence most honourable to human
+nature&mdash;the shrine of Shakespeare's love. There is one such
+wanderer who will never forget the farewell clasp of that kind
+woman's hand, and who has never parted with her gift of woodbine and
+roses from the porch of Anne Hathaway's cottage.</p>
+<p>In England it is living, more than writing about it, that is
+esteemed by the best persons. They prize good writing, but they prize
+noble living far more. This is an ingrained principle, and not an
+artificial habit, and this principle doubtless was as potent in
+Shakespeare's age as it is to-day. Nothing could be more natural than
+that this great writer should think less of his works than of the
+establishment of his home. He would desire, having won a fortune, to
+dwell in his native place, to enjoy the companionship and esteem of
+his neighbours, to participate in their pleasures, to help them in
+their troubles, to aid in the improvement and embellishment of the
+town, to deepen his hold upon the affections of all around him, and
+to feel that, at last, honoured and lamented, his ashes would be laid
+in the village church where he had worshipped&mdash;</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote><small>"Among familiar names to rest,<br>
+And in the places of his youth."</small></blockquote>
+<p>It was in 1597, twelve years after he went to London, that the
+poet began to buy property in Stratford, and it was about eight years
+after his first purchase that he finally settled there, at New Place.
+[J. O. Halliwell-Phillips says that it was in 1609: There is a record
+alleging that as late as that year Shakespeare still retained a
+residence in Clink Street, Southwark.] This mansion was altered by
+Sir Hugh Clopton, who owned it toward the middle of the eighteenth
+century, and it was destroyed by the Rev. Francis Gastrell, in 1759.
+The grounds, which have been reclaimed,&mdash;chiefly through the
+zeal of J. O. Halliwell-Phillips,&mdash;are laid out according to the
+model they are supposed to have presented when Shakespeare owned
+them. His lawn, his orchard, and his garden are indicated; and a
+scion of his mulberry is growing on the spot where that famous tree
+once flourished. You can see a part of the foundation of the old
+house. It was made of brick and timber, it seems to have had gables,
+and no doubt it was fashioned with the beautiful curves and broken
+lines of the Tudor architecture. They show, upon the lawn, a stone of
+considerable size, that surmounted its door. The site&mdash;still a
+central and commodious one&mdash;is on the corner of Chapel Street
+and Chapel Lane; and on the opposite corner stands now, as it has
+stood for eight hundred years, the chapel of the Holy Cross, with
+square, dark tower, fretted parapet, pointed casements, and Norman
+porch&mdash;one of the most romantic and picturesque little churches
+in England. It was easy, when musing on that storied spot, to fancy
+Shakespeare, in the gloaming of a summer day, strolling on the lawn,
+beneath his elms, and listening to the soft and solemn music of the
+chapel organ; or to think of him as stepping forth from his study, in
+the late and lonesome hours of the night, and pausing to "count the
+clock," or note the "exhalations whizzing in the air."</p>
+<p>The funeral train of Shakespeare, on that dark day when it moved
+from New Place to Stratford Church, had but a little way to go. The
+river, surely, must have seemed to hush its murmurs, the trees to
+droop their branches, the sunshine to grow dim&mdash;as that sad
+procession passed! His grave is under the gray pavement of the
+chancel, near the altar, and his wife and one of his daughters are
+buried beside him. The pilgrim who reads upon the gravestone those
+rugged lines of grievous entreaty and awful imprecation that guard
+the poet's rest feels no doubt that he is listening to his living
+voice&mdash;for he has now seen the enchanting beauty of the place,
+and he has now felt what passionate affection it can inspire. Feeling
+and not manner would naturally have prompted that abrupt, agonised
+supplication and threat. Nor does such a pilgrim doubt, when gazing
+on the painted bust, above the grave,&mdash;made by Gerard Jonson,
+stonecutter,&mdash;that he beholds the authentic face of Shakespeare.
+It is not the heavy face of the portraits that represent it. There is
+a rapt, transfigured quality in it, that those copies do not convey.
+It is thoughtful, austere, and yet benign. Shakespeare was a
+hazel-eyed man, with auburn hair, and the colours that he wore were
+scarlet and black. Being painted, and also being set up at a
+considerable height on the church wall, the bust does not disclose
+what is sufficiently perceptible in a cast from it&mdash;that it is
+the copy of a mask from the dead face. One of the cheeks is a little
+swollen and the tongue, slightly protruded, is caught between the
+lips. The idle theory that the poet was not a gentleman of
+consideration in his own time and place falls utterly and for ever
+from the mind when you stand at his grave. No man could have a more
+honourable or sacred place of sepulture; and while it illustrates the
+profound esteem of the community in which he lived it testifies to
+the religious character by which that esteem was confirmed. "I
+commend my soul into the hands of God, my Creator, hoping, and
+assuredly believing, through the only merits of Jesus Christ, my
+Saviour, to be made partaker of life everlasting." So said
+Shakespeare, in his last Will, bowing in humble reverence the
+mightiest mind&mdash;as vast and limitless in the power to comprehend
+as to express!&mdash;that ever wore the garments of
+mortality.&dagger;</p>
+<p><small>&dagger; It ought perhaps to be remarked that this prelude
+to Shakespeare's Will may not have been intended by him as a
+profession of faith, but may have been signed simply as a legal
+formula. His works denote a mind of high and broad spiritual
+convictions, untrammelled by creed or doctrine. His inclination,
+probably, was toward the Roman Catholic church, because of the poetry
+that is in it: but such a man as Shakespeare would have viewed all
+religious beliefs in a kindly spirit, and would have made no emphatic
+professions. The Will was executed on March 25, 1616. It covers three
+sheets of paper; it is not in Shakespeare's hand-writing, but each
+sheet bears his signature. It is in the British Museum.</small></p>
+<p>Once again there is a sound of organ music, very low and soft, in
+Stratford Church, and the dim light, broken by the richly stained
+windows, streams across the dusky chancel, filling the still air with
+opal haze and flooding those gray gravestones with its mellow
+radiance. Not a word is spoken; but, at intervals, the rustle of the
+leaves is audible in a sighing wind. What visions are these, that
+suddenly fill the region! What royal faces of monarchs, proud with
+power, or pallid with anguish! What sweet, imperial women, gleeful
+with happy youth and love, or wide-eyed and rigid in tearless woe!
+What warriors, with serpent diadems, defiant of death and hell! The
+mournful eyes of Hamlet; the wild countenance of Lear; Ariel with his
+harp, and Prospero with his wand! Here is no death! All these, and
+more, are immortal shapes; and he that made them so, although his
+mortal part be but a handful of dust in yonder crypt, is a glorious
+angel beyond the stars.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_DVS" id="a_DVS"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0109.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Distant View of Stratford."></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_PEB" id="a_PEB"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0110.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Paired Eagle Border"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CHIX" id="a_CHIX"></a><a name="a_CHIXb" id="a_CHIXb"></a>
+<h3 align="center">CHAPTER IX</h3>
+<h5 align="center">LONDON NOOKS AND CORNERS</h5>
+<br>
+<p>Those persons upon whom the spirit of the past has power&mdash;and
+it has not power upon every mind!&mdash;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&mdash;slowly and often narrowly made&mdash;of many
+thousands of characters. It is a city that has happened&mdash;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&mdash;the same that Dickens has chosen,
+in his novel of <i>Bleak House,</i> 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.&dagger; 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.&Dagger; I
+remembered&mdash;as I stood there and conjured up that scene of
+golden joy and hope&mdash;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&mdash;a very little time&mdash;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.</p>
+<small>&dagger; That place has been renovated and is no longer a
+disgrace.</small>
+<p><small>&Dagger; 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.</small></p>
+<p>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&mdash;a pauper's grave, that was made in a workhouse
+burial-ground, in Shoe Lane, long since obliterated&mdash;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.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_WHG" id="a_WHG"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0113.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Whitehall Gateway."></p>
+<br>
+<p>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&mdash;upon any condition they might choose to
+make&mdash;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&mdash;now a Chapel Royal and all that remains
+of the ancient palace&mdash;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.</p>
+<p>The literary pilgrim in London has this double
+advantage&mdash;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,&mdash;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.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_LPL" id="a_LPL"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0117.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Lambeth Palace."></p>
+<br>
+<p>In the church, hard by, rest the ashes of men distinguished in the
+most diverse directions&mdash;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&mdash;who was a man of fortune, and
+whom a contemporary epigram styles the best actor of his
+day&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;the Linley sisters&mdash;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 his <i>Life of
+Sheridan,</i> has preserved a lament for her, written by Eliza, Mrs.
+Sheridan, which&mdash;for deep, true sorrow and melodious
+eloquence&mdash;is worthy to be named with Thomas Tickel's monody on
+Addison or Cowper's memorial lines on his mother's
+picture:&mdash;</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote><small>"Shall all the wisdom of the world combined<br>
+Erase thy image, Mary, from my mind,<br>
+Or bid me hope from others to receive<br>
+The fond affection thou alone couldst give?<br>
+Ah no, my best beloved, thou still shalt be<br>
+My friend, my sister, all the world to me!"<br></small></blockquote>
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_DCO" id="a_DCO"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0121.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Dulwich College."><br></p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_TCI" id="a_TCI"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0123.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"The Crown Inn, Dulwich."></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_PAB" id="a_PAB"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0124.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Paisley Border"></p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CHX" id="a_CHX"></a><a name="a_CHXb" id="a_CHXb"></a>
+<h3 align="center">CHAPTER X</h3>
+<h5 align="center">RELICS OF LORD BYRON</h5>
+<br>
+<p>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&mdash;commemorated in the
+well-known misanthropic epitaph&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><small>"To mark a friend's remains these stones
+arise,<br>
+I never knew but one, and here he lies"&mdash;</small></blockquote>
+<p>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.)</p>
+<p>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&mdash;supposing him to revere this great poet's genius and to
+care for his memory&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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"&mdash;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,&mdash;the one depicted in a
+well-known sketch of him by Count D'Orsay,&mdash;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&mdash;that Scott said was the best
+likeness of Byron ever painted&mdash;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&mdash;a discoloured band of brass,
+with sharply jagged edges&mdash;should also be named as among the
+most interesting of the relics.</p>
+<p>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&mdash;much scrawled and blotted&mdash;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,&mdash;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 &amp; 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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_ORW" id="a_ORW"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0129.jpg" width="75%" alt=
+"Oriel Window."></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CTF" id="a_CTF"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0130.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Cherub Tooting Flower Border"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CHXI" id="a_CHXI"></a><a name="a_CHXIb" id="a_CHXIb"></a>
+<h3 align="center">CHAPTER XI</h3>
+<h5 align="center">WESTMINSTER ABBEY</h5>
+<br>
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;tingeing them, the while, with sombre sheen&mdash;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&mdash;allied to bereaved love and a natural wish
+for remembrance after death&mdash;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."</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_TWA" id="a_TWA"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0131.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Westminster Abbey, from the Triforium."></p>
+<br>
+<p>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.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_HVC" id="a_HVC"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0133.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Henry VII. Chapel."></p>
+<br>
+<p>In this church are buried, among generations of their nobles and
+courtiers, fourteen monarchs of England&mdash;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&mdash;on the tomb of Margaret
+Woodeville, daughter of Edward the Fourth&mdash;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&mdash;blandly and almost
+humorously oblivious of the incident of Cromwell&mdash;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&mdash;names forever
+glorious!&mdash;are here enshrined in the grandest sepulchre on
+earth.</p>
+<p>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&mdash;in an upright posture, it is
+said&mdash;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.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CEC" id="a_CEC"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0136.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Chapel of Edward the Confessor."></p>
+<br>
+<p>Betterton and Spranger Barry are in the cloisters&mdash;where may
+be read, in four little words, the most touching epitaph in the
+Abbey: "Jane Lister&mdash;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.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_TPC" id="a_TPC"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0138.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"The Poets' Corner."></p>
+<br>
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;whose lovely words may here speak for all of
+them&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><small>"One port, methought, alike they sought,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;One purpose held, where'er they fare:<br>
+O bounding breeze, O rushing seas.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;At last, at last, unite them
+there!"</small></blockquote>
+<p>But it is not alone in the great Abbey that the rambler in London
+is impressed by poetic antiquity and touching historic
+association&mdash;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's
+<i>Fortunes of Nigel),</i> 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.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_TNA" id="a_TNA"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0140.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"The North Ambulatory."></p>
+<br>
+<p>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.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_TSH" id="a_TSH"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0142.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"The Spaniards, Hampstead."></p>
+<br>
+<p>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,&mdash;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,&mdash;the golden cross of Christ!</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_DSP" id="a_DSP"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0143.jpg" width="60%" alt=
+"Dome of St. Paul's"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_LFB" id="a_LFB"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0144.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Leaf and Flower Border"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CHXII" id="a_CHXII"></a><a name="a_CHXIIb" id=
+"a_CHXIIb"></a>
+<h3 align="center">CHAPTER XII.</h3>
+<h5 align="center">SHAKESPEARE'S HOME</h5>
+<br>
+<p>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&mdash;from Birmingham, Warwick,
+Shipton, Bidford, Alcester, Evesham, Worcester, and other contiguous
+towns&mdash;wind, in sun and shadow, through a sod of green velvet,
+swept by the cool, sweet winds of the English summer.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_TGR" id="a_TGR"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0145.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"The Grange."></p>
+<br>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;authentic and splendid
+memorials of a distant and storied past&mdash;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</p>
+<blockquote><small>"That kings for such a tomb would wish to
+die."</small></blockquote>
+<p>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,&mdash;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.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_SHB" id="a_SHB"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0148.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Shakespeare's Birthplace in Henley Street."></p>
+<br>
+<p>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&mdash;Mrs. William Hart&mdash;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&mdash;twenty-three years later,&mdash;and doubtless she
+resided there till her death, in 1646. The estate then passed to
+Susanna&mdash;Mrs. John Hall,&mdash;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&mdash;subject to many of those infringements which are
+incidental to poverty&mdash;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&mdash;two in one, that
+is&mdash;had been subdivided. A part of the building became an
+inn&mdash;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.&mdash;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&mdash;now at length become the resort of
+literary pilgrims,&mdash;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,&dagger; Rogers,
+Thackeray, Kean, Tennyson, and Dickens are among the votaries there
+and thus recorded.</p>
+<p><small>&dagger; 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.</small></p>
+<p>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 beautiful
+<i>Sketch-Book.</i> 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.</p>
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;"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&mdash;a sense of some tremendous
+energy stricken dumb and frozen into silence and past and gone
+forever.</p>
+<p>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,&mdash;in attitude, dress, colours, and other
+peculiarities,&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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 in <i>As You Like
+It.</i> (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,&mdash;since on the last of the
+three sheets which contain his will the word "seal" is stricken out
+and the word "hand" substituted,&mdash;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.</p>
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;which are still extant, at the south-east
+corner of Chapel Lane and Church Street&mdash;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:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote>
+<small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"The raven
+himself is hoarse<br>
+That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan<br>
+Under my battlements."</small></blockquote>
+<p>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&mdash;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,&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote>
+<small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Daffodils<br>
+
+That come before the swallow dares, and take<br>
+The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,<br>
+But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes<br>
+Or Cytherea's breath."</small></blockquote>
+<p>To endeavour to touch upon the larger and more august aspect of
+Shakespeare's life&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_AHC" id="a_AHC"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0165.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Anne Hathaway's Cottage."></p>
+<br>
+<p>The old foot-path across the fields to Shottery remains
+accessible. Wild-flowers are blooming along its margin. The gardens
+and meadows through which it winds are sprinkled with the gorgeous
+scarlet of the poppy. The hamlet of Shottery is less than a mile from
+Stratford, stepping toward the sunset; and there, nestled beneath the
+elms, and almost embowered in vines and roses, stands the cottage in
+which Anne Hathaway was wooed and won. This is even more antiquated
+in appearance than the birthplace of Shakespeare, and more obviously
+a relic of the distant past. It is built of wood and plaster, ribbed
+with massive timbers, and covered with a thatch roof. It fronts
+southward, presenting its eastern end to the road. Under its eaves,
+peeping through embrasures cut in the thatch, are four tiny
+casements, round which the ivy twines and the roses wave softly in
+the wind of June. The western end of the structure is higher than the
+eastern, and the old building, originally divided into two tenements,
+is now divided into three. In front of it is a straggling garden.
+There is a comfortable air of wildness, yet not of neglect, in its
+appointments and surroundings. The place is still the abode of labour
+and lowliness. Entering its parlour you see a stone floor, a wide
+fireplace, a broad, hospitable hearth, with cosy chimney-corners, and
+near this an old wooden settle, much decayed but still serviceable,
+on which Shakespeare may often have sat, with Anne at his side. The
+plastered walls of this room here and there reveal portions of an oak
+wainscot. The ceiling is low. This evidently was the farm-house of a
+substantial yeoman, in the days of Henry the Eighth. The Hathaways
+had lived in Shottery for forty years prior to Shakespeare's
+marriage. The poet, then undistinguished, had just turned eighteen,
+while his bride was nearly twenty-six, and it has been foolishly said
+that she acted ill in wedding her boy-lover. They were married in
+November, 1582, and their first child, Susanna, came in the following
+May. Anne Hathaway must have been a wonderfully fascinating woman, or
+Shakespeare would not so have loved her; and she must have loved him
+dearly&mdash;as what woman, indeed, could help it?&mdash;or she would
+not thus have yielded to his passion. There is direct testimony to
+the beauty of his person; and in the light afforded by his writings
+it requires no extraordinary penetration to conjecture that his
+brilliant mind, sparkling humour, tender fancy, and impetuous spirit
+must have made him, in his youth, a paragon of enchanters. It is not
+known where they lived during the first years after their marriage.
+Perhaps in this cottage at Shottery. Perhaps with Hamnet and Judith
+Sadler, for whom their twins, born in 1585, were named Hamnet and
+Judith. Her father's house assuredly would have been chosen for
+Anne's refuge, when presently (in 1585-86), Shakespeare was obliged
+to leave his wife and children, and go away to London to seek his
+fortune. He did not buy New Place till 1597, but it is known that in
+the meantime he came to his native town once every year. It was in
+Stratford that his son Hamnet died, in 1596. Anne and her children
+probably had never left the town. They show a bedstead and other bits
+of furniture, together with certain homespun sheets of everlasting
+linen, that are kept as heirlooms in the garret of the Shottery
+cottage. Here is the room that may often have welcomed the poet when
+he came home from his labours in the great city. It is a homely and
+humble place, but the sight of it makes the heart thrill with a
+strange and incommunicable awe. You cannot wish to speak when you are
+standing there. You are scarcely conscious of the low rustling of the
+leaves outside, the far-off sleepy murmur of the brook, or the faint
+fragrance of woodbine and maiden's-blush that is wafted in at the
+open casement and that swathes in nature's incense a memory sweeter
+than itself.</p>
+<p>Associations may be established by fable as well as by fact. There
+is but little reason to believe the legendary tale, first recorded by
+Rowe, that Shakespeare, having robbed the deer-park of Sir Thomas
+Lucy of Charlecote (there was not a park at Charlecote then, but
+there was one at Fullbrooke), was so severely persecuted by that
+magistrate that he was compelled to quit Stratford and shelter
+himself in London. Yet the story has twisted itself into all the
+lives of Shakespeare, and whether received or rejected has clung to
+the house of Charlecote. That noble mansion&mdash;a genuine specimen,
+despite a few modern alterations, of the architecture of Queen
+Elizabeth's time&mdash;is found on the west bank of the Avon, about
+three miles north-east from Stratford. It is a long, rambling,
+three-storied palace&mdash;as finely quaint as old St. James's in
+London, and not altogether unlike that edifice, in general
+character&mdash;with octagon turrets, gables, balustrades, Tudor
+casements, and great stacks of chimneys, so closed in by elms of
+giant growth that you can scarce distinguish it, through the foliage,
+till you are close upon it.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CHR" id="a_CHR"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0169.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Charlecote."></p>
+<br>
+<p>It was erected in 1558 by Thomas Lucy, who in 1578 was Sheriff of
+Warwickshire, who was elected to the Parliaments of 1571 and 1584,
+and who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1565. The porch to this
+building was designed by John of Padua. There is a silly ballad in
+existence, idly attributed to Shakespeare, which, it is said, was
+found affixed to Lucy's gate, and gave him great offence. He must
+have been more than commonly sensitive to low abuse if he could have
+been annoyed by such a manifestly scurrilous ebullition of the
+blackguard and the blockhead,&mdash;supposing, indeed, that he ever
+saw it. The ballad, proffered as the work of Shakespeare, is a
+forgery. There is but one existing reason to think that the poet ever
+cherished a grudge against the Lucy family, and that is the coarse
+allusion to the "luces" which is found in the <i>Merry Wives of
+Windsor.</i> There was apparently, a second Sir Thomas Lucy, later
+than the Sheriff, who was more of the Puritanic breed, while
+Shakespeare evidently was a Cavalier. It is possible that in a
+youthful frolic the poet may have poached on Sheriff Lucy's
+preserves. Even so, the affair was trivial. It is possible, too, that
+in after years he may have had reason to dislike the
+ultra-Puritanical neighbour. Some memory of the tradition will, of
+course, haunt the traveller's thoughts as he strolls by Hatton Rock
+and through the villages of Hampton and Charlecote. But this
+discordant recollection is soon smoothed away by the peaceful
+loveliness of the ramble&mdash;past aged hawthorns that Shakespeare
+himself may have seen, and under the boughs of beeches, limes, and
+drooping willows, where every footstep falls on wild-flowers, or on a
+cool green turf that is softer than Indian silk and as firm and
+elastic as the sand of the sea-beaten shore. Thought of Sir Thomas
+Lucy will not be otherwise than kind, either, when the stranger in
+Charlecote church reads the epitaph with which the old knight
+commemorated his wife: "All the time of her Lyfe a true and faithfull
+servant of her good God; never detected of any crime or vice; in
+religion most sound; in love to her husband most faithfull and true.
+In friendship most constant. To what in trust was committed to her
+most secret; in wisdom excelling; in governing her House and bringing
+up of Youth in the feare of God that did converse with her most rare
+and singular; a great maintainer of hospitality; greatly esteemed of
+her betters; misliked of none unless the envious. When all is spoken
+that can be said, a Woman so furnished and garnished with Virtue as
+not to be bettered, and hardly to be equalled of any; as she lived
+most virtuously, so she dyed most godly. Set down by him that best
+did know what hath been written to be true. Thomas Lucy." A narrow
+formalist he may have been, and a severe magistrate in his dealings
+with scapegrace youths, and perhaps a haughty and disagreeable
+neighbour; but there is a touch of manhood, high feeling, and
+virtuous and self-respecting character in those lines, that instantly
+wins the response of sympathy. If Shakespeare really shot the deer of
+Thomas Lucy the injured gentleman had a right to feel annoyed.
+Shakespeare, boy or man, was not a saint, and those who so account
+him can have read his works to but little purpose. He can bear the
+full brunt of his faults. He does not need to be canonised.</p>
+<p>The ramble to Charlecote&mdash;one of the prettiest walks about
+Stratford&mdash;was, it may surely be supposed, often taken by
+Shakespeare. Many another ramble was possible to him and no doubt was
+made. He would cross the mill bridge (new in 1599), which spans the
+Avon a little way to the south of the church. A quaint, sleepy mill
+no doubt it was&mdash;necked with moss and ivy&mdash;and the gaze of
+Shakespeare assuredly dwelt on it with pleasure.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_MWA" id="a_MWA"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0172.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Meadow Walk by the Avon."></p>
+<br>
+<p>His footsteps may be traced, also, in fancy, to the region of the
+old college building, demolished in 1799, which stood in the southern
+part of Stratford, and was the home of his friend John Combe, factor
+of Fulke Greville, Earl of Warwick. Still another of his walks must
+have tended northward through Welcombe, where he was the owner of
+land, to the portly manor of Clopton, or to the home of William,
+nephew of John-a-Combe, which stood where the Phillips mansion stands
+now. On what is called the Ancient House, which stands on the west
+side of High Street, he may often have looked, as he strolled past to
+the Red Horse. That picturesque building, dated 1596, survives,
+notwithstanding some modern touches of rehabilitation, as a beautiful
+specimen of Tudor architecture in one at least of its most charming
+traits, the carved and timber-crossed gable. It is a house of three
+stories, containing parlour, sitting-room, kitchen, and several
+bedrooms, besides cellars and brew-shed; and when sold at auction,
+August 23, 1876, it brought £400. In that house was born John
+Harvard, who founded Harvard University. There are other dwellings
+fully as old in Stratford, but they have been covered with stucco and
+otherwise changed. This is a genuine piece of antiquity and it vies
+with the grammar-school and the hall of the Guild, under the
+pent-house of which the poet would pass whenever he went abroad from
+New Place. Julius Shaw, one of the five witnesses to his will, lived
+in the house next to the present New Place Museum, and there, it is
+reasonable to think, Shakespeare would often pause, for a word with
+his friend and neighbour. In the little streets by the riverside,
+which are ancient and redolent of the past, his image seems steadily
+familiar. In Dead Lane (once also called Walker Street, now called
+Chapel Lane) he owned a cottage, bought of Walter Getley in 1602, and
+only destroyed within the present century. These and kindred shreds
+of fact, suggesting the poet as a living man and connecting him,
+however vaguely, with our everyday experience, are seized with
+peculiar zest by the pilgrim in Stratford. Such a votary, for
+example, never doubts that Shakespeare was a frequenter, in leisure
+or convivial hours, of the ancient Red Horse inn. It stood there, in
+his day, as it stands now, on the north side of Bridge Street,
+westward from the Avon. There are many other taverns in the
+town&mdash;the Shakespeare, a delightful resort, the Falcon, the Rose
+and Crown, the old Red Lion, and the Swan's Nest, being a few of
+them,&mdash;-but the Red Horse takes precedence of all its kindred,
+in the fascinating because suggestive attribute of antiquity.
+Moreover it was the Red Horse that harboured Washington Irving, the
+pioneer of American worshippers at the shrine of Shakespeare; and the
+American explorer of Stratford would cruelly sacrifice his peace of
+mind if he were to repose under any other roof. The Red Horse is a
+rambling, three-story building, entered through an archway that leads
+into a long, straggling yard, adjacent to offices and stables. On one
+side of the entrance is found the smoking-room; on the other is the
+coffee-room. Above are the bed-rooms. It is a thoroughly
+old-fashioned inn&mdash;such a one as we may suppose the Boar's Head
+to have been, in the time of Prince Henry; such a one as untravelled
+Americans only know in the pages of Dickens. The rooms are furnished
+in neat, homelike style, and their associations readily deck them
+with the fragrant garlands of memory. When Drayton and Jonson came
+down to visit "gentle Will" at Stratford they could scarcely have
+omitted to quaff the humming ale of Warwickshire in that cosy
+parlour. When Queen Henrietta Maria was ensconced at New Place the
+general of the royal forces quartered himself at the Red Horse, and
+then doubtless there was enough and to spare of revelry within its
+walls. A little later the old house was soundly peppered by Roundhead
+bullets and the whole town was overrun with the close-cropped,
+psalm-singing soldiers of the Commonwealth. In 1742 Garrick and
+Macklin lodged in the Red Horse, and thither again came Garrick in
+1769, to direct the Shakespeare Jubilee, which was then most dismally
+accomplished but which is always remembered to the great actor's
+credit and honour. Betterton, no doubt, lodged there when he came to
+Stratford in quest of reminiscences of Shakespeare. The visit of
+Washington Irving, supplemented with his delicious chronicle, has led
+to what might be called almost the consecration of the parlour in
+which he sat and the chamber (No. 15) in which he slept. They still
+keep the poker&mdash;now marked "Geoffrey Crayon's
+sceptre"&mdash;with which, as he sat there in long, silent, ecstatic
+meditation, he prodded the fire in the narrow, tiny grate. They keep
+also the chair in which he sat&mdash;a plain, straight-backed
+arm-chair, with a haircloth seat, marked, on a brass plate, with his
+renowned and treasured name. Thus genius can sanctify even the
+humblest objects,</p>
+<blockquote><small>"And shed a something of celestial light<br>
+Round the familiar face of every day."</small></blockquote>
+<p>To pass rapidly in review the little that is known of
+Shakespeare's life is, nevertheless, to be impressed not only by its
+incessant and amazing literary fertility but by the quick succession
+of its salient incidents. The vitality must have been enormous that
+created in so short a time such a number and variety of works of the
+first class. The same quick spirit would naturally have kept in
+agitation all the elements of his daily experience. Descended from an
+ancestor who had fought for the Red Rose on Bosworth Field, he was
+born to repute as well as competence, and during his early childhood
+he received instruction and training in a comfortable home. He
+escaped the plague that was raging in Stratford when he was an
+infant, and that took many victims. He went to school when seven
+years old and left it when about fourteen. He then had to work for
+his living&mdash;his once opulent father having fallen into
+misfortune&mdash;and he became an apprentice to a butcher, or else a
+lawyer's clerk (there were seven lawyers in Stratford at that time),
+or else a schoolteacher. Perhaps he was all three&mdash;and more. It
+is conjectured that he saw the players who from time to time acted in
+the Guildhall, under the auspices of the corporation of Stratford;
+that he attended the religious entertainments that were customarily
+given in the not distant city of Coventry; and that in particular he
+witnessed the elaborate and sumptuous pageants with which in 1575 the
+Earl of Leicester welcomed Queen Elizabeth to Kenilworth Castle. He
+married at eighteen; and, leaving a wife and three children in
+Stratford, he went up to London at twenty-two. His entrance into
+theatrical life followed&mdash;in what capacity it is impossible to
+say. One dubious account says that he held horses for the public at
+the theatre door; another that he got employment as a prompter to the
+actors. It is certain that he had not been in the theatrical business
+long before he began to make himself known. At twenty-eight he was a
+prosperous author. At twenty-nine he had acted with Burbage before
+Queen Elizabeth; and while Spenser had extolled him in the "Tears of
+the Muses," the hostile Greene had disparaged him in the
+"Groat's-worth of Wit." At thirty-three he had acquired wealth enough
+to purchase New Place, the principal residence in his native town,
+where now he placed his family and established his
+home,&mdash;himself remaining in London, but visiting Stratford at
+frequent intervals. At thirty-four he was heard of as the actor of
+Knowell in Ben Jonson's comedy of <i>Every Man in his
+Humour</i>&dagger; and he received the glowing encomium of Meres in
+<i>Wits Treasury.</i> At thirty-eight he had written <i>Hamlet</i>
+and <i>As You Like It,</i> and moreover he had now become the owner
+of more estate in Stratford, costing £320. At forty-one he made his
+largest purchase, buying for £440 the "unexpired term of a moiety of
+the interest in a lease granted in 1554 for ninety-two years of the
+tithes of Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe." In the meantime he had
+smoothed the declining years of his father and had followed him with
+love and duty to the grave. Other domestic bereavements likewise
+befell him, and other worldly cares and duties were laid upon his
+hands, but neither grief nor business could check the fertility of
+his brain. Within the next ten years he wrote, among other great
+plays, <i>Othello, Lear, Macbeth,</i> and <i>Coriolanus.</i></p>
+<p><small>&dagger; Jonson's famous comedy was first acted in 1598,
+"By the then Lord Chamberlain his servants." Knowell is designated as
+"an old gentleman." The Jonson Folio of 1692 names as follows the
+principal comedians who acted in that piece: "Will. Shakespeare. Aug.
+Philips. Hen. Condel. Will. Slye. Will. Kempe. Ric. Burbadge. Joh.
+Hemings. Tho. Pope. Chr. Beston. Joh. Duke."</small></p>
+<br>
+<p>At about forty-eight he seems to have disposed of his interest in
+the two London theatres with which he had been connected, the
+Blackfriars and the Globe, and shortly afterwards, his work as we
+possess it being well-nigh completed, he retired finally to his
+Stratford home. That he was the comrade of many bright spirits who
+glittered in "the spacious times" of Elizabeth several of them have
+left personal testimony. That he was the king of them all is shown in
+his works. The Sonnets seem to disclose that there was a mysterious,
+almost a tragical, passage in his life, and that he was called to
+bear the burden of a great and perhaps a calamitous personal
+grief&mdash;one of those griefs, which, being caused by sinful love,
+are endless in the punishment they entail. Happily, however, no
+antiquarian student of Shakespeare's time has yet succeeded in coming
+near to the man. While he was in London he used to frequent the
+Falcon Tavern, in Southwark, and the Mermaid, and he lived at one
+time in St. Helen's parish, Aldersgate, and at another time in Clink
+Street, Southwark. As an actor his name has been associated with his
+characters of Adam, Friar Lawrence, and the Ghost of King Hamlet, and
+a contemporary reference declared him "excellent in the quality he
+professes." Some of his manuscripts, it is possible, perished in the
+fire that consumed the Globe theatre in 1613. He passed his last days
+in his home at Stratford, and died there, somewhat suddenly, on his
+fifty-second birthday. That event, it may be worth while to observe,
+occurred within thirty-three years of the execution of Charles the
+First, under the Puritan Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell. The Puritan
+spirit, intolerant of the play-house and of all its works, must then
+have been gaining formidable strength. His daughter Susanna, aged
+thirty-three at the time of his death, survived him thirty-three
+years. His daughter Judith, aged thirty-one at the time of his death,
+survived him forty-six years. The whisper of tradition says that both
+were Puritans. If so the strange and seemingly unaccountable
+disappearance of whatever play-house papers he may have left at
+Stratford should not be obscure. This suggestion is likely to have
+been made before; and also it is likely to have been supplemented
+with a reference to the great fire in London in 1666&mdash;(which in
+consuming St. Paul's cathedral burned an immense quantity of books
+and manuscripts that had been brought from all the threatened parts
+of the city and heaped beneath its arches for safety)&mdash;as
+probably the final and effectual holocaust of almost every piece of
+print or writing that might have served to illuminate the history of
+Shakespeare. In his personality no less than in the fathomless
+resources of his genius he baffles scrutiny and stands for ever
+alone.</p>
+<blockquote><small>"Others abide our question; thou art free:<br>
+We ask, and ask; thou smilest and art still&mdash;<br>
+Out-topping knowledge."</small></blockquote>
+<p>It is impossible to convey an adequate suggestion of the
+prodigious and overwhelming sense of peace that falls upon the soul
+of the pilgrim in Stratford church. All the cares and struggles and
+trials of mortal life, all its failures, and equally all its
+achievements, seem there to pass utterly out of remembrance. It is
+not now an idle reflection that "the paths of glory lead but to the
+grave." No power of human thought ever rose higher or went further
+than the thought of Shakespeare. No human being, using the best
+weapons of intellectual achievement, ever accomplished so much. Yet
+here he lies&mdash;who was once so great! And here also, gathered
+around him in death, lie his parents, his children, his descendants,
+and his friends. For him and for them the struggle has long since
+ended. Let no man fear to tread the dark pathway that Shakespeare has
+trodden before him. Let no man, standing at this grave, and seeing
+and feeling that all the vast labours of that celestial genius end
+here at last in a handful of dust, fret and grieve any more over the
+puny and evanescent toils of to-day, so soon to be buried in
+oblivion! In the simple performance of duty and in the life of the
+affections there may be permanence and solace. The rest is an
+"insubstantial pageant." It breaks, it changes, it dies, it passes
+away, it is forgotten; and though a great name be now and then for a
+little while remembered, what can the remembrance of mankind signify
+to him who once wore it? Shakespeare, there is reason to believe, set
+precisely the right value alike upon contemporary renown and the
+homage of posterity. Though he went forth, as the stormy impulses of
+his nature drove him, into the great world of London, and there laid
+the firm hand of conquest upon the spoils of wealth and power, he
+came back at last to the peaceful home of his childhood; he strove to
+garner up the comforts and everlasting treasures of love at his
+hearthstone; he sought an enduring monument in the hearts of friends
+and companions; and so he won for his stately sepulchre the garland
+not alone of glory but of affection. Through the high eastern window
+of the chancel of Holy Trinity church the morning sunshine, broken
+into many-coloured light, streams in upon the grave of Shakespeare
+and gilds his bust upon the wall above it. He lies close by the
+altar, and every circumstance of his place of burial is eloquent of
+his hold upon the affectionate esteem of his contemporaries. The line
+of graves beginning at the north wall of the chancel and extending
+across to the south seems devoted entirely to Shakespeare and his
+family, with but one exception.&dagger; The pavement that covers them
+is of that blue-gray slate or freestone which in England is sometimes
+called black marble. In the first grave under the north wall rests
+Shakespeare's wife. The next is that of the poet himself, bearing the
+world-famed words of blessing and imprecation. Then comes the grave
+of Thomas Nashe, husband to Elizabeth. Hall, the poet's
+granddaughter, who died April 4, 1647. Next is that of Dr. John Hall
+(obiit November 25, 1635), husband to his daughter Susanna, and close
+beside him rests Susanna herself, who was buried on July 11, 1649.
+The gravestones are laid east and west, and all but one present
+inscriptions. That one is under the south wall, and possibly it
+covers the dust of Judith&mdash;Mrs. Thomas Quiney&mdash;the youngest
+daughter of Shakespeare, who, surviving her three children and thus
+leaving no descendants, died in 1662. Upon the gravestone of Susanna
+an inscription has been intruded commemorative of Richard Watts, who
+is not, however, known to have had any relationship with either
+Shakespeare or his descendants.</p>
+<small>&dagger; "The poet knew," says J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps,
+"that as a tithe-owner he would necessarily be buried in the
+chancel."</small>
+<p>Shakespeare's father, who died in 1601, and his mother, Mary
+Arden, who died in 1608, were buried in or near this church. (The
+register says, under Burials, "September 9, 1608, Mayry Shaxspere,
+wydowe.") His infant sisters Joan, Margaret, and Anne, and his
+brother Richard, who died, aged thirty-nine, in 1613, may also have
+been laid to rest in this place. Of the death and burial of his
+brother Gilbert there is no record. His sister Joan, the
+second&mdash;Mrs. Hart&mdash;would naturally have been placed with
+her relatives. His brother Edmund, dying in 1607, aged twenty-seven,
+is under the pavement of St. Saviour's church in Southwark. The boy
+Hamnet, dying before his father had risen into local eminence, rests,
+probably, in an undistinguished grave in the churchyard. (The
+register records his burial on August 11, 1596.) The family of
+Shakespeare seems to have been short-lived and it was soon
+extinguished. He himself died at fifty-two. Judith's children
+perished young. Susanna bore but one child&mdash;Elizabeth&mdash;who
+became successively Mrs. Nashe and Lady Barnard, and she, dying in
+1670, was buried at Abingdon, near Oxford. She left no children by
+either husband, and in her the race of Shakespeare became extinct.
+That of Anne Hathaway also has nearly disappeared, the last living
+descendant of the Hathaways being Mrs. Baker, the present occupant of
+Anne's cottage at Shottery. Thus, one by one, from the pleasant
+gardened town of Stratford, they went to take up their long abode in
+that old church, which was ancient even in their infancy, and which,
+watching through the centuries in its monastic solitude on the shore
+of Avon, has seen their lands and houses devastated by flood and
+fire, the places that knew them changed by the tooth of time, and
+almost all the associations of their lives obliterated by the
+improving hand of destruction.</p>
+<p>One of the oldest and most interesting Shakespearean documents in
+existence is the narrative, by a traveller named Dowdall, of his
+observations in Warwickshire, and of his visit, on April 10, 1693, to
+Stratford church. He describes therein the bust and the tombstone of
+Shakespeare, and he adds these remarkable words: "The clerk that
+showed me this church is above eighty years old. He says that not
+one, for fear of the curse above said, dare touch his gravestone,
+though his wife and daughter did earnestly desire to be laid in the
+same grave with him." Writers in modern days have been pleased to
+disparage that inscription and to conjecture that it was the work of
+a sexton and not of the poet; but no one denies that it has
+accomplished its purpose in preserving the sanctity of Shakespeare's
+rest. Its rugged strength, its simple pathos, its fitness, and its
+sincerity make it felt as unquestionably the utterance of Shakespeare
+himself, when it is read upon the slab that covers him. There the
+musing traveller full well conceives how dearly the poet must have
+loved the beautiful scenes of his birthplace, and with what intense
+longing he must have desired to sleep undisturbed in the most sacred
+spot in their bosom. He doubtless had some premonition of his
+approaching death. Three months before it came he made his will. A
+little later he saw the marriage of his younger daughter. Within less
+than a month of his death he executed the will, and thus set his
+affairs in order. His handwriting in the three signatures to that
+paper conspicuously exhibits the uncertainty and lassitude of
+shattered nerves. He was probably quite worn out. Within the space,
+at the utmost, of twenty-five years, he had written thirty-seven
+plays, one hundred and fifty-four sonnets, and two or more long
+poems; had passed through much and painful toil and through bitter
+sorrow; had made his fortune as author and actor; and had
+superintended, to excellent advantage, his property in London and his
+large interests in Stratford and its neighbourhood. The proclamation
+of health with which the will begins was doubtless a formality of
+legal custom. The story that he died of drinking too hard at a merry
+meeting with Drayton and Ben Jonson is idle gossip. If in those last
+days of fatigue and presentiment he wrote the epitaph that has ever
+since marked his grave, it would naturally have taken the plainest
+fashion of speech. Such is its character; and no pilgrim to the
+poet's shrine could wish to see it changed:&mdash;</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote><small>"Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare,<br>
+To digg the dvst encloased heare;<br>
+Blese be y<sup>e</sup> man y<sup>t</sup> spares thes stones<br>
+And cvrst be he y<sup>t</sup> moves my bones."</small></blockquote>
+<p>It was once surmised that the poet's solicitude lest his bones
+might be disturbed in death grew out of his intention to take with
+him into the grave a confession that the works which now follow him
+were written by another hand. Persons have been found who actually
+believe that a man who was great enough to write <i>Hamlet</i> could
+be little enough to feel ashamed of it, and, accordingly, that
+Shakespeare was only hired to play at authorship, as a screen for the
+actual author. It might not, perhaps, be strange that a desire for
+singularity, which is one of the worst literary crazes of this
+capricious age, should prompt to the rejection of the conclusive and
+overwhelming testimony to Shakespeare's genius that has been left by
+Shakespeare's contemporaries, and that shines forth in all that is
+known of his life. It is strange that a doctrine should get itself
+asserted which is subversive of common reason and contradictory to
+every known law of the human mind. This conjectural confession of
+poetic imposture has never been exhumed. The grave is known to have
+been disturbed, in 1796, when alterations were made in the
+church,&dagger; and there came a time in the present century when, as
+they were making repairs in the chancel pavement (the chancel was
+renovated in 1835), a rift was accidently made in the Shakespeare
+vault. Through this, though not without misgiving, the sexton peeped
+in upon the poet's remains. He saw nothing but dust.</p>
+<p><small>&dagger; It was the opinion&mdash;not conclusive but
+interesting&mdash;of the late J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps that at one
+or other of these "restorations" the original tombstone of
+Shakespeare was removed and another one, from the yard of a modern
+stone-mason, put in its place. Dr. Ingleby, in his book on
+<i>Shakespeare's Bones,</i> 1883, asserts that the original stone was
+removed. I have compared Shakespeare's tombstone with that of his
+wife, and with others in the chancel, but I have not found the
+discrepancy observed by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, and I think there is
+no reason to believe that the original tombstone has ever been
+disturbed. The letters upon it were, probably, cut deeper in
+1835.</small></p>
+<p>The antique font from which the infant Shakespeare may have
+received the water of Christian baptism is still preserved in this
+church. It was thrown aside and replaced by a new one about the
+middle of the seventeenth century. Many years afterward it was found
+in the charnel-house. When that was destroyed, in 1800, it was cast
+into the churchyard. In later times the parish clerk used it as a
+trough to his pump. It passed then through the hands of several
+successive owners, till at last, in days that had learned to value
+the past and the associations connected with its illustrious names,
+it found its way back again to the sanctuary from which it had
+suffered such a rude expulsion. It is still a handsome stone, though
+broken, soiled, and marred.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_AFN" id="a_AFN"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0186.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Remains of the Old Font at which, probably, Shakespeare was christened, now in the Nave of Stratford Church."></p>
+<br>
+<p>On the north wall of the chancel, above his grave and near to "the
+American window," is placed Shakespeare's monument. It is known to
+have been erected there within seven years after his death. It
+consists of a half-length effigy, placed beneath a fretted arch, with
+entablature and pedestal, between two Corinthian columns of black
+marble, gilded at base and top. Above the entablature appear the
+armorial bearings of Shakespeare&mdash;a pointed spear on a bend
+sable and a silver falcon on a tasselled helmet supporting a spear.
+Over this heraldic emblem is a death's-head, and on each side of it
+sits a carved cherub, one holding a spade, the other an inverted
+torch. In front of the effigy is a cushion, upon which both hands
+rest, holding a scroll and a pen. Beneath is an inscription in Latin
+and English, supposed to have been furnished by the poet's
+son-in-law, Dr. Hall. The bust was cut by Gerard Jonson, a native of
+Amsterdam and by occupation a "tomb-maker," who lived in Southwark
+and possibly had seen the poet. The material is a soft stone, and the
+work, when first set up, was painted in the colours of life. Its
+peculiarities indicate that it was copied from a mask of the features
+taken after death. Some persons believe (upon slender and dubious
+testimony) that this mask has since been found, and busts of
+Shakespeare have been based upon it, by W. R. O'Donovan and by
+William Page. In September, 1764, John Ward, grandfather of Mrs.
+Siddons, having come to Stratford with a theatrical company, gave a
+performance of <i>Othello,</i> in the Guildhall, and devoted its
+proceeds to reparation of the Gerard Jonson effigy, then somewhat
+damaged by time.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_SHM" id="a_SHM"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0188.jpg" width="75%" alt=
+"Shakespeare's Monument."></p>
+<br>
+<p>The original colours were then carefully restored and freshened.
+In 1793, under the direction of Malone, this bust, together with the
+image of John-a-Combe&mdash;a recumbent statue upon a tomb close to
+the east wall of the chancel&mdash;was coated with white paint. From
+that plight it was extricated, in 1861, by the assiduous skill of
+Simon Collins, who immersed it in a bath which took off the white
+paint and restored the colours. The eyes are painted light hazel, the
+hair and pointed beard auburn, the face and hands flesh-tint. The
+dress consists of a scarlet doublet, with a rolling collar, closely
+buttoned down the front, worn under a loose black gown without
+sleeves. The upper part of the cushion is green, the lower part
+crimson, and this object is ornamented with gilt tassels. The stone
+pen that used to be in the right hand of the bust was taken from it,
+toward the end of the last century, by a young Oxford student, and,
+being dropped by him upon the pavement, was broken. A quill pen has
+been put in its place. This is the inscription beneath the
+bust:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><small>Ivdicio Pylivm, genio Socratem, arte Maronem,<br>
+Terra tegit, popvlvs mæret, Olympvs habet.<br>
+<br>
+Stay, passenger, why goest thov by so fast?<br>
+Read, if thov canst, whom enviovs Death hath plast<br>
+Within this monvment: S<small>HAKSPEARE</small>: with whome<br>
+Qvick Natvre dide; whose name doth deck y<sup>s</sup> tombe<br>
+Far more than cost; sieth all y<sup>t</sup> he hath writt<br>
+Leaves living art bvt page to serve his witt.<br>
+<br>
+Obiit Ano. Doi. 1616. Ætatis 53. Die. 23. Ap.</small></blockquote>
+<p>The erection of the old castles, cathedrals, monasteries, and
+churches of England was accomplished, little by little, with
+laborious toil protracted through many years. Stratford church,
+probably more than seven centuries old, presents a mixture of
+architectural styles, in which Saxon simplicity and Norman grace are
+beautifully mingled. Different parts of the structure were built at
+different times. It is fashioned in the customary crucial form, with
+a square tower, an octagon stone spire, (erected in 1764, to replace
+a more ancient one, made of oak and covered with lead), and a fretted
+battlement all around its roof. Its windows are diversified, but
+mostly Gothic. The approach to it is across a churchyard thickly sown
+with graves, through a lovely green avenue of lime-trees, leading to
+a porch on its north side. This avenue of foliage is said to be the
+copy of one that existed there in Shakespeare's day, through which he
+must often have walked, and through which at last he was carried to
+his grave. Time itself has fallen asleep in that ancient place. The
+low sob of the organ only deepens the awful sense of its silence and
+its dreamless repose. Yews and elms grow in the churchyard, and many
+a low tomb and many a leaning stone are there, in the shadow, gray
+with moss and mouldering with age. Birds have built their nests in
+many crevices in the timeworn tower, round which at sunset you may
+see them circle, with chirp of greeting or with call of anxious
+discontent. Near by flows the peaceful river, reflecting the gray
+spire in its dark, silent, shining waters. In the long and lonesome
+meadows beyond it the primroses stand in their golden ranks among the
+clover, and the frilled and fluted bell of the cowslip, hiding its
+single drop of blood in its bosom, closes its petals as the night
+comes down.</p>
+<p>Northward, at a little distance from the Church of the Holy
+Trinity, stands, on the west bank of the Avon, the building that will
+always be famous as the Shakespeare Memorial. The idea of the
+Memorial was suggested in 1864, incidentally to the ceremonies which
+then commemorated the three-hundredth anniversary of the poet's
+birth. Ten years later the site for this structure was presented to
+the town by Charles Edward Flower, one of its most honoured
+inhabitants. Contributions of money were then asked, and were given.
+Americans as well as Englishmen contributed. On April 23, 1877, the
+first stone of the Memorial was laid. On April 23, 1880, the building
+was dedicated. The fabric comprises a theatre, a library, and a
+picture-gallery. In the theatre the plays of Shakespeare are annually
+represented, in a manner as nearly perfect as possible. In the
+library and picture-gallery are to be assembled all the books upon
+Shakespeare that have been published, and all the choice paintings
+that can be obtained to illustrate his life and his works. As the
+years pass this will naturally become a principal depository of
+Shakespearean objects. A dramatic college may grow up, in association
+with the Shakespeare theatre. The gardens that surround the Memorial
+will augment their loveliness in added expanse of foliage and in
+greater wealth of floral luxuriance. The mellow tinge of age will
+soften the bright tints of the red brick that mainly composes the
+building. On its cone-shaped turrets ivy will clamber and moss will
+nestle. When a few generations have passed, the old town of Stratford
+will have adopted this now youthful stranger into the race of her
+venerated antiquities. The same air of poetic mystery that rests now
+upon his cottage and his grave will diffuse itself around his
+Memorial; and a remote posterity, looking back to the men and the
+ideas of to-day, will remember with grateful pride that
+English-speaking people of the nineteenth century, although they
+could confer no honour upon the great name of Shakespeare, yet
+honoured themselves in consecrating this votive temple to his
+memory.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_GAW" id="a_GAW"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0192.jpg" width="75%" alt=
+"Gable Window"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_VPC" id="a_VPC"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0193.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Victory with Paired Chargers Border"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CHXIII" id="a_CHXIII"></a><a name="a_CHXIIIb" id=
+"a_CHXIIIb"></a>
+<h3 align="center">CHAPTER XIII</h3>
+<h5 align="center">UP TO LONDON 1882</h5>
+<br>
+<p>About the middle of the night the great ship comes to a pause, off
+the coast of Ireland, and, looking forth across the black waves and
+through the rifts in the rising mist, we see the low and lonesome
+verge of that land of trouble and misery. A beautiful white light
+flashes now and then from the shore, and at intervals the mournful
+booming of a solemn bell floats over the sea. Soon is heard the
+rolling click of oars, and then two or three dusky boats glide past
+the ship, and hoarse voices hail and answer. A few stars are visible
+in the hazy sky, and the breeze from the land brings off, in fitful
+puffs, the fragrant balm of grass and clover, mingled with the salt
+odours of sea-weed and slimy rocks. There is a sense of mystery over
+the whole wild scene; but we realise now that human companionship is
+near, and that the long and lonely ocean voyage is ended.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_PVP" id="a_PVP"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0194.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Peveril Peak."></p>
+<br>
+<p>Travellers who make the run from Liverpool to London by the
+Midland Railway pass through the vale of Derby and skirt around the
+stately Peak that Scott has commemorated in his novel of Peveril. It
+is a more rugged country than is seen in the transit by the
+Northwestern road, but not more beautiful. You see the storied
+mountain, in its delicacy of outline and its airy magnificence of
+poise, soaring into the sky&mdash;its summit almost lost in the smoky
+haze&mdash;and you wind through hillside pastures and meadow-lands
+that are curiously intersected with low, zigzag stone walls; and
+constantly, as the scene changes, you catch glimpses of green lane
+and shining river; of dense copses that cast their cool shadow on the
+moist and gleaming emerald sod; of long white roads that stretch away
+like cathedral aisles and are lost beneath the leafy arches of elm
+and oak; of little church towers embowered in ivy; of thatched
+cottages draped with roses; of dark ravines, luxuriant with a wild
+profusion of rocks and trees; and of golden grain that softly waves
+and whispers in the summer wind; while, all around, the grassy banks
+and glimmering meadows are radiant with yellow daisies, and with that
+wonderful scarlet of the poppy that gives an almost human glow of
+life and loveliness to the whole face of England. After some hours of
+such a pageant&mdash;so novel, so fascinating, so fleeting, so
+stimulative of eager curiosity and poetic desire&mdash;it is a relief
+at last to stand in the populous streets and among the grim houses of
+London, with its surging tides of life, and its turmoil of effort,
+conflict, exultation, and misery. How strange it seems&mdash;yet, at
+the same time, how homelike and familiar! There soars aloft the great
+dome of St. Paul's cathedral, with its golden cross that flashes in
+the sunset! There stands the Victoria tower&mdash;fit emblem of the
+true royalty of the sovereign whose name it bears. And there, more
+lowly but more august, rise the sacred turrets of the Abbey. It is
+the same old London&mdash;the great heart of the modern
+world&mdash;the great city of our reverence and love. As the wanderer
+writes these words he hears the plashing of the fountains in
+Trafalgar Square and the evening chimes that peal out from the spire
+of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, and he knows himself once more at the
+shrine of his youthful dreams.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_SPM" id="a_SPM"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0196.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"St. Paul's from Maiden Lane."></p>
+<br>
+<p>To the observant stranger in London few sights can be more
+impressive than those that illustrate the singular manner in which
+the life of the present encroaches upon the memorials of the past.
+Old Temple Bar has gone,&mdash;a sculptured griffin, at the junction
+of Fleet Street and the Strand, denoting where once it stood. (It has
+been removed to Theobald's Park, near Waltham, and is now the lodge
+gate of the grounds of Sir Henry Meux.) The Midland Railway trains
+dash over what was once St. Pancras churchyard&mdash;the burial-place
+of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, and of many other British
+worthies&mdash;and passengers looking from the carriages may see the
+children of the neighbourhood sporting among the few tombs that yet
+remain in that despoiled cemetery. Dolly's Chop-House, intimately
+associated with the wits of the reign of Queen Anne, has been
+destroyed. The ancient tavern of The Cock, immortalised by Tennyson,
+in his poem of Will Waterproof's Monologue, is soon to
+disappear,&mdash;with its singular wooden vestibule that existed
+before the time of the Plague and that escaped the great fire of
+1666. On the site of Northumberland House stands the Grand Hotel. The
+gravestones that formerly paved the precinct of Westminster Abbey
+have been removed, to make way for grassy lawns intersected with
+pathways. In Southwark, across the Thames, the engine-room of the
+brewery of Messrs. Barclay &amp; Perkins occupies the site of the
+Globe Theatre, in which most of Shakespeare's plays were first
+produced. One of the most venerable and beautiful churches in London,
+that of St. Bartholomew the Great,&mdash;a gray, mouldering temple,
+of the twelfth century, hidden away in a corner of
+Smithfield,&mdash;is desecrated by the irruption of an adjacent shop,
+the staircase hall of which breaks cruelly into the sacred edifice
+and impends above the altar. On July 12, 1882, the present writer,
+walking in the churchyard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden,&mdash;the
+sepulchre of William Wycherley, Robert Wilks, Charles Macklin, Joseph
+Haines, Thomas King, Samuel Butler, Thomas Southerne, Edward Shuter,
+Dr. Arne, Thomas Davies, Edward Kynaston, Richard Estcourt, William
+Havard, and many other renowned votaries of literature and the
+stage,&mdash;found workmen building a new wall to sustain the
+enclosure, and almost every stone in the cemetery uprooted and
+leaning against the adjacent houses. Those monuments, it was said,
+would be replaced; but it was impossible not to consider the chances
+of error in a new mortuary deal&mdash;and the grim witticism of Rufus
+Choate, about dilating with the wrong emotion, came then into
+remembrance, and did not come amiss.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CHH" id="a_CHH"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0199.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"The Charter House."></p>
+<br>
+<p>Facts such as these, however, bid us remember that even the relics
+of the past are passing away, and that cities, unlike human
+creatures, may grow to be so old that at last they will become new.
+It is not wonderful that London should change its aspect from one
+decade to another, as the living surmount and obliterate the dead.
+Thomas Sutton's Charter-House School, founded in 1611, when
+Shakespeare and Ben Jonson were still writing, was reared upon ground
+in which several thousand corses were buried, during the time of the
+Indian pestilence of 1348; and it still stands and
+nourishes&mdash;though not as vigorously now as might be wished. Nine
+thousand new houses, it is said, are built in the great capital every
+year, and twenty-eight miles of new street are thus added to it. On a
+Sunday I drove for three hours through the eastern part of London
+without coming upon a single trace of the open fields. On the west,
+all the region from Kensington to Richmond is settled for most part
+of the way; while northward the city is stretching its arms toward
+Hampstead, Highgate, and tranquil and blooming Finchley. Truly the
+spirit of this age is in strong contrast with that of the time of
+Henry the Eighth when (1530), to prevent the increasing size of
+London, all new buildings were forbidden to be erected "where no
+former hath been known to have been." The march of improvement
+nowadays carries everything before it: even British conservatism is
+at some points giving way: and, noting the changes that have occurred
+here within only five years, I am persuaded that those who would see
+what remains of the London of which they have read and
+dreamed&mdash;the London of Dryden and Pope, of Addison, Sheridan,
+and Byron, of Betterton, Garrick, and Edmund Kean&mdash;will, as time
+passes, find more and more difficulty both in tracing the footsteps
+of fame, and in finding that sympathetic, reverent spirit which
+hallows the relics of genius and renown.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CSM" id="a_CSM"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0201.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Church Steeple Centered on Moon"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_WGH" id="a_WGH"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0202.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Windy Gargoyle Heads Border"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CHXIV" id="a_CHXIV"></a><a name="a_CHXIVb" id=
+"a_CHXIVb"></a>
+<h3 align="center">CHAPTER XIV</h3>
+<h5 align="center">OLD CHURCHES OF LONDON</h5>
+<br>
+<p>Sight-seeing, merely for its own sake, is not to be commended.
+Hundreds of persons roam through the storied places of England,
+carrying nothing away but the bare sense of travel. It is not the
+spectacle that benefits, but the meaning of the spectacle. In the
+great temples of religion, in those wonderful cathedrals that are the
+glory of the old world, we ought to feel, not merely the physical
+beauty but the perfect, illimitable faith, the passionate, incessant
+devotion, which alone made them possible. The cold intellect of a
+sceptical age, like the present, could never create such a majestic
+cathedral as that of Canterbury. Not till the pilgrim feels this
+truth has he really learned the lesson of such places,&mdash;to keep
+alive in his heart the capacity of self-sacrifice, of toil and of
+tears, for the grandeur and beauty of the spiritual life. At the
+tombs of great men we ought to feel something more than a
+consciousness of the crumbling clay that moulders
+within,&mdash;something more even than knowledge of their memorable
+words and deeds: we ought, as we ponder on the certainty of death and
+the evanescence of earthly things, to realise that art at least is
+permanent, and that no creature can be better employed than in noble
+effort to make the soul worthy of immortality. The relics of the
+past, contemplated merely because they are relics, are nothing. You
+tire, in this old land, of the endless array of ruined castles and of
+wasting graves; you sicken at the thought of the mortality of a
+thousand years, decaying at your feet, and you long to look again on
+roses and the face of childhood, the ocean and the stars. But not if
+the meaning of the past is truly within your sympathy; not if you
+perceive its associations as feeling equally with knowledge; not if
+you truly know that its lessons are not of death but of life! To-day
+builds over the ruins of yesterday, as well in the soul of man as on
+the vanishing cities that mark his course. There need be no regret
+that the present should, in this sense, obliterate the past.</p>
+<p>Much, however, as London has changed, and constantly as it
+continues to change, many objects still remain, and long will
+continue to remain, that startle and impress the sensitive mind.
+Through all its wide compass, by night and day, flows and beats a
+turbulent, resounding tide of activity, and hundreds of trivial and
+vacuous persons, sordid, ignorant, and commonplace tramp to and fro
+amid its storied antiquities, heedless of their existence. Through
+such surroundings, but finding here and there a sympathetic guide or
+a friendly suggestion, the explorer must make his way,&mdash;lonely
+in the crowd, and walking like one who lives in a dream. Yet he never
+will drift in vain through a city like this. I went one night into
+the cloisters of Westminster Abbey&mdash;that part, the South Walk,
+which is still accessible after the gates have been closed. The stars
+shone down upon the blackening walls and glimmering windows of the
+great cathedral; the grim, mysterious arches were dimly lighted; the
+stony pathways, stretching away beneath the venerable building,
+seemed to lose themselves in caverns of darkness; not a sound was
+heard but the faint rustling of the grass upon the cloister green.
+Every stone there is the mark of a sepulchre; every breath of the
+night wind seemed the whisper of a gliding ghost. There, among the
+crowded graves, rest Anne Oldfield and Anne Bracegirdle,&mdash;in
+Queen Anne's reign such brilliant luminaries of the stage,&mdash;and
+there was buried the dust of Aaron Hill, poet and dramatist, once
+manager of Drury Lane, who wrote <i>The Fair Inconstant</i> for
+Barton Booth, and some notably felicitous love-songs. There, too, are
+the relics of Susanna Maria Arne (Mrs. Theo. Cibber), Mrs. Dancer,
+Thomas Betterton, and Spranger Barry. Sitting upon the narrow ledge
+that was the monks' rest, I could touch, close at hand, the tomb of a
+mitred abbot, while at my feet was the great stone that covers
+twenty-six monks of Westminster who perished by the Plague nearly six
+hundred years ago. It would scarcely be believed that the doors of
+dwellings open upon that gloomy spot; that ladies may sometimes be
+seen tending flowers upon the ledges that roof those cloister walks.
+Yet so it is; and in such a place, at such a time, you comprehend
+better than before the self-centred, serious, ruminant, romantic
+character of the English mind,&mdash;which loves, more than anything
+else in the world, the privacy of august surroundings and a sombre
+and stately solitude. It hardly need be said that you likewise obtain
+here a striking sense of the power of contrast. I was again aware of
+this, a little later, when, seeing a dim light in St. Margaret's
+church near by, I entered that old temple and found the men of the
+choir at their rehearsal, and presently observed on the wall a brass
+plate which announces that Sir Walter Raleigh was buried here, in the
+chancel,&mdash;after being decapitated for high treason in the Palace
+Yard outside. Such things are the surprises of this historic capital.
+This inscription begs the reader to remember Raleigh's virtues as
+well as his faults,&mdash;a plea, surely, that every man might well
+wish should be made for himself at last. I thought of the verses that
+the old warrior-poet is said to have left in his Bible, when they led
+him out to die&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><small>"Even such is time; that takes in trust<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Our youth, our joys, our all we have,<br>
+And pays us nought but age and dust;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Which, in the dark and silent grave,<br>
+When we have wandered all our ways,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Shuts up the story of our days.&mdash;<br>
+But from this earth, this grave, this dust,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;My God shall raise me up, I
+trust."</small></blockquote>
+<p>This church contains a window commemorative of Raleigh, presented
+by Americans, and inscribed with these lines, by Lowell&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><small>"The New World's sons, from England's breast we
+drew<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Such milk as bids remember whence we
+came;<br>
+Proud of her past, wherefrom our future grew,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This window we inscribe with Raleigh's
+name."</small></blockquote>
+<p>It also contains a window commemorative of Caxton, presented by
+the printers and publishers of London, which is inscribed with these
+lines by Tennyson&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><small>"Thy prayer was Light&mdash;more Light&mdash;while
+Time shall last,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thou sawest a glory growing on the night,<br>
+But not the shadows which that light would cast<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Till shadows vanish in the Light of
+Light."</small></blockquote>
+<p>In St. Margaret's&mdash;a storied haunt, for shining names alike
+of nobles and poets&mdash;was also buried John Skelton, another of
+the old bards (obiit 1529), the enemy and satirist of Cardinal Wolsey
+and Sir Thomas More, one of whom he described as "madde Amaleke," and
+the other as "dawcock doctor." Their renown has managed to survive
+those terrific shafts; but at least this was a falcon who flew at
+eagles. Here the poet Campbell was married,&mdash;October 11, 1803.
+Such old churches as this&mdash;guarding so well their treasures of
+history&mdash;are, in a special sense, the traveller's blessings. At
+St. Giles's, Cripplegate, the janitor is a woman; and she will point
+out to you the lettered stone that formerly marked the grave of
+Milton. It is in the nave, but it has been moved to a place about
+twelve feet from its original position,&mdash;the remains of the
+illustrious poet being, in fact, beneath the floor of a pew, on the
+left of the central aisle, about the middle of the church: albeit
+there is a story, possibly true, that, on an occasion when this
+church was repaired, in August, 1790, the coffin of Milton suffered
+profanation, and his bones were dispersed.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_SGCF" id="a_SGCF"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0207.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"St. Giles', Cripplegate."></p>
+<br>
+<p>Among the monuments hard by is a fine marble bust of Milton,
+placed against the wall, and it is said, by way of enhancing its
+value, that George the Third came here to see it.&dagger; Several of
+the neighbouring inscriptions are of astonishing quaintness. The
+adjacent churchyard&mdash;an eccentric, sequestered, lonesome bit of
+grassy ground, teeming with monuments, and hemmed in with houses,
+terminates, at one end, in a piece of the old Roman wall of London
+(A.D. 306),&mdash;an adamantine structure of cemented
+flints&mdash;which has lasted from the days of Constantine, and which
+bids fair to last forever. I shall always remember that strange nook
+with the golden light of a summer morning shining upon it, the birds
+twittering among its graves, and all around it such an atmosphere of
+solitude and rest as made it seem, though in the heart of the great
+city, a thousand miles from any haunt of man. (It was formally opened
+as a garden for public recreation on July 8, 1891.)</p>
+<p><small>&dagger; This memorial bears the following inscription:
+"John Milton. Author of 'Paradise Lost.' Born, December 1608. Died,
+November 1674. His father, John Milton, died, March 1646. They were
+both interred in this church."</small></p>
+<p>St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, an ancient and venerable temple, the
+church of the priory of the nuns of St. Helen, built in the
+thirteenth century, is full of relics of the history of England. The
+priory, which adjoined this church, has long since disappeared and
+portions of the building have been restored; but the noble Gothic
+columns and the commemorative sculpture remain unchanged. Here are
+the tombs of Sir John Crosby, who built Crosby Place (1466), Sir
+Thomas Gresham, who founded both Gresham College and the Royal
+Exchange in London, and Sir William Pickering, once Queen Elizabeth's
+Minister to Spain and one of the amorous aspirants for her royal
+hand; and here, in a gloomy chapel, stands the veritable altar at
+which, it is said, the Duke of Gloster received absolution, after the
+disappearance of the princes in the Tower. Standing at that altar, in
+the cool silence of the lonely church and the waning light of
+afternoon, it was easy to conjure up his slender, slightly misshapen
+form, decked in the rich apparel that he loved, his handsome,
+aquiline, thoughtful face, the drooping head, the glittering eyes,
+the nervous hand that toyed with the dagger, and the stealthy
+stillness of his person, from head to foot, as he knelt there before
+the priest and perhaps mocked both himself and heaven with the form
+of prayer.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_SJC" id="a_SJC"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0210.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Sir John Crosby's Monument."></p>
+<br>
+<p>Every place that Richard touched is haunted by his magnetic
+presence. In another part of the church you are shown the tomb of a
+person whose will provided that the key of his sepulchre should be
+placed beside his body, and that the door should be opened once a
+year, for a hundred years. It seems to have been his expectation to
+awake and arise; but the allotted century has passed and his bones
+are still quiescent.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_GRMN" id="a_GRMN"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0211.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Gresham's Monument."></p>
+<br>
+<p>How calmly they sleep&mdash;those warriors who once filled the
+world with the tumult of their deeds! If you go into St. Mary's, in
+the Temple, you will stand above the dust of the Crusaders and see
+the beautiful copper effigies of them, recumbent on the marble
+pavement, and feel and know, as perhaps you never did before, the
+calm that follows the tempest. St. Mary's was built in 1240 and
+restored in 1828. It would be difficult to find a lovelier specimen
+of Norman architecture&mdash;at once massive and airy, perfectly
+simple, yet rich with beauty, in every line and scroll.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_GOLD" id="a_GOLD"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0212.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Goldsmith's House."></p>
+<br>
+<p>There is only one other church in Great Britain, it is said, which
+has, like this, a circular vestibule. The stained glass windows, both
+here and at St. Helen's, are very glorious. The organ at St. Mary's
+was selected by Jeffreys, afterwards infamous as the wicked judge.
+The pilgrim who pauses to muse at the grave of Goldsmith may often
+hear its solemn, mournful tones. I heard them thus, and was thinking
+of Dr. Johnson's tender words, when he first learned that Goldsmith
+was dead: "Poor Goldy was wild&mdash;very wild&mdash;but he is so no
+more." The room in which he died, a heart-broken man at only
+forty-six, was but a little way from the spot where he
+sleeps.&dagger; The noises of Fleet Street are heard there only as a
+distant murmur. But birds chirp over him, and leaves flutter down
+upon his tomb, and every breeze that sighs around the gray turrets of
+the ancient Temple breathes out his requiem.</p>
+<p><small>&dagger; No. 2 Brick Court, Middle Temple.&mdash;In 1757-58
+Goldsmith was employed by a chemist, near Fish Street Hill. When he
+wrote his Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe
+he was living in Green Arbour Court, "over Break-neck Steps." At a
+lodging in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, he wrote The Vicar of
+Wakefield. Afterwards he had lodgings at Canonbury House, Islington,
+and in 1764, in the Library Staircase of the Inner
+Temple.</small></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_BCC" id="a_BCC"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0213.jpg" width="60%" alt=
+"A Bit from Clare Court"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_PEAB" id="a_PEAB"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0214.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Peacock Border"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CHXV" id="a_CHXV"></a><a name="a_CHXVb" id="a_CHXVb"></a>
+<h3 align="center">CHAPTER XV</h3>
+<h5 align="center">LITERARY SHRINES OF LONDON</h5>
+<br>
+<p>The mind that can reverence historic associations needs no
+explanation of the charm that such associations possess. There are
+streets and houses in London which, for pilgrims of this class, are
+haunted with memories and hallowed with an imperishable
+light&mdash;that not even the dreary commonness of everyday life can
+quench or dim. Almost every great author in English literature has
+here left behind him some personal trace, some relic that brings us
+at once into his living presence. In the time of
+Shakespeare,&mdash;of whom it may be noted that wherever you find him
+at all you find him in select and elegant neighbourhoods,&mdash;St.
+Helen's parish was a secluded and peaceful quarter of the town; and
+there the poet had his residence, convenient to the theatre in
+Blackfriars, in which he is known to have owned a share. It is said
+that he dwelt at number 134 Aldersgate Street (the house has been
+demolished), and in that region,&mdash;amid all the din of traffic
+and all the strange adjuncts of a new age,&mdash;those who love him
+are in his company. Milton was born in a court adjacent to Bread
+Street, Cheapside, and the explorer comes upon him as a resident in
+St. Bride's churchyard,&mdash;where the poet Lovelace was
+buried,&mdash;and at the house which is now No. 19 York Street,
+Westminster (in later times occupied by Bentham and by Hazlitt), and
+in Jewin Street, Aldersgate. When secretary to Cromwell he lived in
+Scotland Yard, where now is the headquarters of the London police.
+His last home was in Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields, but the visitor
+to that spot finds it covered by the Artillery barracks. Walking
+through King Street, Westminster, you will not forget Edmund Spenser,
+who died there, in grief and destitution, a victim to the same
+inhuman spirit of Irish ruffianism that is still disgracing humanity
+and troubling the peace of the world. Everybody remembers Ben
+Jonson's terse record of that calamity: "The Irish having robbed
+Spenser's goods and burnt his house and a little child new-born, he
+and his wife escaped, and after he died, for lack of bread, in King
+Street." Jonson himself is closely and charmingly associated with
+places that may still be seen. He passed his boyhood near Charing
+Cross&mdash;having been born in Hartshorn Lane, now Northumberland
+Street&mdash;and went to the parish school of St.
+Martin-in-the-Fields; and those who roam around Lincoln's Inn will
+call to mind that this great poet helped to build it&mdash;a trowel
+in one hand and Horace in the other. His residence, in his days of
+fame, was just outside of Temple Bar&mdash;but all that neighbourhood
+is new at the present time.</p>
+<p>The Mermaid, which he frequented&mdash;with Shakespeare, Fletcher,
+Herrick, Chapman, and Donne&mdash;was in Bread Street, but no trace
+of it remains; and a banking-house stands now on the site of the
+Devil Tavern, in Fleet Street, where the Apollo Club, which he
+founded, used to meet. The famous inscription, "O rare Ben Jonson,"
+is three times cut in the Abbey&mdash;once in Poets' Corner and twice
+in the north aisle where he was buried, the smaller of the two slabs
+marking the place of his vertical grave.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_BCM" id="a_BCM"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0216.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"A Bit from Clare Market."></p>
+<br>
+<p>Dryden once dwelt in a narrow, dingy, quaint house, in Fetter
+Lane,&mdash;the street in which Dean Swift has placed the home of
+Gulliver, and where now (1882) the famous Doomsday Book is
+kept,&mdash;but later he removed to a finer dwelling, in Gerrard
+Street, Soho, which was the scene of his death. Both buildings are
+marked with mural tablets and neither of them seems to have undergone
+much change. (The house in Fetter Lane is gone&mdash;1891.) Edmund
+Burke's house, also in Gerrard Street, is a beer-shop; but his memory
+hallows the place, and an inscription upon it proudly announces that
+here he lived. Dr. Johnson's house in Gough Square bears likewise a
+mural tablet, and, standing at its time-worn threshold, the visitor
+needs no effort of fancy to picture that uncouth figure shambling
+through the crooked lanes that lead into this queer, sombre,
+melancholy retreat. In that house he wrote the first Dictionary of
+the English language and the immortal letter to Lord Chesterfield. In
+Gough Square lived and died Hugh Kelly, dramatist, author of <i>The
+School of Wives</i> and <i>The Man of Reason</i>, and one of the
+friends of Goldsmith, at whose burial he was present. The historical
+antiquarian society that has marked many of the literary shrines of
+London has rendered a great service. The houses associated with
+Reynolds and Hogarth, in Leicester Square, Byron, in Holies Street,
+Benjamin Franklin and Peter the Great, in Craven Street, Campbell, in
+Duke Street, St. James's, Garrick, in the Adelphi Terrace, Michael
+Farraday, in Blandford Street, and Mrs. Siddons, in Baker Street, are
+but a few of the historic spots which are thus commemorated. Much,
+however, remains to be done. One would like to know, for instance, in
+which room in "The Albany" it was that Byron wrote
+<i>Lara</i>&dagger; in which of the houses of Buckingham Street
+Coleridge had his lodging while he was translating
+<i>Wallenstein;</i> whereabouts in Bloomsbury Square was the
+residence of Akenside, who wrote <i>The Pleasures of Imagination,</i>
+and of Croly, who wrote <i>Salathiel;</i> or where it was that Gray
+lived, when he established himself close by Russell Square, in order
+to be one of the first&mdash;as he continued to be one of the most
+constant&mdash;students at the then newly opened British Museum
+(1759).</p>
+<p><small>&dagger; Byron was born at No. 34 Holies Street, Cavendish
+Square. While he was at school in Dulwich Grove his mother lived in a
+house in Sloane Terrace. Other houses associated with him are No. 8
+St. James Street; a lodging in Bennet Street; No. 2 "The
+Albany"&mdash;a lodging that he rented of Lord Althorpe, and entered
+on March 28, 1814; and No. 139 Piccadilly, where his daughter, Ada,
+was born, and where Lady Byron left him. This, at present, is the
+home of the genial scholar Sir Algernon Borthwick (1893). John
+Murray's house, where Byron's fragment of Autobiography was burned,
+is in Albemarle Street. Byron's body, when brought home from Greece,
+lay in state at No. 25 Great George Street, Westminster, before being
+taken north, to Hucknall-Torkard church, in Nottinghamshire, for
+burial.</small></p>
+<p>These, and such as these, may seem trivial things; but Nature has
+denied an unfailing source of innocent happiness to the man who can
+find no pleasure in them. For my part, when rambling in Fleet Street
+it is a special delight to remember even so slight an incident as
+that recorded of the author of the <i>Elegy in a Country
+Churchyard</i>,&mdash;that he once saw there his satirist, Dr.
+Johnson, rolling and puffing along the sidewalk, and cried out to a
+friend, "Here comes Ursa Major." For the true lovers of literature
+"Ursa Major" walks oftener in Fleet Street to-day than any living
+man.</p>
+<p>A good thread of literary research might be profitably followed by
+him who should trace the footsteps of all the poets that have held,
+in England, the office of laureate. John Kay was laureate in the
+reign of Edward IV.; Andrew Bernard in that of Henry VII.; John
+Skelton in that of Henry VIII.; and Edmund Spenser in that of
+Elizabeth.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_FS1" id="a_FS1"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0219.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Fleet Street in 1780."></p>
+<br>
+<p>Since then the succession has included the names of Samuel Daniel,
+Michael Drayton, Ben Jonson, Sir William Davenant, John Dryden,
+Thomas Shadwell, Nahum Tate, Nicholas Rowe, Lawrence Eusden, Colley
+Cibber, William Whitehead, Thomas Wharton, Henry James Pye, Robert
+Southey, William Wordsworth, and Alfred Tennyson&mdash;who, until his
+death, in 1892, wore, in spotless renown, that</p>
+<blockquote><small>"Laurel greener from the brows<br>
+Of him that utter'd nothing base."</small></blockquote>
+<p>Most of those bards were intimately associated with London, and
+several of them are buried in the Abbey. It is, indeed, because so
+many storied names are written upon gravestones that the explorer of
+the old churches of London finds so rich a harvest of impressive
+association and lofty thought. Few persons visit them, and you are
+likely to find yourself comparatively alone in rambles of this kind.
+I went one morning into St. Martin&mdash;once "in the fields," now in
+one of the busiest thoroughfares at the centre of the city&mdash;and
+found there only a pew-opener preparing for the service, and an
+organist playing an anthem. It is a beautiful structure, with its
+graceful spire and its columns of weather-beaten stone, curiously
+stained in gray and sooty black, and it is almost as famous for
+theatrical names as St. Paul's, Covent Garden, or St. George's,
+Bloomsbury, or St. Clement Danes. Here, in a vault beneath the
+church, was buried the bewitching and affectionate Nell Gwyn; here is
+the grave of James Smith, joint author with his brother
+Horace&mdash;who was buried at Tunbridge Wells&mdash;of <i>The
+Rejected Addresses;</i> here rests Yates, the original Sir Oliver
+Surface; and here were laid the ashes of the romantic and sprightly
+Mrs. Centlivre, and of George Farquhar, whom neither youth, genius,
+patient labour, nor sterling achievement could save from a life of
+misfortune and an untimely and piteous death. A cheerier association
+of this church is with Thomas Moore, the poet of Ireland, who was
+here married.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_GIS" id="a_GIS"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0221.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Gray's Inn Square."></p>
+<br>
+<p>At St. Giles-in-the-Fields, again, are the graves of George
+Chapman, who translated Homer, Andrew Marvel, who wrote such lovely
+lyrics of love, Rich, the manager, who brought out Gay's <i>Beggar's
+Opera</i>, and James Shirley, the fine old dramatist and poet, whose
+immortal couplet has been so often murmured in such solemn haunts as
+these&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><small>"Only the actions of the just<br>
+Smell sweet and blossom in the dust."</small></blockquote>
+<p>Shirley lived in Gray's Inn when he was writing his plays, and he
+was fortunate in the favour of queen Henrietta Maria, wife to Charles
+the First; but when the Puritan times arrived he fell into misfortune
+and poverty and became a school-teacher in Whitefriars. In 1666 he
+was living in or near Fleet Street, and his home was one of the many
+dwellings that were destroyed in the great fire. Then he fled, with
+his wife, into the parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, where, overcome
+with grief and terror, they both died, within twenty-four hours of
+each other, and were buried in the same grave.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_SGH" id="a_SGH"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0222.jpg" width="60%" alt=
+"Shield with Gargoyle Head"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_RAB" id="a_RAB"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0223.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Raise Arms Border"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CHXVI" id="a_CHXVI"></a><a name="a_CHXVIb" id=
+"a_CHXVIb"></a>
+<h3 align="center">CHAPTER XVI</h3>
+<h5 align="center">A HAUNT OF EDMUND KEAN</h5>
+<br>
+<p>To muse over the dust of those about whom we have read so
+much&mdash;the great actors, thinkers, and writers, the warriors and
+statesmen for whom the play is ended and the lights are put
+out&mdash;is to come very near to them, and to realise more deeply
+than ever before their close relationship with our own humanity; and
+we ought to be wiser and better for this experience. It is good,
+also, to seek out the favourite haunts of our heroes, and call them
+up as they were in their lives. One of the happiest accidents of a
+London stroll was the finding of the Harp Tavern,&dagger; in Russell
+Street, Covent Garden, near the stage door of Drury Lane theatre,
+which was the accustomed resort of Edmund Kean.</p>
+<p><small>&dagger; An account of the Harp, in the <i>Victuallers'
+Gazette</i>, says that this tavern has had within its doors every
+actor of note since the days of Garrick, and many actresses, also, of
+the latter part of the eighteenth century; and it mentions, as
+visitants there, Dora Jordan, Nance Oldfield, Anne Bracegirdle, Kitty
+Clive, Harriet Mellon, Barton Booth, Quin, Cibber, Macklin, Grimaldi,
+Eliza Vestris, and Miss Stephens&mdash;who became Countess of
+Essex.</small></p>
+<p>Carpenters and masons were at work upon it when I entered, and it
+was necessary almost to creep amid heaps of broken mortar and rubbish
+beneath their scaffolds, in order to reach the interior rooms. Here,
+at the end of a narrow passage, was a little apartment, perhaps
+fifteen feet square, with a low ceiling and a bare floor, in which
+Kean habitually took his pleasure, in the society of fellow-actors
+and boon companions, long ago. A narrow, cushioned bench against the
+walls, a few small tables, a chair or two, a number of churchwarden
+pipes on the mantlepiece, and portraits of Disraeli and Gladstone,
+constituted the furniture. A panelled wainscot and dingy red paper
+covered the walls, and a few cobwebs hung from the grimy ceiling. By
+this time the old room has been made neat and comely; but then it
+bore the marks of hard usage and long neglect, and it seemed all the
+more interesting for that reason.</p>
+<p>Kean's seat is at the right, as you enter, and just above it a
+mural tablet designates the spot,&mdash;which is still further
+commemorated by a death-mask of the actor, placed on a little shelf
+of dark wood and covered with glass. No better portrait could be
+desired; certainly no truer one exists. In life this must have been a
+glorious face. The eyes are large and prominent, the brow is broad
+and fine, the mouth wide and obviously sensitive, the chin delicate,
+and the nose long, well set, and indicative of immense force of
+character. The whole expression of the face is that of refinement and
+of great and desolate sadness. Kean, as is known from the testimony
+of one who acted with him,&dagger; was always at his best in passages
+of pathos.</p>
+<p><small>&dagger; The mother of Jefferson, the comedian, described
+Edmund Kean in this way. She was a member of the company at the
+Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, when he acted there, and it was
+she who sang for him, when he acted The Stranger, the well-known
+lines, by Sheridan,&mdash;</small><br></p>
+<blockquote><small>"I have a silent sorrow here,<br>
+A grief I'll ne'er impart;<br>
+It breathes no sigh, it sheds no tear,<br>
+But it consumes my heart."</small></blockquote>
+<p>To hear him speak Othello's farewell was to hear the perfect music
+of heart-broken despair. To see him when, as The Stranger, he
+listened to the song, was to see the genuine, absolute reality of
+hopeless sorrow. He could, of course, thrill his hearers in the
+ferocious outbursts-of Richard and Sir Giles, but it was in
+tenderness and grief that he was supremely great; and no one will
+wonder at that who looks upon his noble face&mdash;so eloquent of
+self-conflict and suffering&mdash;even in this cold and colourless
+mask of death. It is easy to judge and condemn the sins of a weak,
+passionate humanity; but when we think of such creatures of genius as
+Edmund Kean and Robert Burns, we ought to consider what demons in
+their own souls those wretched men were forced to fight, and by what
+agonies they expiated their vices and errors. This little tavern-room
+tells the whole mournful story, with death to point the moral, and
+pity to breathe its sigh of unavailing regret.</p>
+<p>Many of the present frequenters of the Harp are elderly men, whose
+conversation is enriched with memories of the stage and with ample
+knowledge and judicious taste in literature and art. They naturally
+speak with pride of Kean's association with their favourite resort.
+Often in that room the eccentric genius has put himself in pawn, to
+exact from the manager of Drury Lane theatre the money needed to
+relieve the wants of some brother actor. Often his voice has been
+heard there, in the songs that he sang with so much feeling and
+sweetness and such homely yet beautiful skill. In the circles of the
+learned and courtly he never was really at home; but here he filled
+the throne and ruled the kingdom of the revel, and here no doubt
+every mood of his mind, from high thought and generous emotion to
+misanthropical bitterness and vacant levity, found its unfettered
+expression. They show you a broken panel in the high wainscot, which
+was struck and smashed by a pewter pot that he hurled at the head of
+a person who had given him offence; and they tell you at the same
+time,&mdash;as, indeed, is historically true,&mdash;that he was the
+idol of his comrades, the first in love, pity, sympathy, and
+kindness, and would turn his back, any day, for the least of them, on
+the nobles who sought his companionship. There is no better place
+than this in which to study the life of Edmund Kean. Old men have
+been met with here who saw him on the stage, and even acted with him.
+The room is the weekly meeting-place and habitual nightly tryst of an
+ancient club, called the City of Lushington, which has existed since
+the days of the Regency, and of which these persons are members. The
+City has its Mayor, Sheriff, insignia, record-book, and system of
+ceremonials; and much of wit, wisdom, and song may be enjoyed at its
+civic feasts. The names of its four wards&mdash;Lunacy, Suicide,
+Poverty, and Juniper&mdash;are written up in the four corners of the
+room, and whoever joins must select his ward. Sheridan was a member
+of it, and so was the Regent; and the present landlord of the Harp
+(Mr. M'Pherson) preserves among his relics the chairs in which those
+gay companions sat, when the author presided over the initiation of
+the prince. It is thought that this club grew out of the society of
+The Wolves, which was formed by Kean's adherents, when the elder
+Booth arose to disturb his supremacy upon the stage. But there is no
+malice in it now. Its purposes are simply convivial and literary, and
+its tone is that of thorough good-will.&dagger;</p>
+<p><small>&dagger; A coloured print of this room may be found in that
+eccentric book <i>The Life of an Actor,</i> by Pierce Egan:
+1825.</small></p>
+<p>One of the gentlest and most winning traits in the English
+character is its instinct of companionship as to literature and art.
+Since the days of the Mermaid the authors and actors of London have
+dearly loved and deeply enjoyed such odd little fraternities of wit
+as are typified, not inaptly, by the City of Lushington. There are no
+rosier hours in my memory than those that were passed, between
+midnight and morning, in the cosy clubs in London. And when dark days
+come, and foes harass, and the troubles of life annoy, it will be
+sweet to think that in still another sacred retreat of friendship,
+across the sea, the old armour is gleaming in the festal lights,
+where one of the gentlest spirits that ever wore the laurel of
+England's love smiles kindly on his comrades and seems to murmur the
+charm of English hospitality&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><small>"Let no one take beyond this threshold hence<br>
+Words uttered here in friendship's confidence."</small></blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_TFB" id="a_TFB"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0228.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Three Flower Border"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CHXVII" id="a_CHXVII"></a><a name="a_CHXVIIb" id=
+"a_CHXVIIb"></a>
+<h3 align="center">CHAPTER XVII</h3>
+<h5 align="center">STOKE-POGIS AND THOMAS GRAY</h5>
+<br>
+<p>It is a cool afternoon in July, and the shadows are falling
+eastward on fields of waving grain and lawns of emerald velvet.
+Overhead a few light clouds are drifting, and the green boughs of the
+great elms are gently stirred by a breeze from the west. Across one
+of the more distant fields a flock of sable rooks&mdash;some of them
+fluttering and cawing&mdash;wings its slow and melancholy flight.
+There is the sound of the whetting of a scythe, and, near by, the
+twittering of many birds upon a cottage roof. On either side of the
+country road, which runs like a white rivulet through banks of green,
+the hawthorn hedges are shining and the bright sod is spangled with
+all the wild-flowers of an English summer. An odour of lime-trees and
+of new-mown hay sweetens the air for many miles around. Far off, on
+the horizon's verge, just glimmering through the haze, rises the
+imperial citadel of Windsor. And close at hand a little child points
+to a gray spire&dagger; peering out of a nest of ivy, and tells me
+that this is Stoke-Pogis church.</p>
+<p><small>&dagger; In Gray's time there was no spire on the
+church&mdash;nor is the spire an improvement to the
+tower.</small></p>
+<p>If peace dwells anywhere upon the earth its dwelling-place is
+here. You come into this little churchyard by a pathway across the
+park and through a wooden turnstile; and in one moment the whole
+world is left behind and forgotten. Here are the nodding elms; here
+is the yew-tree's shade; here "heaves the turf in many a mouldering
+heap." All these graves seem very old. The long grass waves over
+them, and some of the low stones that mark them are entirely shrouded
+with ivy. Many of the "frail memorials" are made of wood. None of
+them is neglected or forlorn, but all of them seem to have been
+scattered here, in that sweet disorder which is the perfection of
+rural loveliness. There never, of course, could have been any thought
+of creating this effect; yet here it remains, to win your heart
+forever. And here, amid this mournful beauty, the little church
+itself nestles close to the ground, while every tree that waves its
+branches around it, and every vine that clambers on its surface,
+seems to clasp it in the arms of love. Nothing breaks the silence but
+the sighing of the wind in the great yew-tree at the church
+door,&mdash;beneath which was the poet's favourite seat, and where
+the brown needles, falling, through many an autumn, have made a dense
+carpet on the turf. Now and then there is a faint rustle in the ivy;
+a fitful bird-note serves but to deepen the stillness; and from a
+rose-tree near at hand a few leaves flutter down, in soundless
+benediction on the dust beneath.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_SPC" id="a_SPC"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0230.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Stoke-Pogis Church."></p>
+<br>
+<p>Gray was laid in the same grave with his mother, "the careful,
+tender mother of many children, one alone of whom," as he wrote upon
+her gravestone, "had the misfortune to survive her." Their
+tomb&mdash;a low, oblong, brick structure, covered with a large
+slab&mdash;stands a few feet away from the church wall, upon which is
+a small tablet to denote its place. The poet's name has not been
+inscribed above him. There was no need here of "storied urn or
+animated bust." The place is his monument, and the majestic
+Elegy&mdash;giving to the soul of the place a form of seraphic beauty
+and a voice of celestial music&mdash;is his immortal epitaph.</p>
+<blockquote><small>"There scatter'd oft, the earliest of ye Year,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;By hands unseen are showers of vi'lets
+found;<br>
+The Redbreast loves to build &amp; warble there,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And little Footsteps lightly print the
+ground."<br></small></blockquote>
+<p>There is a monument to Gray in Stoke Park, about two hundred yards
+from the church; but it seems commemorative of the builder rather
+than the poet. They intend to set a memorial window in the church, to
+honour him, and the visitor finds there a money-box for the reception
+of contributions in aid of this pious design. Nothing will be done
+amiss that serves to direct closer attention to his life. It was one
+of the best lives ever recorded in the history of literature. It was
+a life singularly pure, noble, and beautiful. In two qualities,
+sincerity and reticence, it was exemplary almost beyond a parallel;
+and those are qualities that literary character in the present day
+has great need to acquire. Gray was averse to publicity. He did not
+sway by the censure of other men; neither did he need their
+admiration as his breath of life. Poetry, to him, was a great art,
+and he added nothing to literature until he had first made it as
+nearly perfect as it could be made by the thoughtful, laborious
+exertion of his best powers, superadded to the spontaneous impulse
+and flow of his genius. More voluminous writers, Charles Dickens
+among the rest, have sneered at him because he wrote so little. The
+most colossal form of human complacency is that of the individual who
+thinks all other creatures inferior who happen to be unlike himself.
+This reticence on the part of Gray was, in fact, the emblem of his
+sincerity and the compelling cause of his imperishable renown. There
+is a better thing than the great man who is always speaking; and that
+is the great man who only speaks when he has a great word to say.
+Gray has left only a few poems; but of his principal works each is
+perfect in its kind, supreme and unapproachable. He did not test
+merit by reference to ill-formed and capricious public opinion, but
+he wrought according to the highest standards of art that learning
+and taste could furnish. His letters form an English classic. There
+is no purer prose in existence; there is not much that is so pure.
+But the crowning glory of Gray's nature, the element that makes it so
+impressive, the charm that brings the pilgrim to Stoke-Pogis church
+to muse upon it, was the self-poised, sincere, and lovely exaltation
+of its contemplative spirit. He was a man whose conduct of life
+would, first of all, purify, expand, and adorn the temple of his own
+soul, out of which should afterward flow, in their own free way,
+those choral harmonies that soothe, guide, and exalt the human race.
+He lived before he wrote. The soul of the Elegy is the soul of the
+man. It was his thought&mdash;which he has somewhere expressed in
+better words than these&mdash;that human beings are only at their
+best while such feelings endure as are engendered when death has just
+taken from us the objects of our love. That was the point of view
+from which he habitually looked upon the world; and no man who has
+learned the lessons of experience can doubt that he was right.</p>
+<p>Gray was twenty-six years old when he wrote the first draft of the
+Elegy. He began that poem in 1742, at Stoke-Pogis, and he finished
+and published it in 1751. No visitor to this churchyard can miss
+either its inspiration or its imagery. The poet has been dead more
+than a hundred years, but the scene of his rambles and reveries has
+suffered no material change. One of his yew-trees, indeed, much
+weakened with age, was some time since blown down, in a storm, and
+its fragments have been carried away. The picturesque manor house not
+far distant was once the home of Admiral Penn, father of William Penn
+the famous Quaker.&dagger;</p>
+<p><small>&dagger; William Penn and his children are buried in the
+little Jordans graveyard, not many miles away. The visitor to
+Stoke-Pogis should not omit a visit to Upton church, Burnham village,
+and Binfield. Pope lived at Binfield when he wrote his poem on
+Windsor Forest. Upton claims to have had a share in the inspiration
+of the Elegy, but Stoke-Pogis was unquestionably his place of
+residence when he wrote it. Langley Marish ought to be visited also,
+and Horton&mdash;where Milton wrote "L'Allegro," "II Penseroso," and
+"Comus." Chalfont St. Peter is accessible, where still is standing
+the house in which Milton finished <i>Paradise Lost</i> and began
+<i>Paradise Regained;</i> and from there a short drive will take you
+to Beaconsfield, where you may see Edmund Burke's tablet, in the
+church, and the monument to Waller, in the churchyard.</small></p>
+<p>All the trees of the region have, of course, waxed and
+expanded,&mdash;not forgetting the neighbouring beeches of Burnham,
+among which he loved to wander, and where he might often have been
+found, sitting with his book, at some gnarled wreath of "old
+fantastic roots." But in its general characteristics, its rustic
+homeliness and peaceful beauty, this "glimmering landscape,"
+immortalised in his verse, is the same on which his living eyes have
+looked. There was no need to seek for him in any special spot. The
+house in which he once lived might, no doubt, be discovered; but
+every nook and vista, every green lane and upland lawn and
+ivy-mantled tower of this delicious solitude is haunted with his
+presence.</p>
+<p>The night is coming on and the picture will soon be dark; but
+never while memory lasts can it fade out of the heart. What a
+blessing would be ours, if only we could hold forever that exaltation
+of the spirit, that sweet, resigned serenity, that pure freedom from
+all the passions of nature and all the cares of life, which comes
+upon us in such a place as this! Alas, and again alas! Even with the
+thought this golden mood begins to melt away; even with the thought
+comes our dismissal from its influence. Nor will it avail us anything
+now to linger at the shrine. Fortunate is he, though in bereavement
+and regret, who parts from beauty while yet her kiss is warm upon his
+lips,&mdash;waiting not for the last farewell word, hearing not the
+last notes of the music, seeing not the last gleams of sunset as the
+light dies from the sky. It was a sad parting, but the memory of the
+place can never now be despoiled of its loveliness. As I write these
+words I stand again in the cool and dusky silence of the poet's
+church, with its air of stately age and its fragrance of cleanliness,
+while the light of the western sun, broken into rays of gold and
+ruby, streams through the painted windows and softly falls upon the
+quaint little galleries and decorous pews; and, looking forth through
+the low, arched door, I see the dark and melancholy boughs of the
+dreaming yew-tree, and, nearer, a shadow of rippling leaves in the
+clear sunshine of the churchway path. And all the time a gentle voice
+is whispering, in the chambers of thought&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><small>"No farther seek his merits to disclose,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Or draw his frailties from their dread
+abode:<br>
+(There they alike in trembling hope repose),<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The bosom of his Father and his
+God."</small></blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_OCH" id="a_OCH"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0235.jpg" width="75%" alt=
+"Old Church."></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_imgBFB" id="a_imgBFB"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0236.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Bird and Flower Border"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CHXVIII" id="a_CHXVIII"></a><a name="a_CHXVIIIb" id=
+"a_CHXVIIIb"></a>
+<h3 align="center">CHAPTER XVIII</h3>
+<h5 align="center">AT THE GRAVE OF COLERIDGE</h5>
+<br>
+<p>Among the deeply meditative, melodious, and eloquent poems of
+Wordsworth there is one&mdash;-about the burial of Ossian&mdash;that
+glances at the question of fitness in a place of sepulchre. Not
+always, for the illustrious dead, has the final couch of rest been
+rightly chosen. We think with resignation, and with a kind of pride,
+of Keats and Shelley in the little Protestant burial-ground at Rome.
+Every heart is touched at the spectacle of Garrick and Johnson
+sleeping side by side in Westminster Abbey. It was right that the
+dust of Dean Stanley should mingle with the dust of poets and of
+kings; and to see&mdash;as the present writer did, only a little
+while ago&mdash;fresh flowers on the stone that covers him, in the
+chapel of Henry the Seventh, was to feel a tender gladness and solemn
+content. Shakespeare's grave, in the chancel of Stratford church,
+awakens the same ennobling awe and melancholy pleasure; and it is
+with kindred feeling that you linger at the tomb of Gray. But who can
+be content that poor Letitia Landon should sleep beneath the pavement
+of a barrack, with soldiers trampling over her dust? One might almost
+think, sometimes, that the spirit of calamity, which follows certain
+persons throughout the whole of life, had pursued them even in death,
+to haunt about their repose and to mar all the gentleness of
+association that ought to hallow it. Chatterton, a pauper and a
+suicide, was huddled into a workhouse graveyard, the very place of
+which&mdash;in Shoe Lane, covered now by Farringdon Market&mdash;has
+disappeared. Otway, miserable in his love for Elizabeth Barry, the
+actress, and said to have starved to death in the Minories, near the
+Tower of London, was laid in a vault of St. Clement Danes, in the
+middle of the Strand, where never the green leaves rustle, but where
+the roar of the mighty city pours on in continual tumult. That church
+holds also the remains of William Mountfort, the actor, slain in a
+brawl by Lord Mohun; of Nat Lee, "the mad poet"; of George Powell,
+the tragedian, of brilliant and deplorable memory; and of the
+handsome Hildebrand Horden, cut off by a violent death in the
+springtime of his youth. Hildebrand Horden was the son of a clergyman
+of Twickenham and lived in the reign of William and Mary. Dramatic
+chronicles say that he was possessed of great talent as an actor, and
+of remarkable personal beauty. He was stabbed, in a quarrel, at the
+Rose Tavern; and after he had been laid out for the grave, such was
+the lively feminine interest in his handsome person, many ladies
+came, some masked and others openly, to view him in his shroud. This
+is mentioned in Colley Cibber's <i>Apology.</i> Charles Coffey, the
+dramatist, author of <i>The Devil upon Two Sticks,</i> and other
+plays, lies in the vaults of St. Clement; as likewise does Thomas
+Rymer, historiographer for William III., successor to Shadwell, and
+author of Foedera, in seventeen volumes. In the church of St. Clement
+you may see the pew in which Dr. Johnson habitually sat when he
+attended divine service there. It was his favourite church. The pew
+is in the gallery; and to those who honour the passionate integrity
+and fervent, devout zeal of the stalwart old champion of letters, it
+is indeed a sacred shrine. Henry Mossop, one of the stateliest of
+stately actors, perishing, by slow degrees, of penury and
+grief,&mdash;which he bore in proud silence,&mdash;found a refuge, at
+last, in the barren gloom of Chelsea churchyard. Theodore Hook, the
+cheeriest spirit of his time, the man who filled every hour of life
+with the sunshine of his wit and was wasted and degraded by his own
+brilliancy, rests, close by Bishop Sherlock, in Fulham
+churchyard,&mdash;one of the dreariest spots in the suburbs of
+London. Perhaps it does not much signify, when once the play is over,
+in what oblivion our crumbling relics are hidden away. Yet to most
+human creatures these are sacred things, and many a loving heart, for
+all time to come, will choose a consecrated spot for the repose of
+the dead, and will echo the tender words of Longfellow,&mdash;so
+truly expressive of a universal and reverent sentiment&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><small>"Take them, O Grave, and let them lie<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Folded upon thy narrow shelves,<br>
+As garments by the soul laid by<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And precious only to
+ourselves."</small></blockquote>
+<p>One of the most impressive of the many literary pilgrimages that I
+have made was that which brought me to the house in which Coleridge
+died, and the place where he was buried. The student needs not to be
+told that this poet, born in 1772, the year after Gray's death, bore
+the white lilies of pure literature till 1834, when he too entered
+into his rest. The last nineteen years of the life of Coleridge were
+spent in a house at Highgate; and there, within a few steps of each
+other, the visitor may behold his dwelling and his tomb. The house is
+one in a block of dwellings, situated in what is called the
+Grove&mdash;a broad, embowered street, a little way from the centre
+of the village. There are gardens attached to these houses, both in
+the front and the rear, and the smooth and peaceful roadside walks in
+the Grove itself are pleasantly shaded by elms of noble size and
+abundant foliage. These were young trees when Coleridge saw them, and
+all this neighbourhood, in his day, was but thinly settled. Looking
+from his chamber window he could see the dusky outlines of sombre
+London, crowned with the dome of St. Paul's on the southern horizon,
+while, more near, across a fertile and smiling valley, the gray spire
+of Hampstead church would bound his prospect, rising above the
+verdant woodland of Caen.&dagger; In front were beds of flowers, and
+all around he might hear the songs of birds that filled the fragrant
+air with their happy, careless music. Not far away stood the old
+church of Highgate, long since destroyed, in which he used to
+worship, and close by was the Gate House inn, primitive, quaint, and
+cosy, which still is standing, to comfort the weary traveller with
+its wholesome hospitality.</p>
+<p><small>&dagger; "Come in the first stage, so as either to walk, or
+to be driven in Mr. Gilman's gig, to Caen wood and its delicious
+groves and alleys, the finest in England, a grand cathedral aisle of
+giant lime-trees, Pope's favourite composition walk, when with the
+old Earl."&mdash;<i>Coleridge to Crabb Robinson. Highgate, June</i>
+1817</small></p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_TWH" id="a_TWH"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0240.jpg" width="75%" alt=
+"The White Hart."></p>
+<br>
+<p>Highgate, with all its rural peace, must have been a bustling
+place in the old times, for all the travel went through it that
+passed either into or out of London by the great north
+road,&mdash;that road in which Whittington heard the prophetic
+summons of the bells, and where may still be seen, suitably and
+rightly marked, the site of the stone on which he sat to rest. Here,
+indeed, the coaches used to halt, either to feed or to change horses,
+and here the many neglected little taverns still remaining, with
+their odd names and their swinging signs, testify to the discarded
+customs of a bygone age. Some years ago a new road was cut, so that
+travellers might wind around the hill, and avoid climbing the steep
+ascent to the village; and since then the grass has begun to grow in
+the streets. But such bustle as once enlivened the solitude of
+Highgate could never have been otherwise than agreeable diversion to
+its inhabitants; while for Coleridge himself, as we can well imagine,
+the London coach was welcome indeed, that brought to his door such
+well-loved friends as Charles Lamb, Joseph Henry Green, Crabb
+Robinson, Wordsworth, or Talfourd.</p>
+<p>To this retreat the author of <i>The Ancient Mariner</i> withdrew
+in 1815, to live with his friend James Gilman, a surgeon, who had
+undertaken to rescue him from the demon of opium, but who, as De
+Quincey intimates, was lured by the poet into the service of the very
+fiend whom both had striven to subdue. It was his last refuge, and he
+never left it till he was released from life. As you ramble in that
+quiet neighbourhood your fancy will not fail to conjure up his placid
+figure,&mdash;the silver hair, the pale face, the great, luminous,
+changeful blue eyes, the somewhat portly form clothed in black
+raiment, the slow, feeble walk, the sweet, benignant manner, the
+voice that was perfect melody, and the inexhaustible talk that was
+the flow of a golden sea of eloquence and wisdom. Coleridge was often
+seen walking there, with a book in his hand; and the children of the
+village knew him and loved him. His presence is impressed forever
+upon the place, to haunt and to hallow it. He was a very great man.
+The wings of his imagination wave easily in the opal air of the
+highest heaven. The power and majesty of his thought are such as
+establish forever in the human mind the conviction of personal
+immortality. Yet how forlorn the ending that this stately soul was
+enforced to make! For more than thirty years he was the slave of
+opium. It blighted his home; it alienated his wife; it ruined his
+health; it made him utterly wretched. "I have been, through a large
+portion of my later life," he wrote, in 1834, "a sufferer, sorely
+afflicted with bodily pains, languor, and manifold infirmities." But
+behind all this,&mdash;more dreadful still and harder to
+bear,&mdash;was he not the slave of some ingrained perversity of the
+mind itself, some helpless and hopeless irresolution of character,
+some enervating spell of that sublime yet pitiable dejection of
+Hamlet, which kept him forever at war with himself, and, last of all,
+cast him out upon the homeless ocean of despair, to drift away into
+ruin and death? There are shapes more awful than his, in the records
+of literary history,&mdash;the ravaged, agonising form of Swift, for
+instance, and the wonderful, desolate face of Byron; but there is no
+figure more forlorn and pathetic.</p>
+<p>This way the memory of Coleridge came upon me, standing at his
+grave. He should have been laid in some wild, free place, where the
+grass could grow above him and the trees could wave their branches
+over his head. They placed him in a ponderous tomb, of gray stone, in
+Highgate churchyard, and in later times they have reared a new
+building above it,&mdash;the grammar-school of the village,&mdash;so
+that now the tomb, fenced round with iron, is in a cold, barren,
+gloomy crypt, accessible indeed from the churchyard, through several
+arches, but grim and doleful in all its surroundings; as if the evil
+and cruel fate that marred his life were still triumphant over his
+ashes.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_ABB" id="a_ABB"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0243.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Ada Brooke Flower Border"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CHXIX" id="a_CHXIX"></a><a name="a_CHXIXb" id=
+"a_CHXIXb"></a>
+<h3 align="center">CHAPTER XIX</h3>
+<h5 align="center">ON BARNET BATTLE-FIELD</h5>
+<br>
+<p>In England, as elsewhere, every historic spot is occupied; and of
+course it sometimes happens, at such a spot, that its association is
+marred and its sentiment almost destroyed by the presence of the
+persons and the interests of to-day. The visitor to such places must
+carry with him not only knowledge and sensibility but imagination and
+patience. He will not find the way strewn with roses nor the
+atmosphere of poetry ready-made for his enjoyment. That atmosphere,
+indeed, for the most part&mdash;especially in the cities&mdash;he
+must himself supply. Relics do not robe themselves for exhibition.
+The Past is utterly indifferent to its worshippers. All manner of
+little obstacles, too, will arise before the pilgrim, to thwart him
+in his search. The mental strain and bewilderment, the inevitable
+physical weariness, the soporific influence of the climate, the
+tumult of the streets, the frequent and disheartening spectacle of
+poverty, squalor, and vice, the capricious and untimely rain, the
+inconvenience of long distances, the ill-timed arrival and consequent
+disappointment, the occasional nervous sense of loneliness and
+insecurity, the inappropriate boor, the ignorant, garrulous porter,
+the extortionate cabman, and the jeering bystander&mdash;all these
+must be regarded with resolute indifference by him who would ramble,
+pleasantly and profitably, in the footprints of English history.
+Everything depends, in other words, upon the eyes with which you
+observe and the spirit which you impart. Never was a keener truth
+uttered than in the couplet of Wordsworth&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><small>"Minds that have nothing to confer<br>
+Find little to perceive."</small></blockquote>
+<p>To the philosophic stranger, however, even this prosaic occupancy
+of historic places is not without its pleasurable, because humorous,
+significance. Such an observer in England will sometimes be amused as
+well as impressed by a sudden sense of the singular incidental
+position into which&mdash;partly through the lapse of years, and
+partly through a peculiarity of national character&mdash;the scenes
+of famous events, not to say the events themselves, have gradually
+drifted. I thought of this one night, when, in Whitehall Gardens, I
+was looking at the statue of James the Second, and a courteous
+policeman came up and silently turned the light of his bull's-eye
+upon the inscription. A scene of more incongruous elements, or one
+suggestive of a more serio-comic contrast, could not be imagined. I
+thought of it again when standing on the village green near Barnet,
+and viewing, amid surroundings both pastoral and ludicrous, the
+column which there commemorates the defeat and death of the great
+Earl of Warwick, and, consequently, the final triumph of the Grown
+over the last of the Barons of England.</p>
+<p>It was toward the close of a cool summer day, and of a long drive
+through the beautiful hedgerows of sweet and verdurous Middlesex,
+that I came to the villages of Barnet and Hadley, and went over the
+field of King Edward's victory,&mdash;that fatal glorious field, on
+which Gloster showed such resolute valour, and where Neville, supreme
+and magnificent in disaster, fought on foot, to make sure that
+himself might go down in the stormy death of all his hopes. More than
+four hundred years have drifted by since that misty April morning
+when the star of Warwick was quenched in blood, and ten thousand men
+were slaughtered to end the strife between the Barons and the Crown;
+yet the results of that conflict are living facts in the government
+of England now, and in the fortunes of her inhabitants. If you were
+unaware of the solid simplicity and proud reticence of the English
+character,&mdash;leading it to merge all its shining deeds in one
+continuous fabric of achievement, like jewels set in a cloth of
+gold,&mdash;you might expect to find this spot adorned with a
+structure of more than common splendour. What you actually do find
+there is a plain monument, standing in the middle of a common, at the
+junction of several roads,&mdash;the chief of which are those leading
+to Hatfield and St. Albans, in Hertfordshire,&mdash;and on one side
+of this column you may read, in letters of faded black, the
+comprehensive statement that "Here was fought the famous battle
+between Edward the Fourth and the Earl of Warwick, April 14th, anno
+1471, in which the Earl was defeated and slain."&dagger;</p>
+<p><small>&dagger; The words "stick no bills" have been intrusively
+added, just below this inscription.</small></p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CBB" id="a_CBB"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0246.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Column on Barnet Battle-Field."></p>
+<br>
+<p>In my reverie, standing at the foot of this humble,
+weather-stained monument, I saw the long range of Barnet hills,
+mantled with grass and flowers and with the golden haze of a morning
+in spring, swarming with gorgeous horsemen and glittering with spears
+and banners; and I heard the vengeful clash of arms, the horrible
+neighing of maddened steeds, the furious shouts of onset, and all the
+nameless cries and groans of battle, commingled in a thrilling yet
+hideous din. Here rode King Edward, intrepid, handsome, and stalwart,
+with his proud, cruel smile and his long, yellow hair. There Warwick
+swung his great two-handed sword, and mowed his foes like grain. And
+there the fiery form of Richard, splendid in burnished steel, darted
+like the scorpion, dealing death at every blow; till at last, in
+fatal mischance, the sad star of Oxford, assailed by its own friends,
+was swept out of the field, and the fight drove, raging, into the
+valleys of Hadley. How strangely, though, did this fancied picture
+contrast with the actual scene before me! At a little distance, all
+around the village green, the peaceful, embowered cottages kept their
+sentinel watch. Over the careless, straggling grass went the shadow
+of the passing cloud. Not a sound was heard, save the rustle of
+leaves and the low laughter of some little children, playing near the
+monument. Close by and at rest was a flock of geese, couched upon the
+cool earth, and, as their custom is, supremely contented with
+themselves and all the world.</p>
+<p>And at the foot of the column, stretched out at his full length,
+in tattered garments that scarcely covered his nakedness, reposed the
+British labourer, fast asleep upon the sod. No more Wars of the Roses
+now; but calm retirement, smiling plenty, cool western winds, and
+sleep and peace&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><small>"With a red rose and a white rose<br>
+Leaning, nodding at the wall."</small></blockquote>
+<br>
+<a name="a_FMH2" id="a_FMH2"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0248.jpg" width="75%" alt=
+"Farm-house."></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CHBB" id="a_CHBB"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0249.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Cherubs Battling Boar Border"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CHXX" id="a_CHXX"></a><a name="a_CHXXb" id="a_CHXXb"></a>
+<h3 align="center">CHAPTER XX</h3>
+<h5 align="center">A GLIMPSE OF CANTERBURY</h5>
+<br>
+<p>One of the most impressive spots on earth, and one that especially
+teaches&mdash;with silent, pathetic eloquence and solemn
+admonition&mdash;the great lesson of contrast, the incessant flow of
+the ages and the inevitable decay and oblivion of the past, is the
+ancient city of Canterbury. Years and not merely days of residence
+there are essential to the adequate and right comprehension of that
+wonderful place. Yet even an hour passed among its shrines will teach
+you, as no printed word has ever taught, the measureless power and
+the sublime beauty of a perfect religious faith; while, as you stand
+and meditate in the shadow of the gray cathedral walls, the pageant
+of a thousand years of history will pass before you like a dream. The
+city itself, with its bright, swift river (the Stour), its opulence
+of trees and flowers, its narrow winding streets, its numerous
+antique buildings, its many towers, its fragments of ancient wall and
+gate, its formal decorations, its air of perfect cleanliness and
+thoughtful gravity, its beautiful, umbrageous suburbs,&mdash;where
+the scarlet of the poppies and the russet red of the clover make one
+vast rolling sea of colour and of fragrant delight,&mdash;and, to
+crown all, its stately character of wealth without ostentation and
+industry without tumult, must prove to you a deep and satisfying
+comfort. But, through all this, pervading and surmounting it all, the
+spirit of the place pours in upon your heart, and floods your whole
+being with the incense and organ music of passionate, jubilant
+devotion.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_FIW" id="a_FIW"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0250.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Falstaff Inn and West Gate, Canterbury."></p>
+<br>
+<p>It was not superstition that reared those gorgeous fanes of
+worship which still adorn, even while they no longer consecrate, the
+ecclesiastic cities of the old world. In the age of Augustine,
+Dunstan, and Ethelnoth humanity had begun to feel its profound and
+vital need of a sure and settled reliance on religious faith. The
+drifting spirit, worn with sorrow, doubt, and self-conflict, longed
+to be at peace&mdash;longed for a refuge equally from the evils and
+tortures of its own condition and the storms and perils of the world.
+In that longing it recognised its immortality and heard the voice of
+its Divine Parent; and out of the ecstatic joy and utter abandonment
+of its new-born, passionate, responsive faith, it built and
+consecrated those stupendous temples,&mdash;rearing them with all its
+love no less than all its riches and all its power. There was no
+wealth that it would not give, no toil that it would not perform, and
+no sacrifice that it would not make, in the accomplishment of its
+sacred task. It was grandly, nobly, terribly in earnest, and it
+achieved a work that is not only sublime in its poetic majesty but
+measureless in the scope and extent of its moral and spiritual
+influence. It has left to succeeding ages not only a legacy of
+permanent beauty, not only a sublime symbol of religious faith, but
+an everlasting monument to the loveliness and greatness that are
+inherent in human nature. No creature with a human heart in his bosom
+can stand in such a building as Canterbury cathedral without feeling
+a greater love and reverence than he ever felt before, alike for God
+and man.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_BLC" id="a_BLC"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0252.jpg" width="75%" alt=
+"Butchery Lane, Canterbury."></p>
+<br>
+<p>On a day (July 27, 1882) when a class of the boys of the King's
+School of Canterbury was graduated the present writer chanced to be a
+listener to the impressive and touching sermon that was preached
+before them, in the cathedral; wherein they were tenderly admonished
+to keep unbroken their associations with their school-days and to
+remember the lessons of the place itself. That counsel must have sunk
+deep into every mind. It is difficult to understand how any person
+reared amid such scenes and relics could ever cast away their
+hallowing influence. Even to the casual visitor the bare thought of
+the historic treasures that are garnered in this temple is, by
+itself, sufficient to implant in the bosom a memorable and lasting
+awe. For more than twelve hundred years the succession of the
+Archbishops of Canterbury has remained substantially unbroken. There
+have been ninety-three "primates of all England," of whom fifty-three
+were buried in the cathedral, and here the tombs of fifteen of them
+are still visible. Here was buried the sagacious, crafty, inflexible,
+indomitable Henry the Fourth,&mdash;that Hereford whom Shakespeare
+has described and interpreted with matchless, immortal
+eloquence,&mdash;and here, cut off in the morning of his greatness,
+and lamented to this day in the hearts of the English people, was
+laid the body of Edward the Black Prince, who to a dauntless valour
+and terrible prowess in war added a high-souled, human, and tender
+magnanimity in conquest, and whom personal virtues and shining public
+deeds united to make the ideal hero of chivalry. In no other way than
+by personal observance of such memorials can historic reading be
+invested with a perfect and permanent reality. Over the tomb of the
+Black Prince, with its fine recumbent effigy of gilded brass, hang
+the gauntlets that he wore; and they tell you that his sword formerly
+hung there, but that Oliver Cromwell&mdash;who revealed his
+iconoclastic and unlovely character in making a stable of this
+cathedral&mdash;carried it away. Close at hand is the tomb of the
+wise, just, and gentle Cardinal Pole, simply inscribed "Blessed are
+the dead which die in the Lord"; and you may touch a little, low
+mausoleum of gray stone, in which are the ashes of John Morton, that
+Bishop of Ely from whose garden in Holborn the strawberries were
+brought for the Duke of Gloster, on the day when he condemned the
+accomplished Hastings, and who "fled to Richmond," in good time, from
+the standard of the dangerous Protector. Standing there, I could
+almost hear the resolute, scornful voice of Richard, breathing out,
+in clear, implacable accents&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><small>"Ely with Richmond troubles me more near<br>
+Than Buckingham and his rash-levied strength."</small></blockquote>
+<p>The astute Morton, when Bosworth was over and Richmond had assumed
+the crown and Bourchier had died, was made Archbishop of Canterbury;
+and as such, at a great age, he passed away.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_FHI" id="a_FHI"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0255.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Flying Horse Inn, Canterbury."></p>
+<br>
+<p>A few hundred yards from his place of rest, in a vault beneath the
+Church of St. Dunstan, is the head of Sir Thomas More (the body being
+in St. Peter's, at the Tower of London), who in his youth had been a
+member of Morton's ecclesiastical household, and whose greatness that
+prelate had foreseen and prophesied. Did no shadow of the scaffold
+ever fall across the statesman's thoughts, as he looked upon that
+handsome, manly boy, and thought of the troublous times that were
+raging about them? Morton, aged ninety, died in 1500; More, aged
+fifty-five, in 1535. Strange fate, indeed, was that, and as
+inscrutable as mournful, which gave to those who in life had been
+like father and son such a ghastly association in death!&dagger; They
+show you the place where Becket was murdered, and the stone steps,
+worn hollow by the thousands upon thousands of devout pilgrims who,
+in the days before the Reformation, crept up to weep and pray at the
+costly, resplendent shrine of St. Thomas. The bones of Becket, as all
+the world knows, were, by command of Henry the Eighth, burnt, and
+scattered to the winds, while his shrine was pillaged and destroyed.
+Neither tomb nor scutcheon commemorates him here,&mdash;but the
+cathedral itself is his monument.</p>
+<p><small>&dagger; St. Dunstan's church was connected with the
+Convent of St. Gregory. The Roper family, in the time of Henry the
+Fourth, founded a chapel in it, in which are two marble tombs,
+commemorative of them, and underneath which is their burial vault.
+Margaret Roper, Sir Thomas More's daughter, obtained her father's
+head, after his execution, and buried it here. The vault was opened
+in 1835,&mdash;when a new pavement was laid in the chancel of this
+church,&mdash;and persons descending into it saw the head, in a
+leaden box shaped like a beehive, open in front, set in a niche in
+the wall, behind an iron grill.</small></p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CCA" id="a_CCA"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0257.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Canterbury Cathedral."></p>
+<br>
+<p>There it stands, with its grand columns and glorious arches, its
+towers of enormous size and its long vistas of distance, so
+mysterious and awful, its gloomy crypt where once the silver lamps
+sparkled and the smoking censers were swung, its tombs of mighty
+warriors and statesmen, its frayed and crumbling banners, and the
+eternal, majestic silence with which it broods over the love,
+ambition, glory, defeat, and anguish of a thousand years, dissolved
+now and ended in a little dust! As the organ music died away I looked
+upward and saw where a bird was wildly flying to and fro, through the
+vast spaces beneath its lofty roof, in the vain effort to find some
+outlet of escape. Fit emblem, truly, of the human mind which strives
+to comprehend and to utter the meaning of this marvellous fabric!</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_ALL" id="a_ALL"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0259.jpg" width="30%" alt=
+"Alladin's Lamp"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_DWB" id="a_DWB"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0260.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Dark Wind Border"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CHXXI" id="a_CHXXI"></a><a name="a_CHXXIb" id=
+"a_CHXXIb"></a>
+<h3 align="center">CHAPTER XXI</h3>
+<h5 align="center">THE SHRINES OF WARWICKSHIRE 1882</h5>
+<br>
+<p>Night, in Stratford-upon-Avon&mdash;a summer night, with large,
+solemn stars, a cool and fragrant breeze, and the stillness of
+perfect rest. From this high and grassy bank I look forth across the
+darkened meadows and the smooth and shining river, and see the little
+town where it lies asleep. Hardly a light is anywhere visible. A few
+great elms, near by, are nodding and rustling in the wind, and once
+or twice a drowsy bird-note floats up from the neighbouring thicket
+that skirts the vacant, lonely road. There, at some distance, are the
+dim arches of Clopton's Bridge. In front&mdash;a graceful, shapely
+mass, indistinct in the starlight&mdash;rises the fair Memorial,
+Stratford's honour and pride. Further off, glimmering through the
+tree-tops, is the dusky spire of Trinity, keeping its sacred vigil
+over the dust of Shakespeare. Nothing here is changed. The same
+tranquil beauty, as of old, hallows this place; the same sense of awe
+and mystery broods over its silent shrines of everlasting renown.
+Long and weary the years have been since last I saw it; but to-night
+they are remembered only as a fleeting and troubled dream. Here, once
+more, is the highest and noblest companionship this world can give.
+Here, once more, is the almost visible presence of the one magician
+who can lift the soul out of the infinite weariness of common things
+and give it strength and peace. The old time has come back, and the
+bloom of the heart that I thought had all faded and gone. I stroll
+again to the river's brink, and take my place in the boat, and,
+trailing my hand in the dark waters of the Avon, forget every trouble
+that ever I have known.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_SUA" id="a_SUA"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0261.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Stratford-upon-Avon."></p>
+<br>
+<p>It is often said, with reference to memorable places, that the
+best view always is the first view. No doubt the accustomed eye sees
+blemishes. No doubt the supreme moments of human life are few and
+come but once; and neither of them is ever repeated. Yet frequently
+it will be found that the change is in ourselves and not in the
+objects we behold. Scott has glanced at this truth, in a few mournful
+lines, written toward the close of his heroic and beautiful life.
+Here at Stratford, however, I am not conscious that the wonderful
+charm of the place is in any degree impaired. The town still
+preserves its old-fashioned air, its quaintness, its perfect
+cleanliness and order. At the Shakespeare cottage, in the stillness
+of the room where he was born, the spirits of mystery and reverence
+still keep their imperial state. At the ancient grammar-school, with
+its pent-house roof and its dark, sagging rafters, you still may see,
+in fancy, the unwilling schoolboy gazing upward absently at the
+great, rugged timbers, or looking wistfully at the sunshine, where it
+streams through the little lattice windows of his prison. New Place,
+with its lovely lawn, its spacious garden, the ancestral mulberry and
+the ivy-covered well, will bring the poet before you, as he lived and
+moved, in the meridian of his greatness. <i>Cymbeline, The
+Tempest,</i> and <i>A Winter's Tale,</i> the last of his works,
+undoubtedly were written here; and this alone should make it a
+hallowed spot. Here he blessed his young daughter on her wedding day;
+here his eyes closed in the long last sleep; and from this place he
+was carried to his grave in the chancel of Stratford church. I pass
+once again through the fragrant avenue of limes, the silent
+churchyard with its crumbling monuments, the dim porch, the twilight
+of the venerable temple, and kneel at last above the ashes of
+Shakespeare. What majesty in this triumphant rest! All the great
+labour accomplished. The universal human heart interpreted with a
+living voice. The memory and the imagination of mankind stored
+forever with words of sublime eloquence and images of immortal
+beauty. The noble lesson of self-conquest&mdash;the lesson of the
+entire adequacy of the resolute, virtuous, patient human
+will&mdash;set forth so grandly that all the world must see its
+meaning and marvel at its splendour. And, last of all, death itself
+shorn of its terrors and made a trivial thing.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_SCH" id="a_SCH"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0263.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Stratford Church."></p>
+<br>
+<p>There is a new custodian at New Place, and he will show you the
+little museum that is kept there&mdash;including the shovel-board
+from the old Falcon tavern across the way, on which the poet himself
+might have played&mdash;and he will lead you through the gardens, and
+descant on the mulberry and on the ancient and still unforgiven
+vandalism of the Rev. Francis Gastrell, by whom the Shakespeare
+mansion was destroyed (1759), and will pause at the well, and at the
+fragments of the foundation, covered now with stout screens of wire.
+There is a fresh and fragrant beauty all about these grounds, an
+atmosphere of sunshine, life, comfort and elegance of state, that no
+observer can miss. This same keeper also has the keys of the guild
+chapel, opposite, on which Shakespeare looked from his windows and
+his garden, and in which he was the holder of two sittings. You will
+enter it by the same porch through which he walked, and see the arch
+and columns and tall, mullioned windows on which his gaze has often
+rested. The interior is cold and barren now, for the scriptural
+wall-paintings, discovered there in 1804, under a thick coating of
+whitewash, have been obliterated and the wooden pews, which are
+modern, have not yet been embrowned by age. Yet this church, known
+beyond question as one of Shakespeare's personal haunts, will hold
+you with the strongest tie of reverence and sympathy. At his
+birthplace everything remains unchanged. The gentle ladies who have
+so long guarded and shown it still have it in their affectionate
+care. The ceiling of the room in which the poet was born&mdash;the
+room that contains "the Actor's Pillar" and the thousands of
+signatures on walls and windows&mdash;is slowly crumbling to pieces.
+Every morning little particles of the plaster are found upon the
+floor. The area of tiny, delicate iron laths, to sustain this
+ceiling, has more than doubled (1882) since I first saw it, in 1877.
+It was on the ceiling that Lord Byron wrote his name, but this has
+flaked off and disappeared. In the museum hall, once the Swan inn,
+they are forming a library; and there you may see at least one
+Shakespearean relic of extraordinary interest. This is the MS. letter
+of Richard Quiney&mdash;whose son Thomas became, in 1616, the husband
+of Shakespeare's youngest daughter, Judith&mdash;asking the poet for
+the loan of thirty pounds. It is enclosed between plates of glass in
+a frame, and usually kept covered with a cloth, so that the sunlight
+may not fade the ink. The date of this letter is October 25, 1598,
+and thirty English pounds then was a sum equivalent to about six
+hundred dollars of American money now. This is the only letter known
+to be in existence that Shakespeare received. Miss Caroline Chataway,
+the younger of the ladies who keep this house, will recite to you its
+text, from memory&mdash;giving a delicious old-fashioned flavour to
+its quaint phraseology and fervent spirit, as rich and strange as the
+odour of the wild thyme and rosemary that grow in her garden beds.
+This antique touch adds a wonderful charm to the relics of the past.
+I found it once more when sitting in the chimney-corner of Anne
+Hathaway's kitchen; and again in the lovely little church at
+Charlecote, where a simple, kindly woman, not ashamed to reverence
+the place and the dead, stood with me at the tomb of the Lucys, and
+repeated from memory the tender, sincere, and eloquent epitaph with
+which Sir Thomas Lucy thereon commemorates his wife. The lettering is
+small and indistinct on the tomb, but having often read it I well
+knew how correctly it was then spoken. Nor shall I ever read it again
+without thinking of that kindly, pleasant voice, the hush of the
+beautiful church, the afternoon sunlight streaming through the oriel
+window, and&mdash;visible through the doorway arch&mdash;the roses
+waving among the churchyard graves.</p>
+<p>In the days of Shakespeare's courtship, when he strolled across
+the fields to Anne Hathaway's cottage at Shottery, his path, we may
+be sure, ran through wild pasture-land and tangled thicket. A fourth
+part of England at that time was a wilderness, and the entire
+population of that country did not exceed five millions of persons.
+The Stratford-upon-Avon of to-day is still possessed of some of its
+ancient features; but the region round about it then must have been
+rude and wild in comparison with what it is at present. If you walk
+in the foot-path to Shottery now you will pass between low fences and
+along the margin of gardens,&mdash;now in the sunshine, and now in
+the shadow of larch and chestnut and elm, while the sweet air blows
+upon your face and the expeditious rook makes rapid wing to the
+woodland, cawing as he flies. In the old cottage, with its roof of
+thatch, its crooked rafters, its odorous hedges and climbing vines,
+its leafy well and its tangled garden, everything remains the same.
+Mrs. Mary Taylor Baker, the last living descendant of the Hathaways,
+born in this house, always a resident here, and now an elderly woman,
+still has it in her keeping, and still displays to you the ancient
+carved bedstead in the garret, the wooden settle by the kitchen
+fireside, the hearth at which Shakespeare sat, the great blackened
+chimney with its adroit iron "fish-back" for the better regulation of
+the tea-kettle, and the brown and tattered Bible, with the Hathaway
+family record. Sitting in an old arm-chair, in the corner of Anne
+Hathaway's bedroom, I could hear, in the perfumed summer stillness,
+the low twittering of birds, whose nest is in the covering thatch and
+whose songs would awaken the sleeper at the earliest light of dawn. A
+better idea can be obtained in this cottage than in either the
+birthplace or any other Shakespearean haunt of what the real life
+actually was of the common people of England in Shakespeare's day.
+The stone floor and oak timbers of the Hathaway kitchen, stained and
+darkened in the slow decay of three hundred years, have lost no
+particle of their pristine character. The occupant of the cottage has
+not been absent from it more than a week during upward of half a
+century. In such a nook the inherited habits of living do not alter.
+"The thing that has been is the thing that shall be," and the customs
+of long ago are the customs of to-day.</p>
+<p>The Red Horse inn is now in the hands of William Gardner
+Colbourne, who has succeeded his uncle Mr. Gardner, and it is
+brighter than of old&mdash;without, however, having parted with
+either its antique furniture or its delightful antique ways. The old
+mahogany and wax-candle period has not ended yet in this happy place,
+and you sink to sleep on a snow-white pillow, soft as down and
+fragrant as lavender. One important change is especially to be
+remarked. They have made a niche in a corner of Washington Irving's
+parlour, and in it have placed his arm-chair, re-cushioned and
+polished, and sequested from touch by a large sheet of plate-glass.
+The relic may still be seen, but the pilgrim can sit upon it no more.
+Perhaps it might be well to enshrine "Geoffrey Crayon's Sceptre" in a
+somewhat similar way. It could be fastened to a shield, displaying
+the American colours, and placed in this storied room. At present it
+is the tenant of a starred and striped bag, and keeps its state in
+the seclusion of a bureau; nor is it shown except upon
+request&mdash;like the beautiful marble statue of Donne, in his
+shroud, niched in the chancel wall of St. Paul's
+cathedral.&dagger;</p>
+<p><small>&dagger; A few effigies are all that remain of old St.
+Paul's. The most important and interesting of them is that shrouded
+statue of the poet John Donne, who was Dean of St. Paul's from 1621
+to 1631, dying in the latter year, aged 58. This is in the south
+aisle of the chancel, in a niche in the wall. You will not see it
+unless you ask the privilege. The other relics are in the crypt and
+in the churchyard. There is nothing to indicate the place of the
+grave of John of Gaunt or that of Sir Philip Sidney. Old St. Paul's
+was burned September 2, 1666.</small></p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_WIC" id="a_WIC"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0269.jpg" width="35%" alt=
+"Washington Irving's Chair."></p>
+<br>
+<p>One of the strongest instincts of the English character is the
+instinct of permanence. It acts involuntarily, it pervades the
+national life, and, as Pope said of the universal soul, it operates
+unspent. Institutions seem to have grown out of human nature in this
+country, and are as much its expression as blossoms, leaves, and
+flowers are the expression of inevitable law. A custom, in England,
+once established, is seldom or never changed. The brilliant career,
+the memorable achievement, the great character, once fulfilled, takes
+a permanent shape in some kind of outward and visible memorial, some
+absolute and palpable fact, which thenceforth is an accepted part of
+the history of the land and the experience of its people. England
+means stability&mdash;the fireside and the altar, home here and
+heaven hereafter; and this is the secret of the power that she wields
+in the affairs of the world, and the charm that she diffuses over the
+domain of thought. Such a temple as St. Paul's cathedral, such a
+palace as Hampton Court, such a castle as that of Windsor or that of
+Warwick, is the natural, spontaneous expression of the English
+instinct of permanence; and it is in memorials like these that
+England has written her history, with symbols that can perish only
+with time itself. At intervals her latent animal ferocity breaks
+loose&mdash;as it did under Henry the Eighth, under Mary, under
+Cromwell, and under James the Second,&mdash;and for a brief time
+ramps and bellows, striving to deface and deform the surrounding
+structure of beauty that has been slowly and painfully reared out of
+her deep heart and her sane civilisation. But the tears of human pity
+soon quench the fire of Smithfield, and it is only for a little while
+that the Puritan soldiers play at nine-pins in the nave of St.
+Paul's. This fever of animal impulse, this wild revolt of petulant
+impatience, is soon cooled; and then the great work goes on again, as
+calmly and surely as before&mdash;that great work of educating
+mankind to the level of constitutional liberty, in which England has
+been engaged for well-nigh a thousand years, and in which the
+American Republic, though sometimes at variance with her methods and
+her spirit, is, nevertheless, her follower and the consequence of her
+example. Our Declaration was made in 1776: the Declaration to the
+Prince of Orange is dated 1689, and the Bill of Rights 1628, while
+Magna Charta was secured in 1215.</p>
+<p>Throughout every part of this sumptuous and splendid domain of
+Warwickshire the symbols of English stability and the relics of
+historic times are numerous and deeply impressive. At Stratford the
+reverence of the nineteenth century takes its practical, substantial
+form, not alone in the honourable preservation of the ancient
+Shakespearean shrines, but in the Shakespeare Memorial. That fabric,
+though mainly due to the fealty of England, is also, to some extent,
+representative of the practical sympathy of America. Several
+Americans&mdash;Edwin Booth, Herman Vezin, M. D. Conway, and W. H.
+Reynolds among them&mdash;were contributors to the fund that built
+it, and an American gentlewoman, Miss Kate Field, has worked for its
+cause with excellent zeal, untiring fidelity, and good results. (Miss
+Mary Anderson acted&mdash;1885&mdash;in the Memorial Theatre, for its
+benefit, presenting for the first time in her life the character of
+Rosalind.) It is a noble monument. It stands upon the margin of the
+Avon, not distant from the church of the Holy Trinity, which is
+Shakespeare's grave; so that these two buildings are the conspicuous
+points of the landscape, and seem to confront each other with
+sympathetic greeting, as if conscious of their sacred trust. The
+vacant land adjacent, extending between the road and the river, is a
+part of the Memorial estate, and is to be converted into a garden,
+with pathways, shade-trees, and flowers,&mdash;by means of which the
+prospect will be made still fairer than now it is, and will be kept
+forever unbroken between the Memorial and the Church. Under this
+ample roof are already united a theatre, a library, and a hall of
+pictures. The drop-curtain, illustrating the processional progress of
+Queen Elizabeth when "going to the Globe Theatre," is gay but
+incorrect. The divisions of seats are in conformity with the
+inconvenient arrangements of the London theatre of to-day. Queen
+Elizabeth heard plays in the hall of the Middle Temple, the hall of
+Hampton Palace, and at Greenwich and at Richmond; but she never went
+to the Globe Theatre. In historic temples there should be no trifling
+with historic themes; and surely, in a theatre of the nineteenth
+century, dedicated to Shakespeare, while no fantastic regard should
+be paid to the usages of the past, it would be tasteful and proper to
+blend the best of ancient ways with all the luxury and elegance of
+these times. It is much, however, to have built what can readily be
+made a lovely theatre; and meanwhile, through the affectionate
+generosity of friends in all parts of the world, the library shelves
+are continually gathering treasures, and the hall of paintings is
+growing more and more the imposing expository that it was intended to
+be, of Shakespearean poetry and the history of the English stage.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_TSM" id="a_TSM"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0273.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"The Stratford Memorial."></p>
+<br>
+<p>Many faces of actors appear upon those walls&mdash;from Garrick to
+Edmund Kean, from Macready to Henry Irving, from Kemble to Edwin
+Booth, from Mrs. Siddons to Ellen Terry, Ada Rehan, and Mary
+Anderson. Prominent among the pictures is a spirited portrait of
+Garrick and his wife, playing at cards, wherein the lovely, laughing
+lady archly discloses that her hands are full of hearts. Not
+otherwise, truly, is it with sweet and gentle Stratford herself,
+where peace and beauty and the most hallowed and hallowing of poetic
+associations garner up, forever and forever, the hearts of all
+mankind.</p>
+<p>In previous papers upon this subject I have tried to express the
+feelings that are excited by personal contact with the relics of
+Shakespeare&mdash;the objects that he saw and the fields through
+which he wandered. Fancy would never tire of lingering in this
+delicious region of flowers and of dreams. From the hideous vileness
+of the social condition of London in the time of James the First,
+Shakespeare must indeed have rejoiced to depart into this blooming
+garden of rustic tranquillity. Here also he could find the
+surroundings that were needful to sustain him amid the vast and
+overwhelming labours of his final period. No man, however great his
+powers, can ever, in this world, escape from the trammels under which
+nature enjoins and permits the exercise of the brain. Ease, in the
+intellectual life, is always visionary. The higher a man's faculties
+the higher are his ideals,&mdash;toward which, under the operation of
+a divine law, he must perpetually strive, but to the height of which
+he will never absolutely attain. So, inevitably, it was with
+Shakespeare.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_MAC" id="a_MAC"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0276.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Mary Arden Cottage."></p>
+<br>
+<p>But, although genius cannot escape from itself and is no more free
+than the humblest toiler in the vast scheme of creation, it
+may&mdash;and it must&mdash;sometimes escape from the world: and this
+wise poet, of all men else, would surely recognise and strongly grasp
+the great privilege of solitude amid the sweetest and most soothing
+adjuncts of natural beauty. That privilege he found in the sparkling
+and fragrant gardens of Warwick, the woods, fields and waters of the
+Avon, where he had played as a boy, and where love had laid its first
+kiss upon his lips and poetry first opened upon his inspired vision
+the eternal glories of her celestial world. It still abides there,
+for every gentle soul that can feel its influence&mdash;to deepen the
+glow of noble passion, to soften the sting of grief, and to touch the
+lips of worship with a fresh sacrament of patience and beauty.</p>
+<p class="pg1">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br>
+<br>
+THE ANNE HATHAWAY COTTAGE.</p>
+<p><i>April,</i> 1892.&mdash;A record that all lovers of the
+Shakespeare shrines have long wished to make can at last be made. The
+Anne Hathaway Cottage has been bought for the British Nation, and
+that building will henceforth be one of the Amalgamated Trusts that
+are guarded by the corporate authorities of Stratford. The other
+Trusts are the Birthplace, the Museum, and New Place. The Mary Arden
+Cottage, the home of Shakespeare's mother, is yet to be acquired.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_OWB" id="a_OWB"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0278.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Owl Border"></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CHXXII" id="a_CHXXII"></a><a name="a_CHXXIIb" id=
+"a_CHXXIIb"></a>
+<h3 align="center">CHAPTER XXII</h3>
+<h5 align="center">A BORROWER OF THE NIGHT</h5>
+<br>
+<blockquote><small><i>"I must become a borrower of the night,<br>
+For a dark hour or
+twain."</i>&mdash;M<small>ACBETH</small>.</small></blockquote>
+<p>Midnight has just sounded from the tower of St. Martin. It is a
+peaceful night, faintly lit with stars, and in the region round about
+Trafalgar Square a dream-like stillness broods over the darkened
+city, now slowly hushing itself to its brief and troubled rest. This
+is the centre of the heart of modern civilisation, the middle of the
+greatest city in the world&mdash;the vast, seething alembic of a
+grand future, the stately monument of a deathless past. Here, alone,
+in my quiet room of this old English inn, let me meditate a while on
+some of the scenes that are near me&mdash;the strange, romantic, sad,
+grand objects that I have seen, the memorable figures of beauty,
+genius, and renown that haunt this classic land.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_CSM2" id="a_CSM2"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0279.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Church of St. Martin."></p>
+<br>
+<p>How solemn and awful now must be the gloom within the walls of the
+Abbey! A walk of only a few minutes would bring me to its
+gates&mdash;the gates of the most renowned mausoleum on earth. No
+human foot to-night invades its sacred precincts. The dead alone
+possess it. I see, upon its gray walls, the marble figures, white and
+spectral, staring through the darkness. I hear the night-wind moaning
+around its lofty towers and faintly sobbing in the dim, mysterious
+spaces beneath its fretted roof. Here and there a ray of starlight,
+streaming through the sumptuous rose window, falls and lingers, in
+ruby or emerald gleam, on tomb, or pillar, or dusky pavement.
+Rustling noises, vague and fearful, float from those dim chapels
+where the great kings lie in state, with marble effigies recumbent
+above their bones. At such an hour as this, in such a place, do the
+dead come out of their graves? The resolute, implacable Queen
+Elizabeth, the beautiful, ill-fated Queen of Scots, the royal boys
+that perished in the Tower, Charles the Merry and William the
+Silent&mdash;are these, and such as these, among the phantoms that
+fill the haunted aisles? What a wonderful company it would be, for
+human eyes to behold! And with what passionate love or hatred, what
+amazement, or what haughty scorn, its members would look upon each
+other's faces, in this miraculous meeting? Here, through the
+glimmering, icy waste, would pass before the watcher the august
+shades of the poets of five hundred years. Now would glide the ghosts
+of Chaucer, Spenser, Jonson, Beaumont, Dryden, Cowley, Congreve,
+Addison, Prior, Campbell, Garrick, Burke, Sheridan, Newton, and
+Macaulay&mdash;children of divine genius, that here mingled with the
+earth. The grim Edward, who so long ravaged Scotland; the blunt,
+chivalrous Henry, who conquered France; the lovely, lamentable victim
+at Pomfret, and the harsh, haughty, astute victor at Bosworth; James
+with his babbling tongue, and William with his impassive, predominant
+visage&mdash;they would all mingle with the spectral multitude and
+vanish into the gloom. Gentler faces, too, might here once more
+reveal their loveliness and their grief&mdash;Eleanor de Bohun,
+brokenhearted for her murdered lord; Elizabeth Claypole, the meek,
+merciful, beloved daughter of Cromwell; Matilda, Queen to Henry the
+First, and model of every grace and virtue; and sweet Anne Neville,
+destroyed&mdash;if his enemies told the truth&mdash;by the politic
+craft of Gloster. Strange sights, truly, in the lonesome Abbey
+to-night!</p>
+<p>In the sombre crypt beneath St. Paul's cathedral how thrilling now
+must be the heavy stillness! No sound can enter there. No breeze from
+the upper world can stir the dust upon those massive sepulchres. Even
+in day-time that shadowy vista, with its groined arches and the black
+tombs of Wellington and Nelson and the ponderous funeral-car of the
+Iron Duke, is seen with a shudder. How strangely, how fearfully the
+mind would be impressed, of him who should wander there to-night!
+What sublime reflections would be his, standing beside the ashes of
+the great admiral, and thinking of that fiery, dauntless
+spirit&mdash;so simple, resolute, and true&mdash;who made the earth
+and the sea alike resound with the splendid tumult of his deeds.
+Somewhere beneath this pavement is the dust of Sir Philip
+Sidney&mdash;buried here before the destruction of the old cathedral,
+in the great fire of 1666&mdash;and here, too, is the nameless grave
+of the mighty Duke of Lancaster, John of Gaunt. Shakespeare was only
+twenty-two years old when Sidney fell, at the battle of Zutphen, and,
+being then resident in London, he might readily have seen, and
+doubtless did see, the splendid funeral procession with which the
+body of that heroic gentleman&mdash;radiant and immortal example of
+perfect chivalry&mdash;was borne to the tomb. Hither came Henry of
+Hereford&mdash;returning from exile and deposing the handsome,
+visionary, useless Richard&mdash;to mourn over the relics of his
+father, dead of sorrow for his son's absence and his country's shame.
+Here, at the venerable age of ninety-one, the glorious brain of Wren
+found rest at last, beneath the stupendous temple that himself had
+reared. The watcher in the crypt tonight would see, perchance, or
+fancy that he saw, those figures from the storied past. Beneath this
+roof&mdash;the soul and the perfect symbol of sublimity!&mdash;are
+ranged more than fourscore monuments to heroic martial persons who
+have died for England, by land or sea. Here, too, are gathered in
+everlasting repose the honoured relics of men who were famous in the
+arts of peace. Reynolds and Opie, Lawrence and West, Landseer,
+Turner, Cruikshank, and many more, sleep under the sculptured
+pavement where now the pilgrim walks. For fifteen centuries a
+Christian church has stood upon this spot, and through it has poured,
+with organ strains and glancing lights, an endless procession of
+prelates and statesmen, of poets and warriors and kings. Surely this
+is hallowed and haunted ground! Surely to him the spirits of the
+mighty dead would be very near, who&mdash;alone, in the
+darkness&mdash;should stand to-night 'within those sacred walls, and
+hear, beneath that awful dome, the mellow thunder of the bells of
+God.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_WES" id="a_WES"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0283.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+"Westminster Abbey."></p>
+<br>
+<p>How looks, to-night, the interior of the chapel of the Foundling
+hospital? Dark and lonesome, no doubt, with its heavy galleries and
+sombre pews, and the great organ&mdash;Handel's gift&mdash;standing
+there, mute and grim, between the ascending tiers of empty seats. But
+never, in my remembrance, will it cease to present a picture more
+impressive and touching than words can say. Scores of white-robed
+children, rescued from shame and penury by this noble benevolence,
+were ranged around that organ when I saw it, and, with artless, frail
+little voices, singing a hymn of praise and worship. Well-nigh one
+hundred and fifty years have passed since this grand institution of
+charity&mdash;the sacred work and blessed legacy of Captain Thomas
+Coram&mdash;was established in this place. What a divine good it has
+accomplished, and continues to accomplish, and what a pure glory
+hallows its founder's name! Here the poor mother, betrayed and
+deserted, may take her child and find for it a safe and happy home
+and a chance in life&mdash;nor will she herself be turned adrift
+without sympathy and help. The poet and novelist George Croly was
+once chaplain of the Foundling hospital, and he preached some noble
+sermons there; but these were thought to be above the comprehension
+of his usual audience, and he presently resigned the place. Sidney
+Smith often spoke in this pulpit, when a young man. It was an aged
+clergyman who preached there within my hearing, and I remember he
+consumed the most part of an hour in saying that a good way in which
+to keep the tongue from speaking evil is to keep the heart kind and
+pure. Better than any sermon, though, was the spectacle of those poor
+children, rescued out of their helplessness and reared in comfort and
+affection. Several fine works of art are owned by this hospital and
+shown to visitors&mdash;paintings by Gainsborough and Reynolds, and a
+portrait of Captain Coram, by Hogarth. May the turf lie lightly on
+him, and daisies and violets deck his hallowed grave! No man ever did
+a better deed than he, and the darkest night that ever was cannot
+darken his fame.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_MTL" id="a_MTL"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0285.jpg" width="75%" alt=
+"Middle Temple Lane."></p>
+<br>
+<p>How dim and silent now are all those narrow and dingy little
+streets and lanes around Paul's churchyard and the Temple, where
+Johnson and Goldsmith loved to ramble! More than once have I wandered
+there, in the late hours of the night, meeting scarce a human
+creature, but conscious of a royal company indeed, of the wits and
+poets and players of a far-off time. Darkness now, on busy
+Smithfield, where once the frequent, cruel flames of bigotry shed
+forth a glare that sickened the light of day. Murky and grim enough
+to-night is that grand processional walk in St. Bartholomew's church,
+where the great gray pillars and splendid Norman arches of the
+twelfth century are mouldering in neglect and decay. Sweet to fancy
+and dear in recollection, the old church comes back to me now, with
+the sound of children's voices and the wail of the organ strangely
+breaking on its pensive rest. Stillness and peace over arid Bunhill
+Fields&mdash;-the last haven of many a Puritan worthy, and hallowed
+to many a pilgrim as the resting-place of Bunyan and of Watts. In
+many a park and gloomy square the watcher now would hear only a
+rustling of leaves or the fretful twitter of half-awakened birds.
+Around Primrose Hill and out toward Hampstead many a night-walk have
+I taken, that seemed like rambling in a desert&mdash;so dark and
+still are the walled houses, so perfect is the solitude. In Drury
+Lane, even at this late hour, there would be some movement; but cold
+and dense as ever the shadows are resting on that little graveyard
+behind it, where Lady Dedlock went to die. To walk in Bow Street
+now,&mdash;might it not be to meet the shades of Waller and Wycherley
+and Betterton, who lived and died there; to have a greeting from the
+silver-tongued Barry; or to see, in draggled lace and ruffles, the
+stalwart figure and flushed and roystering countenance of Henry
+Fielding? Very quiet now are those grim stone chambers in the
+terrible Tower of London, where so many tears have fallen and so many
+noble hearts been split with sorrow. Does Brackenbury still kneel in
+the cold, lonely, vacant chapel of St. John; or the sad ghost of
+Monmouth hover in the chancel of St. Peter's? How sweet tonight would
+be the rustle of the ivy on the dark walls of Hadley church, where
+late I breathed the rose-scented air and heard the warbling thrush,
+and blessed, with a grateful heart, the loving kindness that makes
+such beauty in the world! Out there on the hillside of Highgate,
+populous with death, the starlight gleams on many a ponderous tomb
+and the white marble of many a sculptured statue, where dear and
+famous names will lure the traveller's footsteps for years to come.
+There Lyndhurst rests, in honour and peace, and there is hushed the
+tuneful voice of Dempster&mdash;never to be heard any more, either
+when snows are flying or "when green leaves come again." Not many
+days have passed since I stood there, by the humble gravestone of
+poor Charles Harcourt, that fine actor, and remembered all the gentle
+enthusiasm with which (1877) he spoke to me of the character of
+Jaques&mdash;which he loved&mdash;and how well he repeated the
+immortal lines upon the drama of human life. For him the "strange,
+eventful history" came early and suddenly to an end.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="a_TCAI" id="a_TCAI"></a>
+<p class="pg1"><img src="images/img0287.jpg" width="75%" alt=
+"The Castle Inn."></p>
+<br>
+<p>In that ground, too, I saw the sculptured medallion of the
+well-beloved George Honey&mdash;"all his frolics o'er" and nothing
+left but this. Many a golden moment did we have, old friend, and by
+me thou art not forgotten! The lapse of a few years changes the whole
+face of life; but nothing can ever take from us our memories of the
+past. Here, around me, in the still watches of the night, are the
+faces that will never smile again, and the voices that will speak no
+more&mdash;Sothern, with his silver hair and bright and kindly smile,
+from the spacious cemetery of Southampton; and droll Harry Beckett
+and poor Adelaide Neilson from dismal Brompton. And if I look from
+yonder window I shall not see either the lions of Landseer or the
+homeless and vagrant wretches who sleep around them; but high in her
+silver chariot, surrounded with all the pomp and splendour that royal
+England knows, and marching to her coronation in Westminster Abbey,
+the beautiful figure of Anne Boleyn, with her dark eyes full of
+triumph and her torrent of golden hair flashing in the sun. On this
+spot is written the whole history of a mighty empire. Here are
+garnered up such loves and hopes, such memories and sorrows, as can
+never be spoken. Pass, ye shadows! Let the night wane and the morning
+break.<br>
+<br>
+<br></p>
+<p class="pg1"><small>THE END</small></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Shakespeare's England, by William Winter
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Shakespeare's England, by William Winter
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Shakespeare's England
+
+Author: William Winter
+
+Release Date: January 28, 2011 [EBook #35105]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jim Adcock, Special Thanks to the Internet
+Archive, American Libraries.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+     SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND
+          BY
+     WILLIAM WINTER
+
+     New Edition, Revised, with Illustrations
+
+     _New York_
+     THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+     LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
+     1898
+
+     _All rights reserved_
+
+     Copyright, 1892,
+     BY MACMILLAN AND CO.
+
+     ------
+
+     _Illustrated Edition,_
+     COPYRIGHT, 1893,
+     BY MACMILLAN AND CO.
+
+     ------
+
+     First published elsewhere.
+     Set up and electrotyped by Macmillan & Co., April, 1892.
+     Reprinted November, 1892; January, 1893.
+
+     Illustrated edition, revised throughout, in crown 8v0, set up and
+     Electrotyped June, 1893. Reprinted October, 1893; August, 1895;
+     September, 1898.
+
+     _Norwood Press_
+     J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
+     Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
+
+
+
+     To _Whitelaw Reid_
+
+
+     IN HONOUR OF EXALTED VIRTUES
+     ADORNING A LIFE OF
+     NOBLE ACHIEVEMENT AND PATIENT KINDNESS
+     AND IN REMEMBRANCE OF
+     FAITHFUL AND GENTLE FRIENDSHIP
+     I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
+
+
+     ------
+
+     _"Tum meae, si quid loquar audiendum,
+     Vocis accedet bona pars"_
+
+
+
+     PREFACE TO THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND
+
+
+_The favour with which this book has been received, alike in Great
+Britain and America, is thought to warrant a reproduction of it with
+pictorial embellishment, and accordingly it is offered in the present
+form. I have revised the text for this reprint, and my friend Mr. George
+P. Brett, of the house of Messrs. Macmillan and Company,--at whose
+suggestion the pictorial edition was undertaken,--has supervised the
+choice of pictures for its adornment. The approval that the work has
+elicited is a source of deep gratification. It signifies that my
+endeavour to reflect the gentle sentiment of English landscape and the
+romantic character of English rural life has not proved altogether
+in vain. It also shows that an appeal may confidently be
+made,--irrespective of transitory literary fashions and of popular
+caprice,--to the love of the ideal, the taste for simplicity, and the
+sentiment of veneration. In these writings there is, I hope, a profound
+practical deference to the perfect standard of style that is represented
+by such illustrious exemplars as Addison, Goldsmith, Sterne, and Gray.
+This frail fabric may perish: that standard is immortal; and whatever
+merit this book may possess is due to an instinctive and passionate
+devotion to the ideal denoted by those shining names. These sketches
+were written out of love for the subject. The first book of them, called
+_The Trip to England, _reprinted, with changes, from the _New York
+Tribune, _was made for me, at the De Vinne Press. The subsequent growth
+of the work is traced in the earlier Preface, herewith reprinted. The
+title of _Shakespeare's England _was given to it when the first English
+edition was published, by Mr. David Douglas, of Edinburgh. It has been
+my privilege to make various tours of the British islands, since those
+of _1877 _and _1882, _recorded here; and my later books, _Gray Days and
+Gold, _and _Old Shrines and Ivy, _should be read in association with
+this one, by those persons who care for a wider glimpse of the same
+delightful field, in the same companionship, and especially by those who
+like to follow the record of exploration and change in Shakespeare's
+home. As to the question of accuracy,--and indeed, as to all other
+questions,--it is my wish that this book may be judged by the text of
+the present edition, which is the latest and the best._
+
+
+     _W. W._
+
+     June 6, 1893.
+
+
+
+     PREFACE
+
+
+_Beautiful and storied scenes that have soothed and elevated the mind
+naturally inspire a feeling of gratitude. Prompted by that feeling the
+present author has written this record of his rambles in England. It was
+his wish, in dwelling upon the rural loveliness and the literary and
+historical associations of that delightful realm, to afford sympathetic
+guidance and useful suggestion to other American travellers who, like
+himself, might be attracted to roam among the shrines of the mother
+land. There is no pursuit more fascinating or in a high intellectual
+sense more remunerative; since it serves to define and regulate
+knowledge, to correct misapprehensions of fact, to broaden the mental
+vision, to ripen and refine the Judgment and the taste, and to fill the
+memory with ennobling recollections. These papers commemorate two visits
+to England, the first made in _1877, _the second in _1882; _they
+occasionally touch upon the same place or scene as observed at different
+times; and especially they describe two distinct journeys, separated by
+an interval of five years, through the region associated with the great
+name of Shakespeare. Repetitions of the same reference, which now and
+then occur, were found unavoidable by the writer, but it is hoped that
+they will not be found tedious by the reader. Those who walk twice in
+the same pathways should be pleased, and not pained, to find the same
+wild-flowers growing beside them. The first American edition of this
+work consisted of two volumes, published in _1879, 1881, _and _1884,
+_called _The Trip to England _and _English Rambles. _The former book was
+embellished with poetic illustrations by Joseph Jefferson, the famous
+comedian, my life-long friend. The paper on _Shakespeare's
+Home,--_written to record for American readers the dedication of the
+Shakespeare Memorial at Stratford,_--_was first printed in _Harper's
+Magazine, _in May _1879. _with delicate illustrative pictures from the
+graceful pencil of Edwin Abbey. This compendium of the _Trip _and the
+_Rambles, _with the title of _Shakespeare's England, _was first
+published by David Douglas of Edinburgh. That title was chosen for the
+reason that the book relates largely to Warwickshire and because it
+depicts not so much the England of fact as the England created and
+hallowed by the spirit of her poetry, of which Shakespeare is the soul.
+Several months after the publication of _Shakespeare's England _the
+writer was told of a work, published many years ago, bearing a similar
+title, though relating to a different theme--the physical state of
+England in Shakespeare's time. He had never heard of it and has never
+seen it. The text for the present reprint has been carefully revised. To
+his British readers the author would say that it is neither from lack of
+sympathy with the happiness around him nor from lack of faith in the
+future of his country that his writings have drifted toward the pathos
+in human experience and toward the hallowing associations of an old
+historic land. Temperament is the explanation of style: and he has
+written thus of England because she has filled his mind with beauty and
+his heart with mingled joy and sadness: and surely some memory of her
+venerable ruins, her ancient shrines, her rustic glens, her gleaming
+rivers, and her flower-spangled meadows will mingle with the last
+thoughts that glimmer through his brain, when the shadows of the eternal
+night are falling and the ramble of life is done._
+
+
+     _W. W._
+
+     1892.
+
+
+
+          CONTENTS
+
+
+     Preface  To Illustrated Edition
+
+     Old  Preface
+
+     CHAPTER I.
+     The  Voyage
+
+     CHAPTER II.
+     Beauty Of England
+
+     CHAPTER III.
+     Great Historic Places
+
+     CHAPTER IV.
+     Rambles In London
+
+     CHAPTER V.
+     A Visit To Windsor
+
+     CHAPTER VI.
+     The Palace Of Westminster.
+
+     CHAPTER VII.
+     Warwick And Kenilworth
+
+     CHAPTER VIII.
+     First View Of Stratford-Upon-Avon
+
+     CHAPTER IX.
+     London Nooks And Corners
+
+     CHAPTER X.
+     Relics Of Lord Byron
+
+     CHAPTER XI.
+     Westminster Abbey
+
+     CHAPTER XII.
+     Shakespeare's Home
+
+     CHAPTER XIII.
+     Up to London
+
+     CHAPTER XIV.
+     Old Churches of London
+
+     CHAPTER XV.
+     Literary Shrines of London
+
+     CHAPTER XVI.
+     A Haunt Of Edmund Kean
+
+     CHAPTER XVII.
+     Stoke-Pogis and Thomas Gray
+
+     CHAPTER XVIII.
+     At The Grave of Coleridge
+
+     CHAPTER XIX.
+     On Barnet Battle-field
+
+     CHAPTER XX.
+     A Glimpse Of Canterbury
+
+     CHAPTER XXI.
+     The Shrines Of Warwickshire
+
+     CHAPTER XXII.
+     A Borrower of The Night
+
+
+
+          ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+     Portrait of William Winter--from a crayon by Arthur Jule Goodman
+
+     The Anchor Inn
+
+     Old House at Bridport
+
+     Restoration House, Rochester
+
+     Charing Cross
+
+     Kensington Palace
+
+     The Tower of London
+
+     Old Water Gate
+
+     Approach to Cheshire Cheese
+
+     St. Mary-le-Strand
+
+     Temple Church
+
+     Gower's Monument
+
+     Andrews's Monument
+
+     Old Tabard Inn, Southwark
+
+     Windsor Castle
+
+     St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle
+
+     Windsor Forest and Park
+
+     The Curfew Tower
+
+     The Sign of the Swan
+
+     Westminster Hall
+
+     The Mace
+
+     Greenwich Hospital
+
+     Queen Elizabeth's Cradle
+
+     Warwick Castle
+
+     Old Inn
+
+     Washington Irving's Parlour
+
+     From the Warwick Shield
+
+     Holy Trinity Church, Stratford
+
+     The Inglenook
+
+     Approach to Shottery
+
+     Distant View of Stratford
+
+     Whitehall Gateway
+
+     Lambeth Palace
+
+     Dulwich College
+
+     The Crown Inn, Dulwich
+
+     Oriel Window
+
+     From the Triforium, Westminster Abbey
+
+     Chapel of Henry VII.
+
+     Chapel of Edward the Confessor
+
+     The Poets' Corner
+
+     The North Ambulatory
+
+     The Spaniards, Hampstead
+
+     The Dome of St. Paul's
+
+     The Grange
+
+     Shakespeare's Birthplace
+
+     Anne Hathaway's Cottage
+
+     Charlecote
+
+     Meadow Walk by the Avon
+
+     Antique Font
+
+     Monument
+
+     Gable Window
+
+     Peveril Peak
+
+     St. Paul's, from Maiden Lane
+
+     The Charter-house
+
+     St. Giles', Cripplegate
+
+     Sir John Crosby's Monument
+
+     Gresham's Monument
+
+     Goldsmith's House
+
+     A Bit from Clare Court
+
+     Fleet Street in 1780
+
+     Gray's Inn Square
+
+     Stoke-Pogis Church
+
+     Old Church
+
+     The White Hart
+
+     Column on Barnet Battle-field
+
+     Farm-house
+
+     Falstaff Inn and West Gate, Canterbury
+
+     Butchery Lane, Canterbury
+
+     Flying-horse Inn, Canterbury
+
+     Canterbury Cathedral
+
+     Stratford-upon-Avon
+
+     Stratford Church
+
+     Washington Irving's Chair
+
+     The Stratford Memorial
+
+     Mary Arden's Cottage
+
+     Church of St. Martin
+
+     Westminster Abbey
+
+     Middle Temple Lane
+
+
+
+     _This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,_
+     _This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,_
+     _This other Eden, demi-paradise,_
+     _This fortress built by Nature for herself, . . ._
+     _This precious stone set in the silver sea, . . ._
+     _This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, . . ._
+     _This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,_
+     _Dear for her reputation through the world!_
+
+
+          SHAKESPEARE.
+
+
+          ------
+
+
+     _All that I saw returns upon my view;_
+     _All that I heard comes back upon my ear;_
+     _All that I felt this moment doth renew._
+
+     _Fair land! by Time's parental love made free,_
+     _By Social Order's watchful arms embraced,_
+     _With unexampled union meet in thee,_
+     _For eye and mind, the present and the past;_
+     _With golden prospect for futurity,_
+     _If that be reverenced which ought to last._
+
+
+          WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+
+
+SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE VOYAGE
+
+1887
+
+The coast-line recedes and disappears, and night comes down upon the
+ocean. Into what dangers will the great ship plunge? Through what
+mysterious waste of waters will she make her viewless path? The black
+waves roll up around her. The strong blast fills her sails and whistles
+through her creaking cordage. Overhead the stars shine dimly amid the
+driving clouds. Mist and gloom close in the dubious prospect, and a
+strange sadness settles upon the heart of the voyager--who has left his
+home behind, and who now seeks, for the first time, the land, the homes,
+and the manners of the stranger. Thoughts and images of the past crowd
+thick upon his remembrance. The faces of absent friends rise before him,
+whom, perhaps, he is destined nevermore to behold. He sees their smiles;
+he hears their voices; he fancies them by familiar hearth-stones, in the
+light of the evening lamps. They are very far away now; and already it
+seems months instead of hours since the parting moment. Vain now the
+pang of regret for misunderstandings, unkindness, neglect; for golden
+moments slighted and gentle courtesies left undone. He is alone upon the
+wild sea--all the more alone because surrounded with new faces of
+unknown companions--and the best he can do is to seek his lonely pillow
+and lie down with a prayer in his heart and on his lips. Never before
+did he so clearly know--never again will he so deeply feel--the
+uncertainty of human life and the weakness of human nature. Yet, as he
+notes the rush and throb of the vast ship and the noise of the breaking
+waves around her, and thinks of the mighty deep beneath, and the broad
+and melancholy expanse that stretches away on every side, he cannot miss
+the impression--grand, noble, and thrilling--of human courage, skill,
+and power. For this ship is the centre of a splendid conflict. Man and
+the elements are here at war; and man makes conquest of the elements by
+using them as weapons against themselves. Strong and brilliant, the
+head-light streams over the boiling surges. Lanterns gleam in the tops.
+Dark figures keep watch upon the prow. The officer of the night is at
+his post upon the bridge. Let danger threaten howsoever it may, it
+cannot come unawares; it cannot subdue, without a tremendous struggle,
+the brave minds and hardy bodies that are here arrayed to meet it. With
+this thought, perhaps, the weary voyager sinks to sleep; and this is his
+first night at sea.
+
+There is no tediousness of solitude to him who has within himself
+resources of thought and dream, the pleasures and pains of memory, the
+bliss and the torture of imagination. It is best to have few
+acquaintances--or none--on shipboard. Human companionship, at some
+times, and this is one of them, distracts by its pettiness. The voyager
+should yield himself to nature now, and meet his own soul face to face.
+The routine of everyday life is commonplace enough, equally upon sea and
+land. But the ocean is a continual pageant, filling and soothing the
+mind with unspeakable peace. Never, in even the grandest words of
+poetry, was the grandeur of the sea expressed. Its vastness, its
+freedom, its joy, and its beauty overwhelm the mind. All things else
+seem puny and momentary beside the life that this immense creation
+unfolds and inspires. Sometimes it shines in the sun, a wilderness of
+shimmering silver. Sometimes its long waves are black, smooth,
+glittering, and dangerous. Sometimes it seems instinct with a superb
+wrath, and its huge masses rise, and clash together, and break into
+crests of foam. Sometimes it is gray and quiet, as if in a sullen sleep.
+Sometimes the white mist broods upon it and deepens the sense of awful
+mystery by which it is forever enwrapped. At night its surging billows
+are furrowed with long streaks of phosphorescent fire; or, it may be,
+the waves roll gently, under the soft light of stars; or all the waste
+is dim, save where, beneath the moon, a glorious pathway, broadening out
+to the far horizon, allures and points to heaven. One of the most
+exquisite delights of the voyage, whether by day or night, is to lie
+upon the deck in some secluded spot, and look up at the tall, tapering
+spars as they sway with the motion of the ship, while over them the
+white clouds float, in ever-changing shapes, or the starry
+constellations drift, in their eternal march. No need now of books, or
+newspapers, or talk! The eyes are fed by every object they behold. The
+great ship, with all her white wings spread, careening like a tiny
+sail-boat, dips and rises, with sinuous, stately grace. The clank of her
+engines--fit type of steadfast industry and purpose--goes steadily on.
+The song of the sailors--"Give me some time to blow the man down"--rises
+in cheery melody, full of audacious, light-hearted thoughtlessness, and
+strangely tinged with the romance of the sea. Far out toward the horizon
+many whales come sporting and spouting along. At once, out of the
+distant bank of cloud and mist, a little vessel springs into view, and
+with convulsive movement--tilting up and down like the miniature barque
+upon an old Dutch clock--dances across the vista and vanishes into
+space. Soon a tempest bursts upon the calm; and then, safe-housed from
+the fierce blast and blinding rain, the voyager exults over the stern
+battle of winds and waters and the stalwart, undaunted strength with
+which his ship bears down the furious floods and stems the gale. By and
+by a quiet hour is given, when, met together with the companions of his
+journey, he stands in the hushed cabin and hears the voice of prayer and
+the hymn of praise, and, in the pauses, a gentle ripple of waves against
+the ship, which now rocks lazily upon the sunny deep; and, ever and
+anon, as she dips, he can discern through her open ports the shining sea
+and the wheeling and circling gulls that have come out to welcome her to
+the shores of the old world.
+
+
+The present writer, when first he saw the distant and dim coast of
+Britain, felt, with a sense of forlorn loneliness that he was a
+stranger; but when last he saw that coast he beheld it through a mist of
+tears and knew that he had parted from many cherished friends, from many
+of the gentlest men and women upon the earth, and from a land henceforth
+as dear to him as his own. England is a country which to see is to love.
+As you draw near to her shores you are pleased at once with the air of
+careless finish and negligent grace that everywhere overhangs the
+prospect. The grim, wind-beaten hills of Ireland have first been
+passed--hills crowned, here and there, with dark, fierce towers that
+look like strongholds of ancient bandit chiefs, and cleft by dim valleys
+that seem to promise endless mystery and romance, hid in their sombre
+depths. Passed also is white Queenstown, with its lovely little bay, its
+circle of green hillsides, and its valiant fort; and picturesque
+Fastnet, with its gaily painted tower, has long been left behind. It is
+off the noble crags of Holyhead that the voyager first observes with
+what a deft skill the hand of art has here moulded nature's luxuriance
+into forms of seeming chance-born beauty; and from that hour, wherever
+in rural England the footsteps of the pilgrim may roam, he will behold
+nothing but gentle rustic adornment, that has grown with the grass and
+the roses--greener grass and redder roses than ever we see in our
+western world! In the English nature a love of the beautiful is
+spontaneous, and the operation of it is as fluent as the blowing of the
+summer wind. Portions of English cities, indeed, are hard and harsh and
+coarse enough to suit the most utilitarian taste; yet even in those
+regions of dreary monotony the national love of flowers will find
+expression, and the people, without being aware of it, will, in many odd
+little ways, beautify their homes and make their surroundings pictorial,
+at least to stranger eyes. There is a tone of rest and homelike comfort
+even in murky Liverpool; and great magnificence is there--as well of
+architecture and opulent living as of enterprise and action. "Towered
+cities" and "the busy hum of men," however, are soon left behind by the
+wise traveller in England. A time will come for those; but in his first
+sojourn there he soon discovers the two things that are utterly to
+absorb him--which cannot disappoint--and which are the fulfilment of all
+his dreams. These things are--the rustic loveliness of the land and the
+charm of its always vital and splendid antiquity. The green lanes, the
+thatched cottages, the meadows glorious with wildflowers, the little
+churches covered with dark-green ivy, the Tudor gables festooned with
+roses, the devious footpaths that wind across wild heaths and long and
+lonesome fields, the narrow, shining rivers, brimful to their banks and
+crossed here and there with gray, moss-grown bridges, the stately elms
+whose low-hanging branches droop over a turf of emerald velvet, the
+gnarled beech-trees "that wreathe their old, fantastic roots so high,"
+the rooks that caw and circle in the air, the sweet winds that blow from
+fragrant woods, the sheep and the deer that rest in shady places, the
+pretty children who cluster round the porches of their cleanly, cosy
+homes, and peep at the wayfarer as he passes, the numerous and often
+brilliant birds that at times fill the air with music, the brief, light,
+pleasant rains that ever and anon refresh the landscape--these are some
+of the everyday joys of rural England; and these are wrapped in a
+climate that makes life one serene ecstasy. Meantime, in rich valleys or
+on verdant slopes, a thousand old castles and monasteries, ruined or
+half in ruins, allure the pilgrim's gaze, inspire his imagination,
+arouse his memory, and fill his mind. The best romance of the past and
+the best reality of the present are his banquet now; and nothing is
+wanting to the perfection of the feast. I thought that life could have
+but few moments of content in store for me like the moment--never to be
+forgotten!--when, in the heart of London, on a perfect June day, I lay
+upon the grass in the old Green Park, and, for the first time, looked up
+to the towers of Westminster Abbey.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND
+
+
+It is not strange that Englishmen should be--as certainly they
+are--passionate lovers of their country; for their country is, almost
+beyond parallel, peaceful, gentle, and beautiful. Even in vast London,
+where practical life asserts itself with such prodigious force, the
+stranger is impressed, in every direction, with a sentiment of repose
+and peace. This sentiment seems to proceed in part from the antiquity of
+the social system here established, and in part from the affectionate
+nature of the English people. Here are finished towns, rural regions
+thoroughly cultivated and exquisitely adorned; ancient architecture,
+crumbling in slow decay; and a soil so rich and pure that even in its
+idlest mood it lights itself up with flowers, just as the face of a
+sleeping child lights itself up with smiles. Here, also, are soft and
+kindly manners, settled principles, good laws, wise customs--wise,
+because rooted in the universal attributes of human nature; and, above
+all, here is the practice of trying to live in a happy condition instead
+of trying to make a noise about it. Here, accordingly, life is soothed
+and hallowed with the comfortable, genial, loving spirit of home. It
+would, doubtless, be easily possible to come into contact here with
+absurd forms and pernicious abuses, to observe absurd individuals, and
+to discover veins of sordid selfishness and of evil and sorrow. But the
+things that first and most deeply impress the observer of England and
+English society are their potential, manifold, and abundant sources of
+beauty, refinement, and peace. There are, of course, grumblers. Mention
+has been made of a person who, even in heaven, would complain that his
+cloud was damp and his halo a misfit. We cannot have perfection; but the
+man who could not be happy in England--in so far, at least, as happiness
+depends upon external objects and influences--could not reasonably
+expect to be happy anywhere.
+
+Summer heat is perceptible for an hour or two each day, but it causes no
+discomfort. Fog has refrained; though it is understood to be lurking in
+the Irish sea and the English channel, and waiting for November, when it
+will drift into town and grime all the new paint on the London houses.
+Meantime, the sky is softly blue and full of magnificent bronze clouds;
+the air is cool, and in the environs of the city is fragrant with the
+scent of new-mown hay; and the grass and trees in the parks--those
+copious and splendid lungs of London--are green, dewy, sweet, and
+beautiful. Persons "to the manner born" were lately calling the season
+"backward," and they went so far as to grumble at the hawthorne, as
+being less brilliant than in former seasons. But, in fact, to the
+unfamiliar sense, this tree of odorous coral has been delicious. We have
+nothing comparable with it in northern America, unless, perhaps, it be
+the elder, of our wild woods; and even that, with all its fragrance,
+lacks equal charm of colour. They use the hawthorne, or some kindred
+shrub, for hedges in this country, and hence their fields are seldom
+disfigured with fences. As you ride through the land you see miles and
+miles of meadow traversed by these green and blooming hedgerows, which
+give the country a charm quite incommunicable in words. The green of the
+foliage--enriched by an uncommonly humid air and burnished by the
+sun--is in perfection, while the flowers bloom in such abundance that
+the whole realm is one glowing pageant. I saw near Oxford, on the crest
+of a hill, a single ray of at least a thousand feet of scarlet poppies.
+Imagine that glorious dash of colour in a green landscape lit by the
+afternoon sun! Nobody could help loving a land that woos him with such
+beauty.
+
+English flowers are exceptional for substance and pomp. The roses, in
+particular--though some of them, it should be said, are of French
+breeds--surpass all others. It may seem an extravagance to say, but it
+is certainly true, that these rich, firm, brilliant flowers affect you
+like creatures of flesh and blood. They are, in this respect, only to be
+described as like nothing in the world so much as the bright lips and
+blushing cheeks of the handsome English women who walk among them and
+vie with them in health and loveliness. It is easy to perceive the
+source of those elements of warmth and sumptuousness that are so
+conspicuous in the results of English taste. It is a land of flowers.
+Even in the busiest parts of London the people decorate their houses
+with them, and set the sombre, fog-grimed fronts ablaze with scarlet and
+gold. These are the prevalent colours--radically so, for they have
+become national--and, when placed against the black tint with which this
+climate stains the buildings, they have the advantage of a vivid
+contrast that much augments their splendour. All London wears crape,
+variegated with a tracery of white, like lace upon a pall. In some
+instances the effect is splendidly pompous. There cannot be a grander
+artificial object in the world than the front of St. Paul's cathedral,
+which is especially notable for this mysterious blending of light and
+shade. It is to be deplored that a climate which can thus beautify
+should also destroy; but there can be no doubt that the stones of
+England are steadily defaced by the action of the damp atmosphere.
+Already the delicate carvings on the palace of Westminster are beginning
+to crumble. And yet, if one might judge the climate by this glittering
+July, England is a land of sunshine as well as of flowers. Light comes
+before three o'clock in the morning, and it lasts, through a dreamy and
+lovely gloaming, till nearly ten o'clock at night. The morning sky is
+usually light blue, dappled with slate-coloured clouds. A few large
+stars are visible then, lingering to outface the dawn. Cool winds
+whisper, and presently they rouse the great, sleepy, old elms; and then
+the rooks--which are the low comedians of the air in this region--begin
+to grumble; and then the sun leaps above the horizon, and we sweep into
+a day of golden, breezy cheerfulness and comfort, the like of which is
+rarely or never known in northern America, between June and October.
+Sometimes the whole twenty-four hours have drifted past, as if in a
+dream of light, and fragrance, and music. In a recent moonlight time
+there was scarce any darkness at all; and more than once I have lain
+awake all night, within a few miles of Charing Cross, listening to a
+twitter of birds that is like the lapse and fall of silver water. It
+used to be difficult to understand why the London season should begin in
+May and last through most of the summer; it is not difficult to
+understand the custom now.
+
+The elements of discontent and disturbance which are visible in English
+society are found, upon close examination, to be merely superficial.
+Underneath them there abides a sturdy, immutable, inborn love of
+England. Those croakings, grumblings, and bickerings do but denote the
+process by which the body politic frees itself from the headaches and
+fevers that embarrass the national health. The Englishman and his
+country are one; and when the Englishman complains against his country
+it is not because he believes that either there is or can be a better
+country elsewhere, but because his instinct of justice and order makes
+him crave perfection in his own. Institutions and principles are, with
+him, by nature, paramount to individuals; and individuals only possess
+importance--and that conditional on abiding rectitude--who are their
+representatives. Everything is done in England to promote the permanence
+and beauty of the home; and the permanence and beauty of the home, by a
+natural reaction, augment in the English people solidity of character
+and peace of life. They do not dwell in a perpetual fret and fume as to
+the acts, thoughts, and words of other nations: for the English there is
+absolutely no public opinion outside of their own land: they do not live
+for the sake of working, but they work for the sake of living; and, as
+the necessary preparations for living have long since been completed,
+their country is at rest. This is the secret of England's first, and
+continuous, and last, and all-pervading charm and power for the
+stranger--the charm and power to soothe.
+
+The efficacy of endeavouring to make a country a united, comfortable,
+and beautiful home for all its inhabitants,--binding every heart to the
+land by the same tie that binds every heart to the fireside,--is
+something well worthy to be considered, equally by the practical
+statesman and the contemplative observer. That way, assuredly, lie the
+welfare of the human race and all the tranquillity that human
+nature--warped as it is by evil--will ever permit to this world. This
+endeavour has, through long ages, been steadily pursued in England, and
+one of its results--which is also one of its indications--is the vast
+accumulation of what may be called home treasures in the city of London.
+The mere enumeration of them would fill large volumes. The description
+of them could not be completed in a lifetime. It was this copiousness of
+historic wealth and poetic association, combined with the flavour of
+character and the sentiment of monastic repose, that bound Dr. Johnson
+to Fleet Street and made Charles Lamb such an inveterate lover of the
+town. Except it be to correct a possible insular narrowness there can be
+no need that the Londoner should travel. Glorious sights, indeed, await
+him, if he journeys no further away than Paris; but, aside from
+ostentation, luxury, gaiety, and excitement, Paris will give him nothing
+that he may not find at home.
+
+The great cathedral of Notre Dame will awe him; but not more than his
+own Westminster Abbey. The grandeur and beauty of the Madeleine will
+enchant him; but not more than the massive solemnity and stupendous
+magnificence of St. Paul's. The embankments of the Seine will satisfy
+his taste with their symmetrical solidity; but he will not deem them
+superior in any respect to the embankments of the Thames. The Pantheon,
+the Hotel des Invalides, the Luxembourg, the Louvre, the Tribunal of
+Commerce, the Opera-House,--all these will dazzle and delight his eyes,
+arousing his remembrances of history and firing his imagination of great
+events and persons; but all these will fail to displace in his esteem
+the grand Palace of Westminster, so stately in its simplicity, so strong
+in its perfect grace! He will ride through the exquisite Park of
+Monceau,--one of the loveliest spots in Paris,--and onward to the Bois
+de Boulogne, with its sumptuous pomp of foliage, its romantic green
+vistas, its many winding avenues, its hillside hermitage, its cascades,
+and its affluent lakes whereon the white swans beat the water with their
+joyous wings; but still his soul will turn, with unshaken love and loyal
+preference to the sweetly sylvan solitude of the gardens of Kensington
+and Kew. He will marvel in the museums of the Louvre, the Luxembourg,
+and Cluny; and probably he will concede that of paintings, whether
+ancient or modern, the French display is larger and finer than the
+English; but he will vaunt the British Museum as peerless throughout the
+world, and he will still prize his National Gallery, with its originals
+of Hogarth, Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Turner, its spirited, tender,
+and dreamy Murillos, and its dusky glories of Rembrandt. He will admire,
+at the Theatre Francais, the photographic perfection of French acting;
+but he will be apt to reflect that English dramatic art, if it sometimes
+lacks finish, often has the effect of nature; and he will certainly
+perceive that the playhouse itself is not superior to either Her
+Majesty's Theatre or Covent Garden. He will luxuriate in the Champs
+Elysees, in the superb Boulevards, in the glittering pageant of precious
+jewels that blazes in the Rue de la Paix and the Palais Royal, and in
+that gorgeous panorama of shop-windows for which the French capital is
+unrivalled and famous; and he will not deny that, as to brilliancy of
+aspect, Paris is prodigious and unequalled--the most radiant of
+cities--the sapphire in the crown of Solomon. But, when all is seen,
+either that Louis the Fourteenth created or Buonaparte pillaged,--when
+he has taken his last walk in the gardens of the Tuileries, and mused,
+at the foot of the statue of Caesar, on that Titanic strife of monarchy
+and democracy of which France has seemed destined to be the perpetual
+theatre,--sated with the glitter of showy opulence and tired with the
+whirl of frivolous life he will gladly and gratefully turn again to his
+sombre, mysterious, thoughtful, restful old London; and, like the Syrian
+captain, though in the better spirit of truth and right, declare that
+Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, are better than all the waters of
+Israel.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+GREAT HISTORIC PLACES
+
+
+There is so much to be seen in London that the pilgrim scarcely knows
+where to choose and certainly is perplexed by what Dr. Johnson called
+"the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness." One spot to which I have
+many times been drawn, and which the mention of Dr. Johnson instantly
+calls to mind, is the stately and solemn place in Westminster Abbey
+where that great man's ashes are buried. Side by side, under the
+pavement of the Abbey, within a few feet of earth, sleep Johnson,
+Garrick, Sheridan, Henderson, Dickens, Cumberland, and Handel. Garrick's
+wife is buried in the same grave with her husband. Close by, some brass
+letters on a little slab in the stone floor mark the last resting-place
+of Thomas Campbell. Not far off is the body of Macaulay; while many a
+stroller through the nave treads upon the gravestone of that astonishing
+old man Thomas Parr, who lived in the reigns of nine princes
+(1483-1635), and reached the great age of 152. All parts of Westminster
+Abbey impress the reverential mind. It is an experience very strange and
+full of awe suddenly to find your steps upon the sepulchres of such
+illustrious men as Burke, Pitt, Fox, and Grattan; and you come, with a
+thrill of more than surprise, upon such still fresh antiquity as the
+grave of Anne Neville, the daughter of Warwick and queen of Richard the
+Third. But no single spot in the great cathedral can so enthral the
+imagination as that strip of storied stone beneath which Garrick,
+Johnson, Sheridan, Henderson, Cumberland, Dickens, Macaulay, and Handel
+sleep, side by side. This writer, when lately he visited the Abbey,
+found a chair upon the grave of Johnson, and sat down there to rest and
+muse. The letters on the stone are fast wearing away; but the memory of
+that sturdy champion of thought can never perish, as long as the
+votaries of literature love their art and honour the valiant genius that
+battled--through hunger, toil, and contumely--for its dignity and
+renown. It was a tender and right feeling that prompted the burial of
+Johnson close beside Garrick. They set out together to seek their
+fortune in the great city. They went through privation and trial hand in
+hand. Each found glory in a different way; and, although parted
+afterward by the currents of fame and wealth, they were never sundered
+in affection. It was fit they should at last find their rest together,
+under the most glorious roof that greets the skies of England.
+
+Fortune gave me a good first day at the Tower of London. The sky
+lowered. The air was very cold. The wind blew with angry gusts. The rain
+fell, now and then, in a chill drizzle. The river was dark and sullen.
+If the spirits of the dead come back to haunt any place they surely come
+back to haunt that one; and this was a day for their presence. One dark
+ghost seemed near, at every step--the ominous shade of the lonely Duke
+of Gloster. The little room in which the princes are said to have been
+murdered, by his command, was shown, and the oratory where king Henry
+the Sixth is supposed to have met a violent death, and the council
+chamber, in which Richard--after listening, in an ambush behind the
+arras--denounced the wretched Hastings. The latter place is now used as
+an armoury; but the same ceiling covers it that echoed the bitter
+invective of Gloster and the rude clamour of his soldiers, when their
+frightened victim was plucked forth and dragged downstairs, to be
+beheaded on "a timber-log" in the courtyard. The Tower is a place for
+such deeds, and you almost wonder that they do not happen still, in its
+gloomy chambers. The room in which the princes were killed (if killed
+indeed they were) is particularly grisly in aspect. It is an inner room,
+small and dark. A barred window in one of its walls fronts a window on
+the other side of the passage by which you approach it. This is but a
+few feet from the floor, and perhaps the murderers paused to look
+through it as they went to their hellish work upon the children of king
+Edward. The entrance was indicated to a secret passage by which this
+apartment could be approached from the foot of the Tower. In one gloomy
+stone chamber the crown jewels are exhibited, in a large glass case. One
+of the royal relics is a crown of velvet and gold that was made for poor
+Anne Boleyn. You may pass across the courtyard and pause on the spot
+where that miserable woman was beheaded, and you may walk thence over
+the ground that her last trembling footsteps traversed, to the round
+tower in which, at the close, she lived. Her grave is in the chancel of
+the little antique church, close by. I saw the cell of Raleigh, and that
+direful chamber which is scrawled all over with the names and emblems of
+prisoners who therein suffered confinement and lingering agony, nearly
+always ending in death; but I saw no sadder place than Anne Boleyn's
+tower. It seemed in the strangest way eloquent of mute suffering. It
+seemed to exhale grief and to plead for love and pity. Yet--what woman
+ever had greater love than was lavished on her? And what woman ever
+trampled more royally and recklessly upon human hearts?
+
+The Tower of London is degraded by being put to commonplace uses and by
+being exhibited in a commonplace manner. They use the famous White Tower
+now as a store-house for arms, and it contains about one hundred
+thousand guns, besides a vast collection of old armour and weapons. The
+arrangement of the latter was made by J. R. Planche, the dramatic
+author,--famous as an antiquarian and a herald. [That learned, able,
+brilliant, and honoured gentleman died, May 29, 1880, aged 84.] Under
+his tasteful direction the effigies and gear of chivalry are displayed
+in such a way that the observer may trace the changes that war fashions
+have undergone, through the reigns of successive sovereigns of England,
+from the earliest period until now. A suit of mail worn by Henry the
+Eighth is shown, and also a suit worn by Charles the First. The
+suggestiveness of both figures is remarkable. In a room on the second
+floor of the White Tower they keep many gorgeous oriental weapons, and
+they show the cloak in which General Wolfe died, on the Plains of
+Abraham. It is a gray garment, to which the active moth has given a
+share of his assiduous attention. The most impressive objects to be seen
+there, however, are the block and axe that were used in beheading the
+Scotch lords, Kilmarnock, Balmerino, and Lovat, after the defeat of the
+pretender, in 1746. The block is of ash, and there are big and cruel
+dents upon it, showing that it was made for use rather than ornament. It
+is harmless enough now, and this writer was allowed to place his head
+upon it, in the manner prescribed for the victims of decapitation. The
+door of Raleigh's bedroom is opposite to these baleful relics, and it is
+said that his _History of the World _was written in the room in which
+these implements are now such conspicuous objects of gloom.[1] The place
+is gloomy and cheerless beyond expression, and great must have been the
+fortitude of the man who bore, in that grim solitude, a captivity of
+thirteen years--not failing to improve it by producing a book so
+excellent for quaintness, philosophy, and eloquence. A "beef-eater,"
+arrayed in a dark tunic, trousers trimmed with red, and a black velvet
+hat adorned with bows of blue and red ribbon, precedes each group of
+visitors, and drops information and the letter h, from point to point.
+The centre of what was once the Tower green is marked with a brass
+plate, naming Anne Boleyn and giving the date when she was there
+beheaded. They found her body in an elm-wood box, made to hold arrows,
+and it now rests, with the ashes of other noble sufferers, under the
+stones of the church of St. Peter, about fifty feet from the place of
+execution. The ghost of Anne Boleyn is said to haunt that part of the
+Tower where she lived, and it is likewise whispered that the spectre of
+Lady Jane Grey was seen, not long ago, on the anniversary of the day of
+her execution [Obiit February 12, 1554], to glide out upon a balcony
+adjacent to the room in which she lodged during nearly eight months, at
+the last of her wasted, unfortunate, but gentle and noble life. [That
+room was in the house of Thomas Brydges, brother and deputy of Sir John
+Brydges, Lieutenant of the Tower, and its windows command an
+unobstructed view of the Tower green, which was the place of the block.]
+It could serve no good purpose to relate the particulars of those
+visitations; but nobody doubts them--while he is in the Tower. It is a
+place of mystery and horror, notwithstanding all that the practical
+spirit of to-day has done to make it trivial and to cheapen its grim
+glories by association with the commonplace.
+
+[1] Many of these relics have since been disposed in a different
+way.--Raleigh was incarcerated in various parts of the Tower, in the
+course of his several imprisonments.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+RAMBLES IN LONDON
+
+
+All old cities get rich in association, as a matter of course and
+whether they will or no; but London, by reason of its great extent, as
+well as its great antiquity, is richer in association than any modern
+place on earth. The stranger scarcely takes a step without encountering
+a new object of interest. The walk along the Strand and Fleet Street, in
+particular, is continually on storied ground. Old Temple Bar still
+stands (July 1877), though "tottering to its fall," and marks the
+junction of the two streets. The statues of Charles the First and
+Charles the Second on its western front would be remarkable anywhere, as
+characteristic portraits. You stand beside that arch and quite forget
+the passing throng, and take no heed of the tumult around, as you think
+of Johnson and Boswell leaning against the Bar after midnight in the
+far-off times and waking the echoes of the Temple Garden with their
+frolicsome laughter. The Bar is carefully propped now, and they will
+nurse its age as long as they can; but it is an obstruction to
+travel--and it must disappear. (It was removed in the summer of 1878.)
+They will probably set it up, newly built, in another place. They have
+left untouched a little piece of the original scaffolding built around
+St. Paul's; and that fragment of decaying wood may still be seen, high
+upon the side of the cathedral. The Rainbow, the Mitre, the Cheshire
+Cheese, Dolly's Chop-House, the Cock, and the Round Table--taverns or
+public-houses that were frequented by the old wits--are still extant
+(1877). The Cheshire Cheese is scarcely changed from what it was when
+Johnson, Goldsmith, and their comrades ate beefsteak pie and drank
+porter there, and the Doctor "tossed and gored several persons," as it
+was his cheerful custom to do. The benches in that room are narrow,
+incommodious, penitential; mere ledges of well-worn wood, on which the
+visitor sits bolt upright, in difficult perpendicular; but there is,
+probably, nothing on earth that would induce the owner to alter
+them--and he is right.
+
+Illustration: "Approach to Cheshire Cheese."
+
+The conservative principle in the English mind, if it has saved some
+trash, has saved more treasure. At the foot of Buckingham Street, in the
+Strand,--where was situated an estate of George Villiers, first Duke of
+Buckingham, assassinated in 1628, whose tomb may be seen in the chapel
+of Henry the Seventh in Westminster Abbey,--still stands the slowly
+crumbling ruin of the old Water Gate, so often mentioned as the place
+where accused traitors were embarked for the Tower. The river, in former
+times, flowed up to that gate, but the land along the margin of the
+Thames has been redeemed, and the magnificent Victoria and Albert
+embankments now border the river for a long distance on both sides. The
+Water Gate, in fact, stands in a little park on the north bank of the
+Thames. Not far away is the Adelphi Terrace, where Garrick lived and
+died (Obiit January 20, 1779, aged 63), and where, on October 1, 1822,
+his widow expired, aged 98. The house of Garrick is let in "chambers"
+now. If you walk up the Strand towards Charing Cross you presently come
+near to the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, which is one of the
+works of James Gibbs, a pupil of Sir Christopher Wren, and entirely
+worthy of the master's hand. The fogs have stained that building with
+such a deft touch as shows the caprice of nature to be often better than
+the best design of art. Nell Gwyn's name is connected with St. Martin.
+Her funeral occurred in that church, and was pompous, and no less a
+person than Tenison (afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury) preached the
+funeral sermon.[1]
+
+[1] This was made the occasion of a complaint against him, to Queen Mary,
+who gently expressed her unshaken confidence in his goodness and truth.
+
+Illustration: "Temple Church."
+
+That prelate's dust reposes in Lambeth church, which can be seen, across
+the river, from this part of Westminster. If you walk down the Strand,
+through Temple Bar, you presently reach the Temple; and there is no
+place in London where the past and the present are so strangely
+confronted as they are here. The venerable church, so quaint with its
+cone-pointed turrets, was sleeping in the sunshine when first I saw it;
+sparrows were twittering around its spires and gliding in and out of the
+crevices in its ancient walls; while from within a strain of organ
+music, low and sweet, trembled forth, till the air became a benediction
+and every common thought and feeling was purified away from mind and
+heart. The grave of Goldsmith is close to the pathway that skirts this
+church, on a terrace raised above the foundation of the building and
+above the little graveyard of the Templars that nestles at its base. As
+I stood beside the resting-place of that sweet poet it was impossible
+not to feel both grieved and glad: grieved at the thought of all he
+suffered, and of all that the poetic nature must always suffer before it
+will utter its immortal music for mankind: glad that his gentle spirit
+found rest at last, and that time has given him the crown he would most
+have prized--the affection of true hearts. A gray stone, coffin-shaped
+and marked with a cross,--after the fashion of the contiguous tombs of
+the Templars,--is imposed upon his grave.
+
+Illustration: "St. Mary-le-Strand--The Strand."
+
+One surface bears the inscription, "Here lies Oliver Goldsmith"; the
+other presents the dates of his birth and death. (Born Nov. 10, 1728;
+died April 4, 1774.) I tried to call up the scene of his burial, when,
+around the open grave, on that tearful April evening, Johnson, Burke,
+Reynolds, Beauclerk, Boswell, Davies, Kelly, Palmer, and the rest of
+that broken circle, may have gathered to witness
+
+     "The duties by the lawn-robed prelate paid,
+     And the last rites that dust to dust conveyed."
+
+No place could be less romantic than Southwark is now; but there are few
+places in England that possess a greater charm for the literary pilgrim.
+Shakespeare lived there, and it was there that he wrote for a theatre
+and made a fortune. Old London Bridge spanned the Thames at this point,
+in those days, and was the only road to the Surrey side of the river.
+The theatre stood near the end of the bridge and was thus easy of access
+to the wits and beaux of London. No trace of it now remains; but a
+public-house called the Globe, which was its name, is standing near, and
+the old church of St. Saviour--into which Shakespeare must often have
+entered--still braves the storm and still resists the encroachments of
+time and change. In Shakespeare's day there were houses on each side of
+London Bridge; and as he walked on the bank of the Thames he could look
+across to the Tower, and to Baynard Castle, which had been the residence
+of Richard, Duke of Gloster, and could see, uplifted high in air, the
+spire of old St. Paul's. The borough of Southwark was then but thinly
+peopled. Many of its houses, as may be seen in an old picture of the
+city, were surrounded by fields or gardens; and life to its inhabitants
+must have been comparatively rural. Now it is packed with buildings,
+gridironed with railways, crowded with people, and to the last degree
+resonant and feverish with action and effort. Life swarms, traffic
+bustles, and travel thunders all round the cradle of the British drama.
+The old church of St. Saviour alone preserves the sacred memory of the
+past. I made a pilgrimage to that shrine, with Arthur Sketchley (George
+Rose), one of the kindliest humourists in England. (Obiit November 13,
+1882.) We embarked at Westminster Bridge and landed close by the church
+in Southwark, and we were so fortunate as to get permission to enter it
+without a guide. The oldest part of it is the Lady chapel--which, in
+English cathedrals, is almost invariably placed behind the choir.
+Through this we strolled, alone and in silence. Every footstep there
+falls upon a grave. The pavement is one mass of gravestones; and through
+the tall, stained windows of the chapel a solemn light pours in upon the
+sculptured names of men and women who have long been dust. In one corner
+is an ancient stone coffin--a relic of the Roman days of Britain. This
+is the place in which Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, in the
+days of cruel Queen Mary, held his ecclesiastical court and doomed many
+a dissentient devotee to the rack and the fagot. Here was condemned John
+Rogers,--afterwards burnt at the stake, in Smithfield. Queen Mary and
+Queen Elizabeth may often have entered this chapel. But it is in the
+choir that the pilgrim pauses with most of reverence; for there, not far
+from the altar, he stands at the graves of Edmund Shakespeare, John
+Fletcher, and Philip Massinger.
+
+Illustration: "Gower's Monument."
+
+They apparently rest almost side by side, and only their names and the
+dates of their death are cut in the tablets that mark their sepulchres.
+Edmund Shakespeare, the younger brother of William, was an actor in his
+company, and died in 1607, aged twenty-seven. The great poet must have
+stood at that grave, and suffered and wept there; and somehow the lover
+of Shakespeare comes very near to the heart of the master when he stands
+in that place. Massinger was buried there, March 18, 1638,--the parish
+register recording him as "a stranger." Fletcher--of the Beaumont and
+Fletcher alliance--was buried there, in 1625: Beaumont's grave is in the
+Abbey. The dust of Henslowe the manager also rests beneath the pavement
+of St. Saviour's. Bishop Gardiner was buried there, with pompous
+ceremonial, in 1555,--but subsequently his remains were removed to the
+cathedral at Winchester. The great prelate Lancelot Andrews,
+commemorated by Milton, found his grave there, in 1626. The royal poet
+King James the First, of Scotland, was married there, in 1423, to Jane,
+daughter of the Earl of Somerset and niece of Cardinal Beaufort. In the
+south transept of the church is the tomb of John Gower, the old
+poet--whose effigy, carved and painted, reclines upon it and is not
+attractive. A formal, severe aspect he must have had, if he resembled
+that image. The tomb has been moved from the spot where it first
+stood--a proceeding made necessary by a fire that destroyed part of the
+old church. It is said that Gower caused the tomb to be erected during
+his lifetime, so that it might be in readiness to receive his bones. The
+bones are lost, but the memorial remains--sacred to the memory of the
+father of English song. This tomb was restored by the Duke of
+Sutherland, in 1832.
+
+Illustration: "Andrews Monument."
+
+It is enclosed by a little grill made of iron spears, painted brown and
+gilded at their points. I went into the new part of the church, and,
+alone, knelt in one of the pews and long remained there, overcome with
+thoughts of the past and of the transient, momentary nature of this our
+earthly life and the shadows that we pursue.
+
+One object of merriment attracts a passing glance in that old church.
+There is a tomb in a corner of it that commemorates Dr. Lockyer, a maker
+of patent physic, in the time of Charles the Second. This elaborate
+structure presents an effigy of the doctor, together with a sounding
+epitaph which declares that
+
+"His virtues and his pills are so well known
+That envy can't confine them under stone."
+
+Shakespeare once lived in Clink Street, in the borough of Southwark.
+Goldsmith practised medicine there. Chaucer came there, with his
+Canterbury Pilgrims, and lodged at the Tabard inn, which has
+disappeared. It must have been a romantic region in the old times. It is
+anything but romantic now.
+
+Illustration: "Hanging Lantern"
+
+Illustration: "Old Tabard Inn, Southwark."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+A VISIT TO WINDSOR
+
+
+If the beauty of England were only superficial it would produce only a
+superficial effect. It would cause a passing pleasure and would be
+forgotten. It certainly would not--as now in fact it does--inspire a
+deep, joyous, serene and grateful contentment, and linger in the mind, a
+gracious and beneficent remembrance. The conquering and lasting potency
+of it resides not alone in loveliness of expression but in loveliness of
+character. Having first greatly blessed the British islands with the
+natural advantages of position, climate, soil, and products, nature has
+wrought their development and adornment as a necessary consequence of
+the spirit of their inhabitants. The picturesque variety and pastoral
+repose of the English landscape spring, in a considerable measure, from
+the imaginative taste and the affectionate gentleness of the English
+people. The state of the country, like its social constitution, flows
+from principles within, which are constantly suggested, and it steadily
+comforts and nourishes the mind with a sense of kindly feeling, moral
+rectitude, solidity, and permanence.
+
+Illustration: "Windsor Castle."
+
+Thus in the peculiar beauty of England the ideal is made the actual--is
+expressed in things more than in words, and in things by which words are
+transcended. Milton's "L'Allegro," fine as it is, is not so fine as the
+scenery--the crystallised, embodied poetry--out of which it arose. All
+the delicious rural verse that has been written in England is only the
+excess and superflux of her own poetic opulence: it has rippled from the
+hearts of her poets just as the fragrance floats away from her hawthorn
+hedges. At every step of his progress the pilgrim through English scenes
+is impressed with this sovereign excellence of the accomplished fact, as
+contrasted with any words that can be said in its celebration.
+
+Among representative scenes that are eloquent with this instructive
+meaning,--scenes easily and pleasurably accessible to the traveller in
+what Dickens expressively called "the green, English summer
+weather,"--is the region of Windsor. The chief features of it have often
+been described; the charm that it exercises can only be suggested. To
+see Windsor, moreover, is to comprehend as at a glance the old feudal
+system, and to feel in a profound and special way the pomp of English
+character and history. More than this: it is to rise to the ennobling
+serenity that always accompanies broad, retrospective contemplation of
+the current of human affairs. In this quaint, decorous town--nestled at
+the base of that mighty and magnificent castle which has been the home
+of princes for more than five hundred years--the imaginative mind
+wanders over vast tracts of the past and beholds as in a mirror the
+pageants of chivalry, the coronations of kings, the strife of sects, the
+battles of armies, the schemes of statesmen, the decay of transient
+systems, the growth of a rational civilisation, and the everlasting
+march of thought. Every prospect of the region intensifies this
+sentiment of contemplative grandeur. As you look from the castle walls
+your gaze takes in miles and miles of blooming country, sprinkled over
+with little hamlets, wherein the utmost stateliness of learning and rank
+is gracefully commingled with all that is lovely and soothing in rural
+life. Not far away rise the "antique towers" of Eton--
+
+     "Where grateful science still adores
+     Her Henry's holy shade."
+
+It was in Windsor Castle that her Henry was born; and there he often
+held his court; and it is in St. George's chapel that his ashes repose.
+In the dim distance stands the church of Stoke-Pogis, about which Gray
+used to wander,
+
+     "Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade."
+
+You recognise now a deeper significance than ever before in the "solemn
+stillness" of the incomparable Elegy. The luminous twilight mood of that
+immortal poem--its pensive reverie and solemn passion--is inherent in
+the scene; and you feel that it was there, and there only, that the
+genius of its exceptional author--austerely gentle and severely pure,
+and thus in perfect harmony with its surroundings--could have been moved
+to that sublime strain of inspiration and eloquence. Near at hand, in
+the midst of your reverie, the mellow organ sounds from the chapel of
+St. George, where, under "fretted vault" and over "long-drawn aisle,"
+depend the ghostly, mouldering banners of ancient knights--as still as
+the bones of the dead-and-gone monarchs that crumble in the crypt below.
+
+Illustration: "St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle."
+
+In this church are many of the old kings and nobles of England. The
+handsome and gallant Edward the Fourth here found his grave; and near it
+is that of the accomplished Hastings--his faithful friend, to the last
+and after. Here lies the dust of the stalwart, impetuous, and savage
+Henry the Eighth, and here, at midnight, by the light of torches, they
+laid beneath the pavement the mangled body of Charles the First. As you
+stand on Windsor ramparts, pondering thus upon the storied past and the
+evanescence of "all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave," your eyes
+rest dreamily on green fields far below, through which, under tall elms,
+the brimming and sparkling river flows on without a sound, and in which
+a few figures, dwarfed by distance, flit here and there, in seeming
+aimless idleness; while, warned homeward by impending sunset, the
+chattering birds circle and float around the lofty towers of the castle;
+and delicate perfumes of seringa and jasmine are wafted up from dusky,
+unknown depths at the base of its ivied steep. At such an hour I stood
+on those ramparts and saw the shy villages and rich meadows of fertile
+Berkshire, all red and golden with sunset light; and at such an hour I
+stood in the lonely cloisters of St. George's chapel, and heard the
+distant organ sob, and saw the sunlight fade up the gray walls, and felt
+and knew the sanctity of silence. Age and death have made this church
+illustrious; but the spot itself has its own innate charm of mystical
+repose.
+
+     "No use of lanterns; and in one place lay
+     Feathers and dust to-day and yesterday."
+
+Illustration: "Windsor Forest and Park."
+
+The drive from the front of Windsor Castle is through a broad and
+stately avenue, three miles in length, straight as an arrow and level as
+a standing pool; and this white highway through the green and fragrant
+sod is sumptuously embowered, from end to end, with double rows of
+magnificent elms and oaks. The Windsor avenue, like the splendid
+chestnut grove at Bushey Park, long famous among the pageants of rural
+England, has often been described. It is after leaving this that the
+rambler comes upon the rarer beauties of Windsor Park and Forest. From
+the far end of the avenue--where, in a superb position, the equestrian
+statue of King George the Third rises on its massive pedestal of natural
+rock,--the road winds away, through shaded dell and verdant glade, past
+great gnarled beeches and under boughs of elm, and yew, and oak, till
+its silver thread is lost in the distant woods. At intervals a sinuous
+pathway strays off to some secluded lodge, half hidden in foliage--the
+property of the Crown, and the rustic residence of a scion of the royal
+race. In one of those retreats dwelt poor old George the Third, in the
+days of his mental darkness; and the memory of the agonising king seems
+still to cast a shadow on the mysterious and melancholy house. They show
+you, under glass, in one of the lodge gardens, an enormous grapevine,
+owned by the Queen--a vine which, from its single stalwart trunk,
+spreads its teeming branches, laterally, more than a hundred feet in
+each direction. So come use and thrift, hand in hand with romance! Many
+an aged oak is passed, in your progress, round which, "at still
+midnight," Herne the Hunter might yet take his ghostly prowl, shaking
+his chain "in a most hideous and dreadful manner." The wreck of the
+veritable Herne's Oak, it is said, was rooted out, together with other
+ancient and decayed trees, in the time of George the Third, and in
+somewhat too literal fulfilment of his Majesty's misinterpreted command.
+
+Illustration: "The Curfew Tower."
+
+This great park is fourteen miles in circumference and contains nearly
+four thousand acres, and many of the youngest trees that adorn it are
+more than one hundred and fifty years old. Far in its heart you stroll
+by Virginia Water--an artificial lake, but faultless in its gentle
+beauty--and perceive it so deep and so breezy that a full-rigged
+ship-of-war, with armament, can navigate its wind-swept, curling
+billows. This lake was made by that sanguinary Duke of Cumberland who
+led the English forces at Culloden. In the dim groves that fringe its
+margin are many nests wherein pheasants are bred, to fall by the royal
+shot and to supply the royal table: those you may contemplate but not
+approach. At a point in your walk, sequestered and lonely, they have set
+up and skilfully disposed the fragments of a genuine ruined temple,
+brought from the remote East--relic perchance of "Tadmor's marble
+waste," and certainly a most solemn memorial of the morning twilight of
+time. Broken arch, storm-stained pillar, and shattered column are here
+shrouded with moss and ivy; and should you chance to see them as the
+evening shadows deepen and the evening wind sighs mournfully in the
+grass your fancy will not fail to drink in the perfect illusion that one
+of the stateliest structures of antiquity has slowly crumbled where now
+its fragments remain.
+
+"Quaint" is a descriptive epithet that has been much abused, but it may,
+with absolute propriety, be applied to Windsor. The devious little
+streets there visible, and the carved and timber-crossed buildings,
+often of great age, are uncommonly rich in the expressiveness of
+imaginative character. The emotions and the fancy, equally with the
+sense of necessity and the instinct of use, have exercised their
+influence and uttered their spirit in the shaping and adornment of the
+town. While it constantly feeds the eye--with that pleasing irregularity
+of lines and forms which is so delicious and refreshing--it quite as
+constantly nurtures the sense of romance that ought to play so large a
+part in our lives, redeeming us from the tyranny of the commonplace and
+intensifying all the high feelings and noble aspirations that are
+possible to human nature. England contains many places like Windsor;
+some that blend in even richer amplitude the elements of quaintness,
+loveliness, and magnificence. The meaning of them all is the same: that
+romance, beauty, and gentleness are forever vital; that their forces are
+within our souls, and ready and eager to find their way into our
+thoughts, actions, and circumstances, and to brighten for every one of
+us the face of every day; that they ought neither to be relegated to the
+distant and the past nor kept for our books and day-dreams alone;
+but--in a calmer and higher mood than is usual in this age of universal
+mediocrity, critical scepticism, and miscellaneous tumult--should be
+permitted to flow forth into our architecture, adornments, and customs,
+to hallow and preserve our antiquities, to soften our manners, to give
+us tranquillity, patience, and tolerance, to make our country loveable
+for our own hearts, and so to enable us to bequeath it, sure of love and
+reverence, to succeeding ages.
+
+Illustration: "The Sign of the Swan."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER
+
+
+The American who, having been a careful and interested reader of English
+history, visits London for the first time, half expects to find the
+ancient city in a state of mild decay; and consequently he is a little
+startled at first, upon realising that the present is quite as vital as
+ever the past was, and that London antiquity is, in fact, swathed in the
+robes of everyday action and very much alive. When, for example, you
+enter Westminster Hall--"the great hall of William Rufus"--you are
+beneath one of the most glorious canopies in the world--one that was
+built by Richard the Second, whose grave, chosen by himself, is in the
+Abbey, just across the street from where you stand. But this old hall is
+now only a vestibule to the palace of Westminster. The Lords and the
+Commons of England, on their way to the Houses of Parliament, pass every
+day over the spot on which Charles the First was tried and condemned,
+and on which occurred the trial of Warren Hastings.
+
+Illustration: "Westminster Hall."
+
+It is a mere thoroughfare--glorious though it be, alike in structure and
+historic renown. The Palace Yard, near by, was the scene of the
+execution of Sir Walter Raleigh. In Bishopsgate Street stands Crosby
+House; the same to which, in Shakespeare's tragedy, the Duke of Gloster
+requests the retirement of Lady Anne. It is a restaurant now, and you
+may dine in the veritable throne-room of Richard the Third. The house of
+Cardinal Wolsey in Fleet Street is now a shop. Milton once lived in
+Golden Lane, and Golden Lane was a sweet and quiet spot. It is a dingy
+and dismal street now, and the visitor is glad to get out of it. To-day
+makes use of yesterday, all the world over. It is not in London,
+certainly, that you find anything--except old churches--mouldering in
+silence, solitude, and neglect.
+
+Those who see every day during the Parliamentary session the mace
+that is borne through the lobby of the House of Commons, although they
+are obliged, on every occasion, to uncover as it passes, do not,
+probably, view that symbol with much interest. Yet it is the same mace
+that Oliver Cromwell insulted[1] when he dissolved the Parliament and
+cried out, "Take away that bauble!"
+
+[1] An error. The House of Commons has had three maces. The first one
+disappeared after the judicial slaughter of Charles the First. The
+Cromwell mace was carried to the island of Jamaica, and is there
+preserved in a museum at Kingston. The third is the one now in use.
+
+Illustration: "The Mace."
+
+I saw it one day, on its passage to the table of the Commons, and was
+glad to remove the hat of respect to what it signifies--the power and
+majesty of the free people of England. The Speaker of the House was
+walking behind it, very grand in his wig and gown, and the members
+trooped in at his heels to secure their places by being present at the
+opening prayer. A little later I was provided with a seat, in a dim
+corner, in that august assemblage of British senators, and could observe
+at ease their management of the public business. The Speaker was on his
+throne; the mace was on its table; the hats of the Commons were on their
+heads; and over this singular, animated, impressive scene the waning
+light of a summer afternoon poured softly down, through the high,
+stained, and pictured windows of one of the most symmetrical halls in
+the world. It did not happen to be a day of excitement. The Irish
+members had not then begun to impede the transaction of business, for
+the sake of drawing attention to the everlasting wrongs of Ireland. Yet
+it was a lively day. Curiosity on the part of the Opposition and a
+respectful incertitude on the part of Her Majesty's ministers were the
+prevailing conditions. I had never before heard so many questions
+asked--outside of the French grammar--and asked to so little purpose.
+Everybody wanted to know, and nobody wanted to tell. Each inquirer took
+off his hat when he rose to ask, and put it on again when he sat down to
+be answered. Each governmental sphinx bared his brow when he emerged to
+divulge, and covered it again when he subsided without divulging. The
+superficial respect of these interlocutors for each other steadily
+remained, however, of the most deferential and considerate description;
+so that--without discourtesy--it was impossible not to think of Byron's
+"mildest mannered man that ever scuttled ship or cut a throat."
+Underneath this velvety, purring, conventional manner the observer could
+readily discern the fires of passion, prejudice, and strong antagonism.
+They make no parade in the House of Commons. They attend to their
+business. And upon every topic that is brought before their notice they
+have definite ideas, strong convictions, and settled purposes. The topic
+of Army Estimates upon this day seemed especially to arouse their
+ardour. Discussion of this was continually diversified by cries of "Oh!"
+and of "Hear!" and of "Order!" and sometimes those cries savoured more
+of derision than of compliment. Many persons spoke, but no person spoke
+well. An off-hand, matter-of-fact, shambling method of speech would seem
+to be the fashion in the British House of Commons. I remembered the
+anecdote that De Quincey tells, about Sheridan and the young member who
+quoted Greek. It was easy to perceive how completely out of place the
+sophomore orator would be, in that assemblage. Britons like better to
+make speeches than to hear them, and they will never be slaves to bad
+oratory. The moment a windy gentleman got the floor, and began to read a
+manuscript respecting the Indian Government, as many as forty Commons
+arose and noisily walked out of the House. Your pilgrim likewise hailed
+the moment of his deliverance and was glad to escape to the open air.
+
+Books have been written to describe the Palace of Westminster; but it is
+observable that this structure, however much its magnificence deserves
+commemorative applause, is deficient, as yet, in the charm of
+association. The old Palace of St. James, with its low, dusky walls, its
+round turrets, and its fretted battlements, is more impressive, because
+history has freighted it with meaning and time has made it beautiful.
+But the Palace of Westminster is a splendid structure. It covers eight
+acres of ground, on the bank of the Thames; it contains eleven
+quadrangles and five hundred rooms; and when its niches for statuary
+have been filled it will contain two hundred and twenty-six statues. The
+monuments in St. Stephen's Hall--into which you pass from Westminster
+Hall, which has been incorporated into the Palace and is its only
+ancient and therefore its most interesting feature--indicate, very
+eloquently, what a superb art gallery this will one day become. The
+statues are the images of Selden, Hampden, Falkland, Clarendon, Somers,
+Walpole, Chatham, Mansfield, Burke, Fox, Pitt, and Grattan. Those of
+Mansfield and Grattan present, perhaps, the most of character and power,
+making you feel that they are indubitably accurate portraits, and
+winning you by the charm of personality. There are statues, also, in
+Westminster Hall, commemorative of the Georges, William and Mary, and
+Anne; but it is not of these you think, nor of any local and everyday
+object, when you stand beneath the wonderful roof of Richard the Second.
+Nearly eight hundred years "their cloudy wings expand" above that
+fabric, and copiously shed upon it the fragrance of old renown. Richard
+the Second was deposed there: Cromwell was there installed Lord
+Protector of England: John Fisher, Sir Thomas More, and Strafford were
+there condemned: and it was there that the possible, if not usual,
+devotion of woman's heart was so touchingly displayed by her
+
+     "Whose faith drew strength from death,
+     And prayed her Russell up to God."
+
+No one can realise, without personal experience, the number and variety
+of pleasures accessible to the resident of London. These may not be
+piquant to him who has them always within his reach. I met with several
+residents of the British capital who had always intended to visit the
+Tower but had never done so. But to the stranger they possess a constant
+and keen fascination. The Derby this year [1877] was thought to be
+comparatively a tame race; but I know of one spectator who saw it from
+the top of the grand stand and who thought that the scene it presented
+was wonderfully brilliant. The sky had been overcast with dull clouds
+till the moment when the race was won; but just as Archer, rising in his
+saddle, lifted his horse forward and gained the goal alone, the sun
+burst forth and shed upon the downs a sheen of gold, and lit up all the
+distant hills, and all the far-stretching roads that wind away from the
+region of Epsom like threads of silver through the green.
+Carrier-pigeons were instantly launched off to London, with the news of
+the victory of Silvio. There was one winner on the grand stand who had
+laid bets on Silvio, for no other reason than because that horse bore
+the prettiest name in the list. The Derby, like Christmas, comes but
+once a year; but other allurements are almost perennial.
+
+Illustration: "Greenwich Hospital."
+
+Greenwich, for instance, with its white-bait dinner, invites the epicure
+during the best part of the London season. A favourite tavern is the
+Trafalgar--in which each room is named after some magnate of the old
+British navy; and Nelson, Hardy, and Rodney are household words. Another
+cheery place of resort is The Ship. The Hospitals are at Greenwich that
+Dr. Johnson thought to be too fine for a charity; and back of
+these--which are ordinary enough now, in comparison with modern
+structures erected for a kindred purpose--stands the famous Observatory
+that keeps time for Europe. This place is hallowed also by the grave of
+Clive and by that of Wolfe--to the latter of whom, however, there is a
+monument in Westminster Abbey. Greenwich makes one think of Queen
+Elizabeth, who was born there, who often held her court there, and who
+often sailed thence, in her barge, up the river to Richmond--her
+favourite retreat and the scene of her last days and her pathetic death.
+Few spots can compare with Richmond, in brilliancy of landscape. That
+place--the Shene of old times--was long a royal residence. The woods and
+meadows that you see from the terrace of the Star and Garter
+tavern--spread upon a rolling plain as far as the eye can reach--sparkle
+like emeralds; and the Thames, dotted with little toy-like boats, shines
+with all the deep lustre of the blackest onyx. Richmond, for those who
+honour genius and who love to walk in the footsteps of renown, is full
+of interest. Dean Swift once had a house there, the site of which is
+still indicated. Pope's rural home was in the adjacent village of
+Twickenham,--where it may still be seen. Horace Walpole's stately
+mansion of Strawberry Hill is not far off. The poet Thomson long resided
+at Richmond, in a house now used as an hospital, and there he died.
+Edmund Kean and the once famous Mrs. Yates rest beneath Richmond church,
+and there also are the ashes of Thomson. As I drove through the sweetly
+sylvan Park of Richmond, in the late afternoon of a breezy summer day,
+and heard the whispering of the great elms, and saw the gentle, trustful
+deer couched at ease in the golden glades, I heard all the while, in the
+still chambers of thought, the tender lament of Collins--which is now a
+prophecy fulfilled:
+
+     "Remembrance oft shall haunt the shore,
+          When Thames in summer wreaths is drest;
+     And oft suspend the dashing oar,
+          To bid his gentle spirit rest."
+
+Illustration: "Queen Elizabeth's Cradle."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+WARWICK AND KENILWORTH
+
+
+All the way from London to Warwick it rained; not heavily, but with a
+gentle fall. The gray clouds hung low over the landscape and softly
+darkened it; so that meadows of scarlet and emerald, the shining foliage
+of elms, gray turret, nestled cottage and limpid river were as
+mysterious and evanescent as pictures seen in dreams. At Warwick the
+rain had fallen and ceased, and the walk from the station to the inn was
+on a road--or on a footpath by the roadside--still hard and damp with
+the water it had absorbed. A fresh wind blew from the fields, sweet with
+the rain and fragrant with the odour of leaves and flowers. The streets
+of the ancient town--entered through an old Norman arch--were deserted
+and silent. It was Sunday when I first came to the country of
+Shakespeare; and over all the region there brooded a sacred stillness
+peculiar to the time and harmonious beyond utterance with the sanctity
+of the place. As I strive, after many days, to call back and to fix in
+words the impressions of that sublime experience, the same awe falls
+upon me now that fell upon me then. Nothing else upon earth--no natural
+scene, no relic of the past, no pageantry of the present--can vie with
+the shrine of Shakespeare, in power to impress, to humble, and to exalt
+the devout spirit that has been nurtured at the fountain of his
+transcendent genius.
+
+A fortunate way to approach Stratford-on-Avon is by Warwick and
+Kenilworth. Those places are not on a direct line of travel; but the
+scenes and associations that they successively present are such as
+assume a symmetrical order, increase in interest, and grow to a
+delightful culmination. Objects that Shakespeare himself must have seen
+are still visible there; and little by little, in contact with these,
+the pilgrim through this haunted region is mentally saturated with that
+atmosphere of serenity and romance in which the youth of Shakespeare was
+passed, and by which his works and his memory are embalmed. No one
+should come abruptly upon the poet's home. The mind needs to be prepared
+for the impression that awaits it; and in this gradual approach it finds
+preparation, both suitable and delicious. The luxuriance of the country,
+its fertile fields, its brilliant foliage, its myriads of wild-flowers,
+its pomp of colour and of physical vigour and bloom, do not fail to
+announce, to every mind, howsoever heedless, that this is a fit place
+for the birth and nurture of a great man. But this is not all. As you
+stroll in the quaint streets of Warwick, as you drive to Kenilworth, as
+you muse in that poetic ruin, as you pause in the old graveyard in the
+valley below, as you meditate over the crumbling fragments of the
+ancient abbey, at every step of the way you are haunted by a vague sense
+of an impending grandeur; you are aware of a presence that fills and
+sanctifies the scene. The emotion that is thus inspired is very
+glorious; never to be elsewhere felt; and never to be forgotten.
+
+Illustration: "Warwick Castle."
+
+The cyclopaedias and the guide-books dilate, with much particularity and
+characteristic eloquence, upon Warwick Castle and other great features
+of Warwickshire, but the attribute that all such records omit is the
+atmosphere; and this, perhaps, is rather to be indicated than described.
+The prevailing quality of it is a certain high and sweet solemnity--a
+feeling kindred with the placid, happy melancholy that steals over the
+mind, when, on a sombre afternoon in autumn, you stand in the
+churchyard, and listen, amid rustling branches and sighing grass, to the
+low music of distant organ and chanting choir. Peace, haunted by
+romance, dwells here, in reverie. The great tower of Warwick, based in
+silver Avon and pictured in its slumbering waters, seems musing upon the
+centuries over which it has watched, and full of unspeakable knowledge
+and thought. The dark and massive gateways of the town and the
+timber-crossed fronts of its antique houses live on in the same strange
+dream and perfect repose; and all along the drive to Kenilworth are
+equal images of rest--of a rest in which there is nothing supine or
+sluggish, no element of death or decay, but in which passion,
+imagination, beauty, and sorrow, seized at their topmost poise, seem
+crystallised in eternal calm. What opulence of splendid life is vital
+for ever in Kenilworth's crumbling ruin there are no words to say. What
+pomp of royal banners! what dignity of radiant cavaliers! what
+loveliness of stately and exquisite ladies! what magnificence of
+banquets! what wealth of pageantry! what lustre of illumination! The
+same festal music that the poet Gascoigne heard there, three hundred
+years ago, is still sounding on, to-day. The proud and cruel Leicester
+still walks in his vaulted hall. The imperious face of the Virgin Queen
+still from her dais looks down on plumed courtiers and jewelled dames;
+and still the moonlight, streaming through the turret-window, falls on
+the white bosom and the great, startled, black eyes of Amy Robsart,
+waiting for her lover. The gaze of the pilgrim, indeed, rests only upon
+old, gray, broken walls, overgrown with green moss and ivy, and pierced
+by irregular casements through which the sun shines, and the winds blow,
+and the rains drive, and the birds fly, amid utter desolation. But
+silence and ruin are here alike eloquent and awful; and, much as the
+place impresses you by what remains, it impresses you far more by what
+has vanished. Ambition, love, pleasure, power, misery, tragedy--these
+are gone; and being gone they are immortal. I plucked, in the garden of
+Kenilworth, one of the most brilliant red roses that ever grew; and as I
+pressed it to my lips I seemed to touch the lips of that superb,
+bewildering beauty who outweighed England's crown (at least in story),
+and whose spirit is the everlasting genius of the place.
+
+There is a row of cottages opposite to the ruins of the castle, in which
+contentment seems to have made her home. The ivy embowers them. The
+roses cluster around their little windows. The greensward slopes away,
+in front, from big, flat stones that are embedded in the mossy sod
+before their doors. Down in the valley, hard by, your steps stray
+through an ancient graveyard--in which stands the parish church, a
+carefully restored building of the eleventh century, with tower, and
+clock, and bell--and past a few fragments of the Abbey and Monastery of
+St. Mary, destroyed in 1538. At many another point, on the roads betwixt
+Warwick and Kenilworth and Stratford, I came upon such nests of cosy,
+rustic quiet and seeming happiness. They build their country houses low,
+in England, so that the trees overhang them, and the cool, friendly,
+flower-gemmed earth--parent, and stay, and bourne of mortal life--is
+tenderly taken into their companionship. Here, at Kenilworth, as
+elsewhere, at such places as Marlowe, Henley, Richmond, Maidenhead,
+Cookham, and the region round about Windsor, I saw many a sweet nook
+where tired life might be content to lay down its burden and enter into
+its rest. In all true love of country--a passion that seems to be more
+deeply felt in England than anywhere else upon the globe--there is love
+for the literal soil itself: and surely that sentiment in the human
+heart is equally natural and pious which inspires and perpetuates man's
+desire that where he found his cradle he may also find his grave.
+
+Illustration: "Old Inn."
+
+Under a cloudy sky and through a landscape still wet and shining with
+recent rain the drive to Stratford was a pleasure so exquisite that at
+last it became a pain. Just as the carriage reached the junction of the
+Warwick and Snitterfield roads a ray of sunshine, streaming through a
+rift in the clouds, fell upon the neighbouring hillside, scarlet with
+poppies, and lit the scene as with the glory of a celestial benediction.
+This sunburst, neither growing larger nor coming nearer, followed all
+the way to Stratford; and there, on a sudden, the clouds were lifted and
+dispersed, and "fair daylight" flooded the whole green countryside. The
+afternoon sun was still high in heaven when I alighted at the Red Horse
+and entered the little parlour of Washington Irving. They keep the room
+much as it was when he left it; for they are proud of his gentle genius
+and grateful for his commemorative words. In a corner stands [1877] the
+small, old-fashioned haircloth arm-chair in which he sat, on that night
+of memory and of musing which he has described in _The Sketch-Book. _A
+brass plate is affixed to it, bearing his name; and the visitor
+observes, in token of its age and service, that the hair-cloth of its
+seat is considerably worn and frayed. Every American pilgrim to
+Stratford sits in that chair; and looks with tender interest on the old
+fireplace; and reads the memorials of Irving that are hung upon the
+walls: and it is no small comfort there to reflect that our illustrious
+countryman--whose name will be remembered with honour, as long as
+literature is prized among men--was the first, in modern days, to
+discover the beauties and to interpret the poetry of the birthplace of
+Shakespeare.
+
+Illustration: "Washington Irving's Parlour."
+
+Illustration: "From the Warwick Shield."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD-ON-AVON
+
+
+Once again, as it did on that delicious summer afternoon which is for
+ever memorable in my life, the golden glory of the westering sun burns
+on the gray spire of Stratford church, and on the ancient graveyard
+below,--wherein the mossy stones lean this way and that, in sweet and
+orderly confusion,--and on the peaceful avenue of limes, and on the
+burnished water of silver Avon. The tall, pointed, many-coloured windows
+of the church glint in the evening light. A cool and fragrant wind is
+stirring the branches and the grass. The small birds, calling to their
+mates or sporting in the wanton pleasure of their airy life, are
+circling over the church roof or hiding in little crevices of its walls.
+On the vacant meadows across the river stretch away the long and level
+shadows of the pompous elms. Here and there, upon the river's brink, are
+pairs of what seem lovers, strolling by the reedy marge, or sitting upon
+the low tombs, in the Sabbath quiet. As the sun sinks and the dusk
+deepens, two figures of infirm old women, clad in black, pass with slow
+and feeble steps through the avenue of limes, and vanish around an angle
+of the church--that now stands all in shadow: and no sound is heard but
+the faint rustling of the leaves.
+
+Illustration: "Holy Trinity Church."
+
+Once again, as on that sacred night, the streets of Stratford are
+deserted and silent under the star-lit sky, and I am standing, in the
+dim darkness, at the door of the cottage in which Shakespeare was born.
+It is empty, dark, and still; and in all the neighbourhood there is no
+stir nor sign of life; but the quaint casements and gables of this
+haunted house, its antique porch, and the great timbers that cross its
+front are luminous as with a light of their own, so that I see them with
+perfect vision. I stand there a long time, and I know that I am to
+remember these sights for ever, as I see them now. After a while, with
+lingering reluctance, I turn away from this marvellous spot, and,
+presently passing through a little, winding lane, I walk in the High
+Street of the town, and mark, at the end of the prospect, the
+illuminated clock in the tower of the chapel of the Holy Cross. A few
+chance-directed steps bring me to what was New Place once, where
+Shakespeare died; and there again I pause, and long remain in
+meditation, gazing into the enclosed garden, where, under screens of
+wire, are certain strange fragments of lime and stone. These--which I do
+not then know--are the remains of the foundation of Shakespeare's house.
+The night wanes; and still I walk in Stratford streets; and by and by I
+am standing on the bridge that spans the Avon, and looking down at the
+thick-clustering stars reflected in its black and silent stream. At
+last, under the roof of the Red Horse, I sink into a troubled slumber,
+from which soon a strain of celestial music--strong, sweet, jubilant,
+and splendid--awakens me in an instant; and I start up in my bed--to
+find that all around me is still as death; and then, drowsily, far-off,
+the bell strikes three, in its weird and lonesome tower.
+
+Every pilgrim to Stratford knows, in a general way, what he will there
+behold. Copious and frequent description of its Shakespearean
+associations has made the place familiar to all the world. Yet these
+Shakespearean associations keep a perennial freshness, and are equally a
+surprise to the sight and a wonder to the soul. Though three centuries
+old they are not stricken with age or decay. The house in Henley Street,
+in which, according to accepted tradition, Shakespeare was born, has
+been from time to time repaired; and so it has been kept sound, without
+having been materially changed from what it was in Shakespeare's youth.
+The kind ladies, Miss Maria and Miss Caroline Chataway, who take care of
+it [1877], and with so much pride and courtesy show it to the visitor,
+called my attention to a bit of the ceiling of the upper chamber--the
+room of Shakespeare's birth--which had begun to droop, and had been
+skilfully secured with little iron laths. It is in this room that the
+numerous autographs are scrawled over the ceiling and walls. One side of
+the chimneypiece here is called "The Actor's Pillar," so richly is it
+adorned with the names of actors; Edmund Kean's signature being among
+them, and still legible. On one of the window-panes, cut with a diamond,
+is the name of "W. Scott"; and all the panes are scratched with
+signatures--making you think of Douglas Jerrold's remark on bad
+Shakespearean commentators, that they resemble persons who write on
+glass with diamonds, and obscure the light with a multitude of
+scratches. The floor of this room, uncarpeted and almost snow-white with
+much washing, seems still as hard as iron; yet its boards have been
+hollowed by wear, and the heads of the old nails that fasten it down
+gleam like polished silver.
+
+Illustration: "The Inglenook."
+
+You can sit in an antique chair, in a corner of this room, and think
+unutterable things. There is, certainly, no word that can even remotely
+suggest the feeling with which you are then overwhelmed. You can sit
+also in the room below, in the seat, in the corner of the wide
+fireplace, that Shakespeare himself must often have occupied. They keep
+but a few sticks of furniture in any part of the cottage. One room is
+devoted to Shakespearean relics--more or less authentic; one of which is
+a schoolboy's desk that was obtained from the old grammar-school in
+Church Street in which Shakespeare was once a pupil. At the back of the
+cottage, now isolated from contiguous structures, is a pleasant garden,
+and at one side is a cosy, luxurious little cabin--the home of order and
+of pious decorum--for the ladies who are custodians of the Shakespeare
+House. If you are a favoured visitor, you may receive from that garden,
+at parting, all the flowers, prettily mounted upon a sheet of paper,
+that poor Ophelia names, in the scene of her madness. "There's rosemary,
+that's for remembrance: and there is pansies, that's for thoughts:
+there's fennel for you, and columbines: there's rue for you: there's a
+daisy:--I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my
+father died."
+
+The minute knowledge that Shakespeare had of plants and flowers, and the
+loving appreciation with which he describes pastoral scenery, are
+explained to the rambler in Stratford, by all that he sees and hears.
+There is a walk across the fields to Shottery that the poet must often
+have taken, in the days of his courtship of Anne Hathaway. The path to
+this hamlet passes through pastures and gardens, necked everywhere with
+those brilliant scarlet poppies that are so radiant and so bewitching in
+the English landscape. To have grown up amid such surroundings, and,
+above all, to have experienced amid them the passion of love, must have
+been, for Shakespeare, the intuitive acquirement of ample and specific
+knowledge of their manifold beauties. It would be hard to find a sweeter
+rustic retreat than Anne Hathaway's cottage is, even now. Tall trees
+embower it; and over its porches, and all along its picturesque,
+irregular front, and on its thatched roof, the woodbine and the ivy
+climb, and there are wild roses and the maiden's blush. For the young
+poet's wooing no place could be fitter than this. He would always
+remember it with tender-joy.
+
+Illustration: "Approach to Shottery."
+
+They show you, in that cottage, an old settle, by the fireside, whereon
+the lovers may have sat together: it formerly stood outside the door:
+and in the rude little chamber next the roof an antique, carved
+bedstead, that Anne Hathaway once owned. This, it is thought, continued
+to be Anne's home for several years of her married life--her husband
+being absent in London, and sometimes coming down to visit her, at
+Shottery. "He was wont," says John Aubrey, the antiquary, writing in
+1680, "to go to his native country once a year." The last surviving
+descendant of the Hathaway family--Mrs. Baker--lives in the house now,
+and welcomes with homely hospitality the wanderers, from all lands, who
+seek--in a sympathy and reverence most honourable to human nature--the
+shrine of Shakespeare's love. There is one such wanderer who will never
+forget the farewell clasp of that kind woman's hand, and who has never
+parted with her gift of woodbine and roses from the porch of Anne
+Hathaway's cottage.
+
+In England it is living, more than writing about it, that is esteemed by
+the best persons. They prize good writing, but they prize noble living
+far more. This is an ingrained principle, and not an artificial habit,
+and this principle doubtless was as potent in Shakespeare's age as it is
+to-day. Nothing could be more natural than that this great writer should
+think less of his works than of the establishment of his home. He would
+desire, having won a fortune, to dwell in his native place, to enjoy the
+companionship and esteem of his neighbours, to participate in their
+pleasures, to help them in their troubles, to aid in the improvement and
+embellishment of the town, to deepen his hold upon the affections of all
+around him, and to feel that, at last, honoured and lamented, his ashes
+would be laid in the village church where he had worshipped--
+
+     "Among familiar names to rest,
+     And in the places of his youth."
+
+It was in 1597, twelve years after he went to London, that the poet
+began to buy property in Stratford, and it was about eight years after
+his first purchase that he finally settled there, at New Place. [J. O.
+Halliwell-Phillips says that it was in 1609: There is a record alleging
+that as late as that year Shakespeare still retained a residence in
+Clink Street, Southwark.] This mansion was altered by Sir Hugh Clopton,
+who owned it toward the middle of the eighteenth century, and
+it was destroyed by the Rev. Francis Gastrell, in 1759. The grounds,
+which have been reclaimed,--chiefly through the zeal of J. O.
+Halliwell-Phillips,--are laid out according to the model they are
+supposed to have presented when Shakespeare owned them. His lawn, his
+orchard, and his garden are indicated; and a scion of his mulberry is
+growing on the spot where that famous tree once flourished. You can see
+a part of the foundation of the old house. It was made of brick and
+timber, it seems to have had gables, and no doubt it was fashioned with
+the beautiful curves and broken lines of the Tudor architecture. They
+show, upon the lawn, a stone of considerable size, that surmounted its
+door. The site--still a central and commodious one--is on the corner of
+Chapel Street and Chapel Lane; and on the opposite corner stands now, as
+it has stood for eight hundred years, the chapel of the Holy Cross, with
+square, dark tower, fretted parapet, pointed casements, and Norman
+porch--one of the most romantic and picturesque little churches in
+England. It was easy, when musing on that storied spot, to fancy
+Shakespeare, in the gloaming of a summer day, strolling on the lawn,
+beneath his elms, and listening to the soft and solemn music of the
+chapel organ; or to think of him as stepping forth from his study, in
+the late and lonesome hours of the night, and pausing to "count the
+clock," or note the "exhalations whizzing in the air."
+
+The funeral train of Shakespeare, on that dark day when it moved from
+New Place to Stratford Church, had but a little way to go. The river,
+surely, must have seemed to hush its murmurs, the trees to droop their
+branches, the sunshine to grow dim--as that sad procession passed! His
+grave is under the gray pavement of the chancel, near the altar, and his
+wife and one of his daughters are buried beside him. The pilgrim who
+reads upon the gravestone those rugged lines of grievous entreaty and
+awful imprecation that guard the poet's rest feels no doubt that he is
+listening to his living voice--for he has now seen the enchanting beauty
+of the place, and he has now felt what passionate affection it can
+inspire. Feeling and not manner would naturally have prompted that
+abrupt, agonised supplication and threat. Nor does such a pilgrim doubt,
+when gazing on the painted bust, above the grave,--made by Gerard
+Jonson, stonecutter,--that he beholds the authentic face of Shakespeare.
+It is not the heavy face of the portraits that represent it. There is a
+rapt, transfigured quality in it, that those copies do not convey. It is
+thoughtful, austere, and yet benign. Shakespeare was a hazel-eyed man,
+with auburn hair, and the colours that he wore were scarlet and black.
+Being painted, and also being set up at a considerable height on the
+church wall, the bust does not disclose what is sufficiently perceptible
+in a cast from it--that it is the copy of a mask from the dead face. One
+of the cheeks is a little swollen and the tongue, slightly protruded, is
+caught between the lips. The idle theory that the poet was not a
+gentleman of consideration in his own time and place falls utterly and
+for ever from the mind when you stand at his grave. No man could have a
+more honourable or sacred place of sepulture; and while it illustrates
+the profound esteem of the community in which he lived it testifies to
+the religious character by which that esteem was confirmed. "I commend
+my soul into the hands of God, my Creator, hoping, and assuredly
+believing, through the only merits of Jesus Christ, my Saviour, to be
+made partaker of life everlasting." So said Shakespeare, in his last
+Will, bowing in humble reverence the mightiest mind--as vast and
+limitless in the power to comprehend as to express!--that ever wore the
+garments of mortality.[1]
+
+[1] It ought perhaps to be remarked that this prelude to Shakespeare's
+Will may not have been intended by him as a profession of faith, but may
+have been signed simply as a legal formula. His works denote a mind of
+high and broad spiritual convictions, untrammelled by creed or doctrine.
+His inclination, probably, was toward the Roman Catholic church, because
+of the poetry that is in it: but such a man as Shakespeare would have
+viewed all religious beliefs in a kindly spirit, and would have made no
+emphatic professions. The Will was executed on March 25, 1616. It covers
+three sheets of paper; it is not in Shakespeare's hand-writing, but each
+sheet bears his signature. It is in the British Museum.
+
+Once again there is a sound of organ music, very low and soft, in
+Stratford Church, and the dim light, broken by the richly stained
+windows, streams across the dusky chancel, filling the still air with
+opal haze and flooding those gray gravestones with its mellow radiance.
+Not a word is spoken; but, at intervals, the rustle of the leaves is
+audible in a sighing wind. What visions are these, that suddenly fill
+the region! What royal faces of monarchs, proud with power, or pallid
+with anguish! What sweet, imperial women, gleeful with happy youth and
+love, or wide-eyed and rigid in tearless woe! What warriors, with
+serpent diadems, defiant of death and hell! The mournful eyes of Hamlet;
+the wild countenance of Lear; Ariel with his harp, and Prospero with his
+wand! Here is no death! All these, and more, are immortal shapes; and he
+that made them so, although his mortal part be but a handful of dust in
+yonder crypt, is a glorious angel beyond the stars.
+
+Illustration: "Distant View of Stratford."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+LONDON NOOKS AND CORNERS
+
+
+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 of _Bleak
+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.[1] 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. squared 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.
+
+[1] That place has been renovated and is no longer a disgrace.
+
+ squared 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.
+
+Illustration: "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.
+
+Illustration: "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 his _Life 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 combined
+     Erase thy image, Mary, from my mind,
+     Or bid me hope from others to receive
+     The fond affection thou alone couldst give?
+     Ah no, my best beloved, thou still shalt be
+     My 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.
+
+Illustration: "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.
+
+Illustration: "The Crown Inn, Dulwich."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+RELICS OF LORD BYRON
+
+
+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.
+
+Illustration: "Oriel Window."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+WESTMINSTER ABBEY
+
+
+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."
+
+Illustration: "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.
+
+Illustration: "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.
+
+Illustration: "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.
+
+Illustration: "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's _Fortunes 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.
+
+Illustration: "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.
+
+Illustration: "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!
+
+Illustration: "Dome of St. Paul's"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+SHAKESPEARE'S HOME
+
+
+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.
+
+Illustration: "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.
+
+Illustration: "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,[1] Rogers, Thackeray, Kean, Tennyson, and Dickens are among the
+votaries there and thus recorded.
+
+[1] 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 beautiful _Sketch-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 in _As 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 hoarse
+     That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
+     Under 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,--
+
+                    "Daffodils
+     That come before the swallow dares, and take
+     The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
+     But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes
+     Or 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.
+
+Illustration: "Anne Hathaway's Cottage."
+
+The old foot-path across the fields to Shottery remains accessible.
+Wild-flowers are blooming along its margin. The gardens and meadows
+through which it winds are sprinkled with the gorgeous scarlet of the
+poppy. The hamlet of Shottery is less than a mile from Stratford,
+stepping toward the sunset; and there, nestled beneath the elms, and
+almost embowered in vines and roses, stands the cottage in which Anne
+Hathaway was wooed and won. This is even more antiquated in appearance
+than the birthplace of Shakespeare, and more obviously a relic of the
+distant past. It is built of wood and plaster, ribbed with massive
+timbers, and covered with a thatch roof. It fronts southward, presenting
+its eastern end to the road. Under its eaves, peeping through embrasures
+cut in the thatch, are four tiny casements, round which the ivy twines
+and the roses wave softly in the wind of June. The western end of the
+structure is higher than the eastern, and the old building, originally
+divided into two tenements, is now divided into three. In front of it is
+a straggling garden. There is a comfortable air of wildness, yet not of
+neglect, in its appointments and surroundings. The place is still the
+abode of labour and lowliness. Entering its parlour you see a stone
+floor, a wide fireplace, a broad, hospitable hearth, with cosy
+chimney-corners, and near this an old wooden settle, much decayed but
+still serviceable, on which Shakespeare may often have sat, with Anne at
+his side. The plastered walls of this room here and there reveal
+portions of an oak wainscot. The ceiling is low. This evidently was the
+farm-house of a substantial yeoman, in the days of Henry the Eighth. The
+Hathaways had lived in Shottery for forty years prior to Shakespeare's
+marriage. The poet, then undistinguished, had just turned eighteen,
+while his bride was nearly twenty-six, and it has been foolishly said
+that she acted ill in wedding her boy-lover. They were married in
+November, 1582, and their first child, Susanna, came in the following
+May. Anne Hathaway must have been a wonderfully fascinating woman, or
+Shakespeare would not so have loved her; and she must have loved him
+dearly--as what woman, indeed, could help it?--or she would not thus
+have yielded to his passion. There is direct testimony to the beauty of
+his person; and in the light afforded by his writings it requires no
+extraordinary penetration to conjecture that his brilliant mind,
+sparkling humour, tender fancy, and impetuous spirit must have made him,
+in his youth, a paragon of enchanters. It is not known where they lived
+during the first years after their marriage. Perhaps in this cottage at
+Shottery. Perhaps with Hamnet and Judith Sadler, for whom their twins,
+born in 1585, were named Hamnet and Judith. Her father's house assuredly
+would have been chosen for Anne's refuge, when presently (in 1585-86),
+Shakespeare was obliged to leave his wife and children, and go away to
+London to seek his fortune. He did not buy New Place till 1597, but it
+is known that in the meantime he came to his native town once every
+year. It was in Stratford that his son Hamnet died, in 1596. Anne and
+her children probably had never left the town. They show a bedstead and
+other bits of furniture, together with certain homespun sheets of
+everlasting linen, that are kept as heirlooms in the garret of the
+Shottery cottage. Here is the room that may often have welcomed the poet
+when he came home from his labours in the great city. It is a homely and
+humble place, but the sight of it makes the heart thrill with a strange
+and incommunicable awe. You cannot wish to speak when you are standing
+there. You are scarcely conscious of the low rustling of the leaves
+outside, the far-off sleepy murmur of the brook, or the faint fragrance
+of woodbine and maiden's-blush that is wafted in at the open casement
+and that swathes in nature's incense a memory sweeter than itself.
+
+Associations may be established by fable as well as by fact. There is
+but little reason to believe the legendary tale, first recorded by Rowe,
+that Shakespeare, having robbed the deer-park of Sir Thomas Lucy of
+Charlecote (there was not a park at Charlecote then, but there was one
+at Fullbrooke), was so severely persecuted by that magistrate that he
+was compelled to quit Stratford and shelter himself in London. Yet the
+story has twisted itself into all the lives of Shakespeare, and whether
+received or rejected has clung to the house of Charlecote. That noble
+mansion--a genuine specimen, despite a few modern alterations, of the
+architecture of Queen Elizabeth's time--is found on the west bank of the
+Avon, about three miles north-east from Stratford. It is a long,
+rambling, three-storied palace--as finely quaint as old St. James's in
+London, and not altogether unlike that edifice, in general
+character--with octagon turrets, gables, balustrades, Tudor casements,
+and great stacks of chimneys, so closed in by elms of giant growth that
+you can scarce distinguish it, through the foliage, till you are close
+upon it.
+
+Illustration: "Charlecote."
+
+It was erected in 1558 by Thomas Lucy, who in 1578 was Sheriff of
+Warwickshire, who was elected to the Parliaments of 1571 and 1584, and
+who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1565. The porch to this building
+was designed by John of Padua. There is a silly ballad in existence,
+idly attributed to Shakespeare, which, it is said, was found affixed to
+Lucy's gate, and gave him great offence. He must have been more than
+commonly sensitive to low abuse if he could have been annoyed by such a
+manifestly scurrilous ebullition of the blackguard and the
+blockhead,--supposing, indeed, that he ever saw it. The ballad,
+proffered as the work of Shakespeare, is a forgery. There is but one
+existing reason to think that the poet ever cherished a grudge against
+the Lucy family, and that is the coarse allusion to the "luces" which is
+found in the _Merry Wives of Windsor. _There was apparently, a second
+Sir Thomas Lucy, later than the Sheriff, who was more of the Puritanic
+breed, while Shakespeare evidently was a Cavalier. It is possible that
+in a youthful frolic the poet may have poached on Sheriff Lucy's
+preserves. Even so, the affair was trivial. It is possible, too, that in
+after years he may have had reason to dislike the ultra-Puritanical
+neighbour. Some memory of the tradition will, of course, haunt the
+traveller's thoughts as he strolls by Hatton Rock and through the
+villages of Hampton and Charlecote. But this discordant recollection is
+soon smoothed away by the peaceful loveliness of the ramble--past aged
+hawthorns that Shakespeare himself may have seen, and under the boughs
+of beeches, limes, and drooping willows, where every footstep falls on
+wild-flowers, or on a cool green turf that is softer than Indian silk
+and as firm and elastic as the sand of the sea-beaten shore. Thought of
+Sir Thomas Lucy will not be otherwise than kind, either, when the
+stranger in Charlecote church reads the epitaph with which the old
+knight commemorated his wife: "All the time of her Lyfe a true and
+faithfull servant of her good God; never detected of any crime or vice;
+in religion most sound; in love to her husband most faithfull and true.
+In friendship most constant. To what in trust was committed to her most
+secret; in wisdom excelling; in governing her House and bringing up of
+Youth in the feare of God that did converse with her most rare and
+singular; a great maintainer of hospitality; greatly esteemed of her
+betters; misliked of none unless the envious. When all is spoken that
+can be said, a Woman so furnished and garnished with Virtue as not to be
+bettered, and hardly to be equalled of any; as she lived most
+virtuously, so she dyed most godly. Set down by him that best did know
+what hath been written to be true. Thomas Lucy." A narrow formalist he
+may have been, and a severe magistrate in his dealings with scapegrace
+youths, and perhaps a haughty and disagreeable neighbour; but there is a
+touch of manhood, high feeling, and virtuous and self-respecting
+character in those lines, that instantly wins the response of sympathy.
+If Shakespeare really shot the deer of Thomas Lucy the injured gentleman
+had a right to feel annoyed. Shakespeare, boy or man, was not a saint,
+and those who so account him can have read his works to but little
+purpose. He can bear the full brunt of his faults. He does not need to
+be canonised.
+
+The ramble to Charlecote--one of the prettiest walks about
+Stratford--was, it may surely be supposed, often taken by Shakespeare.
+Many another ramble was possible to him and no doubt was made. He would
+cross the mill bridge (new in 1599), which spans the Avon a little way
+to the south of the church. A quaint, sleepy mill no doubt it
+was--necked with moss and ivy--and the gaze of Shakespeare assuredly
+dwelt on it with pleasure.
+
+Illustration: "Meadow Walk by the Avon."
+
+His footsteps may be traced, also, in fancy, to the region of the old
+college building, demolished in 1799, which stood in the southern part
+of Stratford, and was the home of his friend John Combe, factor of Fulke
+Greville, Earl of Warwick. Still another of his walks must have tended
+northward through Welcombe, where he was the owner of land, to the
+portly manor of Clopton, or to the home of William, nephew of
+John-a-Combe, which stood where the Phillips mansion stands now. On what
+is called the Ancient House, which stands on the west side of High
+Street, he may often have looked, as he strolled past to the Red Horse.
+That picturesque building, dated 1596, survives, notwithstanding some
+modern touches of rehabilitation, as a beautiful specimen of Tudor
+architecture in one at least of its most charming traits, the carved and
+timber-crossed gable. It is a house of three stories, containing
+parlour, sitting-room, kitchen, and several bedrooms, besides cellars
+and brew-shed; and when sold at auction, August 23, 1876, it brought
+L400. In that house was born John Harvard, who founded Harvard
+University. There are other dwellings fully as old in Stratford, but
+they have been covered with stucco and otherwise changed. This is a
+genuine piece of antiquity and it vies with the grammar-school and the
+hall of the Guild, under the pent-house of which the poet would pass
+whenever he went abroad from New Place. Julius Shaw, one of the five
+witnesses to his will, lived in the house next to the present New Place
+Museum, and there, it is reasonable to think, Shakespeare would often
+pause, for a word with his friend and neighbour. In the little streets
+by the riverside, which are ancient and redolent of the past, his image
+seems steadily familiar. In Dead Lane (once also called Walker Street,
+now called Chapel Lane) he owned a cottage, bought of Walter Getley in
+1602, and only destroyed within the present century. These and kindred
+shreds of fact, suggesting the poet as a living man and connecting him,
+however vaguely, with our everyday experience, are seized with peculiar
+zest by the pilgrim in Stratford. Such a votary, for example, never
+doubts that Shakespeare was a frequenter, in leisure or convivial hours,
+of the ancient Red Horse inn. It stood there, in his day, as it stands
+now, on the north side of Bridge Street, westward from the Avon. There
+are many other taverns in the town--the Shakespeare, a delightful
+resort, the Falcon, the Rose and Crown, the old Red Lion, and the Swan's
+Nest, being a few of them,---but the Red Horse takes precedence of all
+its kindred, in the fascinating because suggestive attribute of
+antiquity. Moreover it was the Red Horse that harboured Washington
+Irving, the pioneer of American worshippers at the shrine of
+Shakespeare; and the American explorer of Stratford would cruelly
+sacrifice his peace of mind if he were to repose under any other roof.
+The Red Horse is a rambling, three-story building, entered through an
+archway that leads into a long, straggling yard, adjacent to offices and
+stables. On one side of the entrance is found the smoking-room; on the
+other is the coffee-room. Above are the bed-rooms. It is a thoroughly
+old-fashioned inn--such a one as we may suppose the Boar's Head to have
+been, in the time of Prince Henry; such a one as untravelled Americans
+only know in the pages of Dickens. The rooms are furnished in neat,
+homelike style, and their associations readily deck them with the
+fragrant garlands of memory. When Drayton and Jonson came down to visit
+"gentle Will" at Stratford they could scarcely have omitted to quaff the
+humming ale of Warwickshire in that cosy parlour. When Queen Henrietta
+Maria was ensconced at New Place the general of the royal forces
+quartered himself at the Red Horse, and then doubtless there was enough
+and to spare of revelry within its walls. A little later the old house
+was soundly peppered by Roundhead bullets and the whole town was overrun
+with the close-cropped, psalm-singing soldiers of the Commonwealth. In
+1742 Garrick and Macklin lodged in the Red Horse, and thither again came
+Garrick in 1769, to direct the Shakespeare Jubilee, which was then most
+dismally accomplished but which is always remembered to the great
+actor's credit and honour. Betterton, no doubt, lodged there when he
+came to Stratford in quest of reminiscences of Shakespeare. The visit of
+Washington Irving, supplemented with his delicious chronicle, has led to
+what might be called almost the consecration of the parlour in which he
+sat and the chamber (No. 15) in which he slept. They still keep the
+poker--now marked "Geoffrey Crayon's sceptre"--with which, as he sat
+there in long, silent, ecstatic meditation, he prodded the fire in the
+narrow, tiny grate. They keep also the chair in which he sat--a plain,
+straight-backed arm-chair, with a haircloth seat, marked, on a brass
+plate, with his renowned and treasured name. Thus genius can sanctify
+even the humblest objects,
+
+     "And shed a something of celestial light
+     Round the familiar face of every day."
+
+To pass rapidly in review the little that is known of Shakespeare's life
+is, nevertheless, to be impressed not only by its incessant and amazing
+literary fertility but by the quick succession of its salient incidents.
+The vitality must have been enormous that created in so short a time
+such a number and variety of works of the first class. The same quick
+spirit would naturally have kept in agitation all the elements of his
+daily experience. Descended from an ancestor who had fought for the Red
+Rose on Bosworth Field, he was born to repute as well as competence, and
+during his early childhood he received instruction and training in a
+comfortable home. He escaped the plague that was raging in Stratford
+when he was an infant, and that took many victims. He went to school
+when seven years old and left it when about fourteen. He then had to
+work for his living--his once opulent father having fallen into
+misfortune--and he became an apprentice to a butcher, or else a lawyer's
+clerk (there were seven lawyers in Stratford at that time), or else a
+schoolteacher. Perhaps he was all three--and more. It is conjectured
+that he saw the players who from time to time acted in the Guildhall,
+under the auspices of the corporation of Stratford; that he attended the
+religious entertainments that were customarily given in the not distant
+city of Coventry; and that in particular he witnessed the elaborate and
+sumptuous pageants with which in 1575 the Earl of Leicester welcomed
+Queen Elizabeth to Kenilworth Castle. He married at eighteen; and,
+leaving a wife and three children in Stratford, he went up to London at
+twenty-two. His entrance into theatrical life followed--in what capacity
+it is impossible to say. One dubious account says that he held horses
+for the public at the theatre door; another that he got employment as a
+prompter to the actors. It is certain that he had not been in the
+theatrical business long before he began to make himself known. At
+twenty-eight he was a prosperous author. At twenty-nine he had acted
+with Burbage before Queen Elizabeth; and while Spenser had extolled him
+in the "Tears of the Muses," the hostile Greene had disparaged him in
+the "Groat's-worth of Wit." At thirty-three he had acquired wealth
+enough to purchase New Place, the principal residence in his native
+town, where now he placed his family and established his home,--himself
+remaining in London, but visiting Stratford at frequent intervals. At
+thirty-four he was heard of as the actor of Knowell in Ben Jonson's
+comedy of _Every Man in his Humour_[1] and he received the glowing
+encomium of Meres in _Wits Treasury. _At thirty-eight he had written
+_Hamlet _and _As You Like It, _and moreover he had now become the owner
+of more estate in Stratford, costing L320. At forty-one he made his
+largest purchase, buying for L440 the "unexpired term of a moiety of the
+interest in a lease granted in 1554 for ninety-two years of the tithes
+of Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe." In the meantime he had smoothed
+the declining years of his father and had followed him with love and
+duty to the grave. Other domestic bereavements likewise befell him, and
+other worldly cares and duties were laid upon his hands, but neither
+grief nor business could check the fertility of his brain. Within the
+next ten years he wrote, among other great plays, _Othello, Lear,
+Macbeth, _and _Coriolanus._
+
+[1] Jonson's famous comedy was first acted in 1598, "By the then Lord
+Chamberlain his servants." Knowell is designated as "an old gentleman."
+The Jonson Folio of 1692 names as follows the principal comedians who
+acted in that piece: "Will. Shakespeare. Aug. Philips. Hen. Condel.
+Will. Slye. Will. Kempe. Ric. Burbadge. Joh. Hemings. Tho. Pope. Chr.
+Beston. Joh. Duke."
+
+
+At about forty-eight he seems to have disposed of his interest in the
+two London theatres with which he had been connected, the Blackfriars
+and the Globe, and shortly afterwards, his work as we possess it being
+well-nigh completed, he retired finally to his Stratford home. That he
+was the comrade of many bright spirits who glittered in "the spacious
+times" of Elizabeth several of them have left personal testimony. That
+he was the king of them all is shown in his works. The Sonnets seem to
+disclose that there was a mysterious, almost a tragical, passage in his
+life, and that he was called to bear the burden of a great and perhaps a
+calamitous personal grief--one of those griefs, which, being caused by
+sinful love, are endless in the punishment they entail. Happily,
+however, no antiquarian student of Shakespeare's time has yet succeeded
+in coming near to the man. While he was in London he used to frequent
+the Falcon Tavern, in Southwark, and the Mermaid, and he lived at one
+time in St. Helen's parish, Aldersgate, and at another time in Clink
+Street, Southwark. As an actor his name has been associated with his
+characters of Adam, Friar Lawrence, and the Ghost of King Hamlet, and a
+contemporary reference declared him "excellent in the quality he
+professes." Some of his manuscripts, it is possible, perished in the
+fire that consumed the Globe theatre in 1613. He passed his last days in
+his home at Stratford, and died there, somewhat suddenly, on his
+fifty-second birthday. That event, it may be worth while to observe,
+occurred within thirty-three years of the execution of Charles the
+First, under the Puritan Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell. The Puritan
+spirit, intolerant of the play-house and of all its works, must then
+have been gaining formidable strength. His daughter Susanna, aged
+thirty-three at the time of his death, survived him thirty-three years.
+His daughter Judith, aged thirty-one at the time of his death, survived
+him forty-six years. The whisper of tradition says that both were
+Puritans. If so the strange and seemingly unaccountable disappearance of
+whatever play-house papers he may have left at Stratford should not be
+obscure. This suggestion is likely to have been made before; and also it
+is likely to have been supplemented with a reference to the great fire
+in London in 1666--(which in consuming St. Paul's cathedral burned an
+immense quantity of books and manuscripts that had been brought from all
+the threatened parts of the city and heaped beneath its arches for
+safety)--as probably the final and effectual holocaust of almost every
+piece of print or writing that might have served to illuminate the
+history of Shakespeare. In his personality no less than in the
+fathomless resources of his genius he baffles scrutiny and stands for
+ever alone.
+
+     "Others abide our question; thou art free:
+     We ask, and ask; thou smilest and art still--
+     Out-topping knowledge."
+
+It is impossible to convey an adequate suggestion of the prodigious and
+overwhelming sense of peace that falls upon the soul of the pilgrim in
+Stratford church. All the cares and struggles and trials of mortal life,
+all its failures, and equally all its achievements, seem there to pass
+utterly out of remembrance. It is not now an idle reflection that "the
+paths of glory lead but to the grave." No power of human thought ever
+rose higher or went further than the thought of Shakespeare. No human
+being, using the best weapons of intellectual achievement, ever
+accomplished so much. Yet here he lies--who was once so great! And here
+also, gathered around him in death, lie his parents, his children, his
+descendants, and his friends. For him and for them the struggle has long
+since ended. Let no man fear to tread the dark pathway that Shakespeare
+has trodden before him. Let no man, standing at this grave, and seeing
+and feeling that all the vast labours of that celestial genius end here
+at last in a handful of dust, fret and grieve any more over the puny and
+evanescent toils of to-day, so soon to be buried in oblivion! In the
+simple performance of duty and in the life of the affections there may
+be permanence and solace. The rest is an "insubstantial pageant." It
+breaks, it changes, it dies, it passes away, it is forgotten; and though
+a great name be now and then for a little while remembered, what can the
+remembrance of mankind signify to him who once wore it? Shakespeare,
+there is reason to believe, set precisely the right value alike upon
+contemporary renown and the homage of posterity. Though he went forth,
+as the stormy impulses of his nature drove him, into the great world of
+London, and there laid the firm hand of conquest upon the spoils of
+wealth and power, he came back at last to the peaceful home of his
+childhood; he strove to garner up the comforts and everlasting treasures
+of love at his hearthstone; he sought an enduring monument in the hearts
+of friends and companions; and so he won for his stately sepulchre the
+garland not alone of glory but of affection. Through the high eastern
+window of the chancel of Holy Trinity church the morning sunshine,
+broken into many-coloured light, streams in upon the grave of
+Shakespeare and gilds his bust upon the wall above it. He lies close by
+the altar, and every circumstance of his place of burial is eloquent of
+his hold upon the affectionate esteem of his contemporaries. The line of
+graves beginning at the north wall of the chancel and extending across
+to the south seems devoted entirely to Shakespeare and his family, with
+but one exception.[1] The pavement that covers them is of that blue-gray
+slate or freestone which in England is sometimes called black marble. In
+the first grave under the north wall rests Shakespeare's wife. The next
+is that of the poet himself, bearing the world-famed words of blessing
+and imprecation. Then comes the grave of Thomas Nashe, husband to
+Elizabeth. Hall, the poet's granddaughter, who died April 4, 1647. Next
+is that of Dr. John Hall (obiit November 25, 1635), husband to his
+daughter Susanna, and close beside him rests Susanna herself, who was
+buried on July 11, 1649. The gravestones are laid east and west, and all
+but one present inscriptions. That one is under the south wall, and
+possibly it covers the dust of Judith--Mrs. Thomas Quiney--the youngest
+daughter of Shakespeare, who, surviving her three children and thus
+leaving no descendants, died in 1662. Upon the gravestone of Susanna an
+inscription has been intruded commemorative of Richard Watts, who is
+not, however, known to have had any relationship with either Shakespeare
+or his descendants.
+
+[1] "The poet knew," says J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, "that as a tithe-owner
+he would necessarily be buried in the chancel."
+
+Shakespeare's father, who died in 1601, and his mother, Mary Arden, who
+died in 1608, were buried in or near this church. (The register says,
+under Burials, "September 9, 1608, Mayry Shaxspere, wydowe.") His infant
+sisters Joan, Margaret, and Anne, and his brother Richard, who died,
+aged thirty-nine, in 1613, may also have been laid to rest in this
+place. Of the death and burial of his brother Gilbert there is no
+record. His sister Joan, the second--Mrs. Hart--would naturally have
+been placed with her relatives. His brother Edmund, dying in 1607, aged
+twenty-seven, is under the pavement of St. Saviour's church in
+Southwark. The boy Hamnet, dying before his father had risen into local
+eminence, rests, probably, in an undistinguished grave in the
+churchyard. (The register records his burial on August 11, 1596.) The
+family of Shakespeare seems to have been short-lived and it was soon
+extinguished. He himself died at fifty-two. Judith's children perished
+young. Susanna bore but one child--Elizabeth--who became successively
+Mrs. Nashe and Lady Barnard, and she, dying in 1670, was buried at
+Abingdon, near Oxford. She left no children by either husband, and in
+her the race of Shakespeare became extinct. That of Anne Hathaway also
+has nearly disappeared, the last living descendant of the Hathaways
+being Mrs. Baker, the present occupant of Anne's cottage at Shottery.
+Thus, one by one, from the pleasant gardened town of Stratford, they
+went to take up their long abode in that old church, which was ancient
+even in their infancy, and which, watching through the centuries in its
+monastic solitude on the shore of Avon, has seen their lands and houses
+devastated by flood and fire, the places that knew them changed by the
+tooth of time, and almost all the associations of their lives
+obliterated by the improving hand of destruction.
+
+One of the oldest and most interesting Shakespearean documents in
+existence is the narrative, by a traveller named Dowdall, of his
+observations in Warwickshire, and of his visit, on April 10, 1693, to
+Stratford church. He describes therein the bust and the tombstone of
+Shakespeare, and he adds these remarkable words: "The clerk that showed
+me this church is above eighty years old. He says that not one, for fear
+of the curse above said, dare touch his gravestone, though his wife and
+daughter did earnestly desire to be laid in the same grave with him."
+Writers in modern days have been pleased to disparage that inscription
+and to conjecture that it was the work of a sexton and not of the poet;
+but no one denies that it has accomplished its purpose in preserving the
+sanctity of Shakespeare's rest. Its rugged strength, its simple pathos,
+its fitness, and its sincerity make it felt as unquestionably the
+utterance of Shakespeare himself, when it is read upon the slab that
+covers him. There the musing traveller full well conceives how dearly
+the poet must have loved the beautiful scenes of his birthplace, and
+with what intense longing he must have desired to sleep undisturbed in
+the most sacred spot in their bosom. He doubtless had some premonition
+of his approaching death. Three months before it came he made his will.
+A little later he saw the marriage of his younger daughter. Within less
+than a month of his death he executed the will, and thus set his affairs
+in order. His handwriting in the three signatures to that paper
+conspicuously exhibits the uncertainty and lassitude of shattered
+nerves. He was probably quite worn out. Within the space, at the utmost,
+of twenty-five years, he had written thirty-seven plays, one hundred and
+fifty-four sonnets, and two or more long poems; had passed through much
+and painful toil and through bitter sorrow; had made his fortune as
+author and actor; and had superintended, to excellent advantage, his
+property in London and his large interests in Stratford and its
+neighbourhood. The proclamation of health with which the will begins was
+doubtless a formality of legal custom. The story that he died of
+drinking too hard at a merry meeting with Drayton and Ben Jonson is idle
+gossip. If in those last days of fatigue and presentiment he wrote the
+epitaph that has ever since marked his grave, it would naturally have
+taken the plainest fashion of speech. Such is its character; and no
+pilgrim to the poet's shrine could wish to see it changed:--
+
+"Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare,
+To digg the dvst encloased heare;
+Blese be ye man yt spares thes stones
+And cvrst be he yt moves my bones."
+
+It was once surmised that the poet's solicitude lest his bones might be
+disturbed in death grew out of his intention to take with him into the
+grave a confession that the works which now follow him were written by
+another hand. Persons have been found who actually believe that a man
+who was great enough to write _Hamlet _could be little enough to feel
+ashamed of it, and, accordingly, that Shakespeare was only hired to play
+at authorship, as a screen for the actual author. It might not, perhaps,
+be strange that a desire for singularity, which is one of the worst
+literary crazes of this capricious age, should prompt to the rejection
+of the conclusive and overwhelming testimony to Shakespeare's genius
+that has been left by Shakespeare's contemporaries, and that shines
+forth in all that is known of his life. It is strange that a doctrine
+should get itself asserted which is subversive of common reason and
+contradictory to every known law of the human mind. This conjectural
+confession of poetic imposture has never been exhumed. The grave is
+known to have been disturbed, in 1796, when alterations were made in the
+church,[1] and there came a time in the present century when, as they were
+making repairs in the chancel pavement (the chancel was renovated in
+1835), a rift was accidently made in the Shakespeare vault. Through
+this, though not without misgiving, the sexton peeped in upon the poet's
+remains. He saw nothing but dust.
+
+[1] It was the opinion--not conclusive but interesting--of the late J. O.
+Halliwell-Phillipps that at one or other of these "restorations" the
+original tombstone of Shakespeare was removed and another one, from the
+yard of a modern stone-mason, put in its place. Dr. Ingleby, in his book
+on _Shakespeare's Bones, _1883, asserts that the original stone was
+removed. I have compared Shakespeare's tombstone with that of his wife,
+and with others in the chancel, but I have not found the discrepancy
+observed by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, and I think there is no reason to
+believe that the original tombstone has ever been disturbed. The letters
+upon it were, probably, cut deeper in 1835.
+
+The antique font from which the infant Shakespeare may have received the
+water of Christian baptism is still preserved in this church. It was
+thrown aside and replaced by a new one about the middle of the
+seventeenth century. Many years afterward it was found in the
+charnel-house. When that was destroyed, in 1800, it was cast into the
+churchyard. In later times the parish clerk used it as a trough to his
+pump. It passed then through the hands of several successive owners,
+till at last, in days that had learned to value the past and the
+associations connected with its illustrious names, it found its way back
+again to the sanctuary from which it had suffered such a rude expulsion.
+It is still a handsome stone, though broken, soiled, and marred.
+
+Illustration: "Remains of the Old Font at which, probably, Shakespeare
+was christened, now in the Nave of Stratford Church."
+
+On the north wall of the chancel, above his grave and near to "the
+American window," is placed Shakespeare's monument. It is known to have
+been erected there within seven years after his death. It consists of a
+half-length effigy, placed beneath a fretted arch, with entablature and
+pedestal, between two Corinthian columns of black marble, gilded at base
+and top. Above the entablature appear the armorial bearings of
+Shakespeare--a pointed spear on a bend sable and a silver falcon on a
+tasselled helmet supporting a spear. Over this heraldic emblem is a
+death's-head, and on each side of it sits a carved cherub, one holding a
+spade, the other an inverted torch. In front of the effigy is a cushion,
+upon which both hands rest, holding a scroll and a pen. Beneath is an
+inscription in Latin and English, supposed to have been furnished by the
+poet's son-in-law, Dr. Hall. The bust was cut by Gerard Jonson, a native
+of Amsterdam and by occupation a "tomb-maker," who lived in Southwark
+and possibly had seen the poet. The material is a soft stone, and the
+work, when first set up, was painted in the colours of life. Its
+peculiarities indicate that it was copied from a mask of the features
+taken after death. Some persons believe (upon slender and dubious
+testimony) that this mask has since been found, and busts of Shakespeare
+have been based upon it, by W. R. O'Donovan and by William Page. In
+September, 1764, John Ward, grandfather of Mrs. Siddons, having come to
+Stratford with a theatrical company, gave a performance of _Othello, _in
+the Guildhall, and devoted its proceeds to reparation of the Gerard
+Jonson effigy, then somewhat damaged by time.
+
+Illustration: "Shakespeare's Monument."
+
+The original colours were then carefully restored and freshened. In
+1793, under the direction of Malone, this bust, together with the image
+of John-a-Combe--a recumbent statue upon a tomb close to the east wall
+of the chancel--was coated with white paint. From that plight it was
+extricated, in 1861, by the assiduous skill of Simon Collins, who
+immersed it in a bath which took off the white paint and restored the
+colours. The eyes are painted light hazel, the hair and pointed beard
+auburn, the face and hands flesh-tint. The dress consists of a scarlet
+doublet, with a rolling collar, closely buttoned down the front, worn
+under a loose black gown without sleeves. The upper part of the cushion
+is green, the lower part crimson, and this object is ornamented with
+gilt tassels. The stone pen that used to be in the right hand of the
+bust was taken from it, toward the end of the last century, by a young
+Oxford student, and, being dropped by him upon the pavement, was broken.
+A quill pen has been put in its place. This is the inscription beneath
+the bust:--
+
+     Ivdicio Pylivm, genio Socratem, arte Maronem,
+     Terra tegit, popvlvs maeret, Olympvs habet.
+
+     Stay, passenger, why goest thov by so fast?
+     Read, if thov canst, whom enviovs Death hath plast
+     Within this monvment: SHAKSPEARE: with whome
+     Qvick Natvre dide; whose name doth deck ys tombe
+     Far more than cost; sieth all yt he hath writt
+     Leaves living art bvt page to serve his witt.
+
+     Obiit Ano. Doi. 1616. AEtatis 53. Die. 23. Ap.
+
+The erection of the old castles, cathedrals, monasteries, and churches
+of England was accomplished, little by little, with laborious toil
+protracted through many years. Stratford church, probably more than
+seven centuries old, presents a mixture of architectural styles, in
+which Saxon simplicity and Norman grace are beautifully mingled.
+Different parts of the structure were built at different times. It is
+fashioned in the customary crucial form, with a square tower, an octagon
+stone spire, (erected in 1764, to replace a more ancient one, made of
+oak and covered with lead), and a fretted battlement all around its
+roof. Its windows are diversified, but mostly Gothic. The approach to it
+is across a churchyard thickly sown with graves, through a lovely green
+avenue of lime-trees, leading to a porch on its north side. This avenue
+of foliage is said to be the copy of one that existed there in
+Shakespeare's day, through which he must often have walked, and through
+which at last he was carried to his grave. Time itself has fallen asleep
+in that ancient place. The low sob of the organ only deepens the awful
+sense of its silence and its dreamless repose. Yews and elms grow in the
+churchyard, and many a low tomb and many a leaning stone are there, in
+the shadow, gray with moss and mouldering with age. Birds have built
+their nests in many crevices in the timeworn tower, round which at
+sunset you may see them circle, with chirp of greeting or with call of
+anxious discontent. Near by flows the peaceful river, reflecting the
+gray spire in its dark, silent, shining waters. In the long and lonesome
+meadows beyond it the primroses stand in their golden ranks among the
+clover, and the frilled and fluted bell of the cowslip, hiding its
+single drop of blood in its bosom, closes its petals as the night comes
+down.
+
+Northward, at a little distance from the Church of the Holy Trinity,
+stands, on the west bank of the Avon, the building that will always be
+famous as the Shakespeare Memorial. The idea of the Memorial was
+suggested in 1864, incidentally to the ceremonies which then
+commemorated the three-hundredth anniversary of the poet's birth. Ten
+years later the site for this structure was presented to the town by
+Charles Edward Flower, one of its most honoured inhabitants.
+Contributions of money were then asked, and were given. Americans as
+well as Englishmen contributed. On April 23, 1877, the first stone of
+the Memorial was laid. On April 23, 1880, the building was dedicated.
+The fabric comprises a theatre, a library, and a picture-gallery. In the
+theatre the plays of Shakespeare are annually represented, in a manner
+as nearly perfect as possible. In the library and picture-gallery are to
+be assembled all the books upon Shakespeare that have been published,
+and all the choice paintings that can be obtained to illustrate his life
+and his works. As the years pass this will naturally become a principal
+depository of Shakespearean objects. A dramatic college may grow up, in
+association with the Shakespeare theatre. The gardens that surround the
+Memorial will augment their loveliness in added expanse of foliage and
+in greater wealth of floral luxuriance. The mellow tinge of age will
+soften the bright tints of the red brick that mainly composes the
+building. On its cone-shaped turrets ivy will clamber and moss will
+nestle. When a few generations have passed, the old town of Stratford
+will have adopted this now youthful stranger into the race of her
+venerated antiquities. The same air of poetic mystery that rests now
+upon his cottage and his grave will diffuse itself around his Memorial;
+and a remote posterity, looking back to the men and the ideas of to-day,
+will remember with grateful pride that English-speaking people of the
+nineteenth century, although they could confer no honour upon the great
+name of Shakespeare, yet honoured themselves in consecrating this votive
+temple to his memory.
+
+Illustration: "Gable Window"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+UP TO LONDON 1882
+
+
+About the middle of the night the great ship comes to a pause, off the
+coast of Ireland, and, looking forth across the black waves and through
+the rifts in the rising mist, we see the low and lonesome verge of that
+land of trouble and misery. A beautiful white light flashes now and then
+from the shore, and at intervals the mournful booming of a solemn bell
+floats over the sea. Soon is heard the rolling click of oars, and then
+two or three dusky boats glide past the ship, and hoarse voices hail and
+answer. A few stars are visible in the hazy sky, and the breeze from the
+land brings off, in fitful puffs, the fragrant balm of grass and clover,
+mingled with the salt odours of sea-weed and slimy rocks. There is a
+sense of mystery over the whole wild scene; but we realise now that
+human companionship is near, and that the long and lonely ocean voyage
+is ended.
+
+Illustration: "Peveril Peak."
+
+Travellers who make the run from Liverpool to London by the Midland
+Railway pass through the vale of Derby and skirt around the stately Peak
+that Scott has commemorated in his novel of Peveril. It is a more rugged
+country than is seen in the transit by the Northwestern road, but not
+more beautiful. You see the storied mountain, in its delicacy of outline
+and its airy magnificence of poise, soaring into the sky--its summit
+almost lost in the smoky haze--and you wind through hillside pastures
+and meadow-lands that are curiously intersected with low, zigzag stone
+walls; and constantly, as the scene changes, you catch glimpses of green
+lane and shining river; of dense copses that cast their cool shadow on
+the moist and gleaming emerald sod; of long white roads that stretch
+away like cathedral aisles and are lost beneath the leafy arches of elm
+and oak; of little church towers embowered in ivy; of thatched cottages
+draped with roses; of dark ravines, luxuriant with a wild profusion of
+rocks and trees; and of golden grain that softly waves and whispers in
+the summer wind; while, all around, the grassy banks and glimmering
+meadows are radiant with yellow daisies, and with that wonderful scarlet
+of the poppy that gives an almost human glow of life and loveliness to
+the whole face of England. After some hours of such a pageant--so novel,
+so fascinating, so fleeting, so stimulative of eager curiosity and
+poetic desire--it is a relief at last to stand in the populous streets
+and among the grim houses of London, with its surging tides of life, and
+its turmoil of effort, conflict, exultation, and misery. How strange it
+seems--yet, at the same time, how homelike and familiar! There soars
+aloft the great dome of St. Paul's cathedral, with its golden cross that
+flashes in the sunset! There stands the Victoria tower--fit emblem of
+the true royalty of the sovereign whose name it bears. And there, more
+lowly but more august, rise the sacred turrets of the Abbey. It is the
+same old London--the great heart of the modern world--the great city of
+our reverence and love. As the wanderer writes these words he hears the
+plashing of the fountains in Trafalgar Square and the evening chimes
+that peal out from the spire of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, and he knows
+himself once more at the shrine of his youthful dreams.
+
+Illustration: "St. Paul's from Maiden Lane."
+
+To the observant stranger in London few sights can be more impressive
+than those that illustrate the singular manner in which the life of the
+present encroaches upon the memorials of the past. Old Temple Bar has
+gone,--a sculptured griffin, at the junction of Fleet Street and the
+Strand, denoting where once it stood. (It has been removed to Theobald's
+Park, near Waltham, and is now the lodge gate of the grounds of Sir
+Henry Meux.) The Midland Railway trains dash over what was once St.
+Pancras churchyard--the burial-place of Mary Wollstonecraft and William
+Godwin, and of many other British worthies--and passengers looking from
+the carriages may see the children of the neighbourhood sporting among
+the few tombs that yet remain in that despoiled cemetery. Dolly's
+Chop-House, intimately associated with the wits of the reign of Queen
+Anne, has been destroyed. The ancient tavern of The Cock, immortalised
+by Tennyson, in his poem of Will Waterproof's Monologue, is soon to
+disappear,--with its singular wooden vestibule that existed before the
+time of the Plague and that escaped the great fire of 1666. On the site
+of Northumberland House stands the Grand Hotel. The gravestones that
+formerly paved the precinct of Westminster Abbey have been removed, to
+make way for grassy lawns intersected with pathways. In Southwark,
+across the Thames, the engine-room of the brewery of Messrs. Barclay &
+Perkins occupies the site of the Globe Theatre, in which most of
+Shakespeare's plays were first produced. One of the most venerable and
+beautiful churches in London, that of St. Bartholomew the Great,--a
+gray, mouldering temple, of the twelfth century, hidden away in a corner
+of Smithfield,--is desecrated by the irruption of an adjacent shop, the
+staircase hall of which breaks cruelly into the sacred edifice and
+impends above the altar. On July 12, 1882, the present writer, walking
+in the churchyard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden,--the sepulchre of
+William Wycherley, Robert Wilks, Charles Macklin, Joseph Haines, Thomas
+King, Samuel Butler, Thomas Southerne, Edward Shuter, Dr. Arne, Thomas
+Davies, Edward Kynaston, Richard Estcourt, William Havard, and many
+other renowned votaries of literature and the stage,--found workmen
+building a new wall to sustain the enclosure, and almost every stone in
+the cemetery uprooted and leaning against the adjacent houses. Those
+monuments, it was said, would be replaced; but it was impossible not to
+consider the chances of error in a new mortuary deal--and the grim
+witticism of Rufus Choate, about dilating with the wrong emotion, came
+then into remembrance, and did not come amiss.
+
+Illustration: "The Charter House."
+
+Facts such as these, however, bid us remember that even the relics of
+the past are passing away, and that cities, unlike human creatures, may
+grow to be so old that at last they will become new. It is not wonderful
+that London should change its aspect from one decade to another, as the
+living surmount and obliterate the dead. Thomas Sutton's Charter-House
+School, founded in 1611, when Shakespeare and Ben Jonson were still
+writing, was reared upon ground in which several thousand corses were
+buried, during the time of the Indian pestilence of 1348; and it still
+stands and nourishes--though not as vigorously now as might be wished.
+Nine thousand new houses, it is said, are built in the great capital
+every year, and twenty-eight miles of new street are thus added to it.
+On a Sunday I drove for three hours through the eastern part of London
+without coming upon a single trace of the open fields. On the west, all
+the region from Kensington to Richmond is settled for most part of the
+way; while northward the city is stretching its arms toward Hampstead,
+Highgate, and tranquil and blooming Finchley. Truly the spirit of this
+age is in strong contrast with that of the time of Henry the Eighth when
+(1530), to prevent the increasing size of London, all new buildings were
+forbidden to be erected "where no former hath been known to have been."
+The march of improvement nowadays carries everything before it: even
+British conservatism is at some points giving way: and, noting the
+changes that have occurred here within only five years, I am persuaded
+that those who would see what remains of the London of which they have
+read and dreamed--the London of Dryden and Pope, of Addison, Sheridan,
+and Byron, of Betterton, Garrick, and Edmund Kean--will, as time passes,
+find more and more difficulty both in tracing the footsteps of fame, and
+in finding that sympathetic, reverent spirit which hallows the relics of
+genius and renown.
+
+Illustration: "Church Steeple Centered on Moon"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+OLD CHURCHES OF LONDON
+
+
+Sight-seeing, merely for its own sake, is not to be commended. Hundreds
+of persons roam through the storied places of England, carrying nothing
+away but the bare sense of travel. It is not the spectacle that
+benefits, but the meaning of the spectacle. In the great temples of
+religion, in those wonderful cathedrals that are the glory of the old
+world, we ought to feel, not merely the physical beauty but the perfect,
+illimitable faith, the passionate, incessant devotion, which alone made
+them possible. The cold intellect of a sceptical age, like the present,
+could never create such a majestic cathedral as that of Canterbury. Not
+till the pilgrim feels this truth has he really learned the lesson of
+such places,--to keep alive in his heart the capacity of self-sacrifice,
+of toil and of tears, for the grandeur and beauty of the spiritual life.
+At the tombs of great men we ought to feel something more than a
+consciousness of the crumbling clay that moulders within,--something
+more even than knowledge of their memorable words and deeds: we ought,
+as we ponder on the certainty of death and the evanescence of earthly
+things, to realise that art at least is permanent, and that no creature
+can be better employed than in noble effort to make the soul worthy of
+immortality. The relics of the past, contemplated merely because they
+are relics, are nothing. You tire, in this old land, of the endless
+array of ruined castles and of wasting graves; you sicken at the thought
+of the mortality of a thousand years, decaying at your feet, and you
+long to look again on roses and the face of childhood, the ocean and the
+stars. But not if the meaning of the past is truly within your sympathy;
+not if you perceive its associations as feeling equally with knowledge;
+not if you truly know that its lessons are not of death but of life!
+To-day builds over the ruins of yesterday, as well in the soul of man as
+on the vanishing cities that mark his course. There need be no regret
+that the present should, in this sense, obliterate the past.
+
+Much, however, as London has changed, and constantly as it continues to
+change, many objects still remain, and long will continue to remain,
+that startle and impress the sensitive mind. Through all its wide
+compass, by night and day, flows and beats a turbulent, resounding tide
+of activity, and hundreds of trivial and vacuous persons, sordid,
+ignorant, and commonplace tramp to and fro amid its storied antiquities,
+heedless of their existence. Through such surroundings, but finding here
+and there a sympathetic guide or a friendly suggestion, the explorer
+must make his way,--lonely in the crowd, and walking like one who lives
+in a dream. Yet he never will drift in vain through a city like this. I
+went one night into the cloisters of Westminster Abbey--that part, the
+South Walk, which is still accessible after the gates have been closed.
+The stars shone down upon the blackening walls and glimmering windows of
+the great cathedral; the grim, mysterious arches were dimly lighted; the
+stony pathways, stretching away beneath the venerable building, seemed
+to lose themselves in caverns of darkness; not a sound was heard but the
+faint rustling of the grass upon the cloister green. Every stone there
+is the mark of a sepulchre; every breath of the night wind seemed the
+whisper of a gliding ghost. There, among the crowded graves, rest Anne
+Oldfield and Anne Bracegirdle,--in Queen Anne's reign such brilliant
+luminaries of the stage,--and there was buried the dust of Aaron Hill,
+poet and dramatist, once manager of Drury Lane, who wrote _The Fair
+Inconstant_ for Barton Booth, and some notably felicitous love-songs.
+There, too, are the relics of Susanna Maria Arne (Mrs. Theo. Cibber),
+Mrs. Dancer, Thomas Betterton, and Spranger Barry. Sitting upon the
+narrow ledge that was the monks' rest, I could touch, close at hand, the
+tomb of a mitred abbot, while at my feet was the great stone that covers
+twenty-six monks of Westminster who perished by the Plague nearly six
+hundred years ago. It would scarcely be believed that the doors of
+dwellings open upon that gloomy spot; that ladies may sometimes be seen
+tending flowers upon the ledges that roof those cloister walks. Yet so
+it is; and in such a place, at such a time, you comprehend better than
+before the self-centred, serious, ruminant, romantic character of the
+English mind,--which loves, more than anything else in the world, the
+privacy of august surroundings and a sombre and stately solitude. It
+hardly need be said that you likewise obtain here a striking sense of
+the power of contrast. I was again aware of this, a little later, when,
+seeing a dim light in St. Margaret's church near by, I entered that old
+temple and found the men of the choir at their rehearsal, and presently
+observed on the wall a brass plate which announces that Sir Walter
+Raleigh was buried here, in the chancel,--after being decapitated for
+high treason in the Palace Yard outside. Such things are the surprises
+of this historic capital. This inscription begs the reader to remember
+Raleigh's virtues as well as his faults,--a plea, surely, that every man
+might well wish should be made for himself at last. I thought of the
+verses that the old warrior-poet is said to have left in his Bible, when
+they led him out to die--
+
+     "Even such is time; that takes in trust
+               Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
+     And pays us nought but age and dust;
+               Which, in the dark and silent grave,
+     When we have wandered all our ways,
+               Shuts up the story of our days.--
+     But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
+               My God shall raise me up, I trust."
+
+This church contains a window commemorative of Raleigh, presented by
+Americans, and inscribed with these lines, by Lowell--
+
+     "The New World's sons, from England's breast we drew
+               Such milk as bids remember whence we came;
+     Proud of her past, wherefrom our future grew,
+               This window we inscribe with Raleigh's name."
+
+It also contains a window commemorative of Caxton, presented by the
+printers and publishers of London, which is inscribed with these lines
+by Tennyson--
+
+     "Thy prayer was Light--more Light--while Time shall last,
+          Thou sawest a glory growing on the night,
+      But not the shadows which that light would cast
+          Till shadows vanish in the Light of Light."
+
+In St. Margaret's--a storied haunt, for shining names alike of nobles
+and poets--was also buried John Skelton, another of the old bards (obiit
+1529), the enemy and satirist of Cardinal Wolsey and Sir Thomas More,
+one of whom he described as "madde Amaleke," and the other as "dawcock
+doctor." Their renown has managed to survive those terrific shafts; but
+at least this was a falcon who flew at eagles. Here the poet Campbell
+was married,--October 11, 1803. Such old churches as this--guarding so
+well their treasures of history--are, in a special sense, the
+traveller's blessings. At St. Giles's, Cripplegate, the janitor is a
+woman; and she will point out to you the lettered stone that formerly
+marked the grave of Milton. It is in the nave, but it has been moved to
+a place about twelve feet from its original position,--the remains of
+the illustrious poet being, in fact, beneath the floor of a pew, on the
+left of the central aisle, about the middle of the church: albeit there
+is a story, possibly true, that, on an occasion when this church was
+repaired, in August, 1790, the coffin of Milton suffered profanation,
+and his bones were dispersed.
+
+Illustration: "St. Giles', Cripplegate."
+
+Among the monuments hard by is a fine marble bust of Milton, placed
+against the wall, and it is said, by way of enhancing its value, that
+George the Third came here to see it.[1] Several of the neighbouring
+inscriptions are of astonishing quaintness. The adjacent churchyard--an
+eccentric, sequestered, lonesome bit of grassy ground, teeming with
+monuments, and hemmed in with houses, terminates, at one end, in a piece
+of the old Roman wall of London (A.D. 306),--an adamantine structure of
+cemented flints--which has lasted from the days of Constantine, and
+which bids fair to last forever. I shall always remember that strange
+nook with the golden light of a summer morning shining upon it, the
+birds twittering among its graves, and all around it such an atmosphere
+of solitude and rest as made it seem, though in the heart of the great
+city, a thousand miles from any haunt of man. (It was formally opened as
+a garden for public recreation on July 8, 1891.)
+
+[1] This memorial bears the following inscription: "John Milton. Author of
+'Paradise Lost.' Born, December 1608. Died, November 1674. His father,
+John Milton, died, March 1646. They were both interred in this church."
+
+St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, an ancient and venerable temple, the church of
+the priory of the nuns of St. Helen, built in the thirteenth century, is
+full of relics of the history of England. The priory, which adjoined
+this church, has long since disappeared and portions of the building
+have been restored; but the noble Gothic columns and the commemorative
+sculpture remain unchanged. Here are the tombs of Sir John Crosby, who
+built Crosby Place (1466), Sir Thomas Gresham, who founded both Gresham
+College and the Royal Exchange in London, and Sir William Pickering,
+once Queen Elizabeth's Minister to Spain and one of the amorous
+aspirants for her royal hand; and here, in a gloomy chapel, stands the
+veritable altar at which, it is said, the Duke of Gloster received
+absolution, after the disappearance of the princes in the Tower.
+Standing at that altar, in the cool silence of the lonely church and the
+waning light of afternoon, it was easy to conjure up his slender,
+slightly misshapen form, decked in the rich apparel that he loved, his
+handsome, aquiline, thoughtful face, the drooping head, the glittering
+eyes, the nervous hand that toyed with the dagger, and the stealthy
+stillness of his person, from head to foot, as he knelt there before the
+priest and perhaps mocked both himself and heaven with the form of
+prayer.
+
+Illustration: "Sir John Crosby's Monument."
+
+Every place that Richard touched is haunted by his magnetic presence. In
+another part of the church you are shown the tomb of a person whose will
+provided that the key of his sepulchre should be placed beside his body,
+and that the door should be opened once a year, for a hundred years. It
+seems to have been his expectation to awake and arise; but the allotted
+century has passed and his bones are still quiescent.
+
+Illustration: "Gresham's Monument."
+
+How calmly they sleep--those warriors who once filled the world with the
+tumult of their deeds! If you go into St. Mary's, in the Temple, you
+will stand above the dust of the Crusaders and see the beautiful copper
+effigies of them, recumbent on the marble pavement, and feel and know,
+as perhaps you never did before, the calm that follows the tempest. St.
+Mary's was built in 1240 and restored in 1828. It would be difficult to
+find a lovelier specimen of Norman architecture--at once massive and
+airy, perfectly simple, yet rich with beauty, in every line and scroll.
+
+Illustration: "Goldsmith's House."
+
+There is only one other church in Great Britain, it is said, which has,
+like this, a circular vestibule. The stained glass windows, both here
+and at St. Helen's, are very glorious. The organ at St. Mary's was
+selected by Jeffreys, afterwards infamous as the wicked judge. The
+pilgrim who pauses to muse at the grave of Goldsmith may often hear its
+solemn, mournful tones. I heard them thus, and was thinking of Dr.
+Johnson's tender words, when he first learned that Goldsmith was dead:
+"Poor Goldy was wild--very wild--but he is so no more." The room in
+which he died, a heart-broken man at only forty-six, was but a little
+way from the spot where he sleeps.[1] The noises of Fleet Street are heard
+there only as a distant murmur. But birds chirp over him, and leaves
+flutter down upon his tomb, and every breeze that sighs around the gray
+turrets of the ancient Temple breathes out his requiem.
+
+[1] No. 2 Brick Court, Middle Temple.--In 1757-58 Goldsmith was employed
+by a chemist, near Fish Street Hill. When he wrote his Inquiry into the
+Present State of Polite Learning in Europe he was living in Green Arbour
+Court, "over Break-neck Steps." At a lodging in Wine Office Court, Fleet
+Street, he wrote The Vicar of Wakefield. Afterwards he had lodgings at
+Canonbury House, Islington, and in 1764, in the Library Staircase of the
+Inner Temple.
+
+Illustration: "A Bit from Clare Court"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+LITERARY SHRINES OF LONDON
+
+
+The mind that can reverence historic associations needs no explanation
+of the charm that such associations possess. There are streets and
+houses in London which, for pilgrims of this class, are haunted with
+memories and hallowed with an imperishable light--that not even the
+dreary commonness of everyday life can quench or dim. Almost every great
+author in English literature has here left behind him some personal
+trace, some relic that brings us at once into his living presence. In
+the time of Shakespeare,--of whom it may be noted that wherever you find
+him at all you find him in select and elegant neighbourhoods,--St.
+Helen's parish was a secluded and peaceful quarter of the town; and
+there the poet had his residence, convenient to the theatre in
+Blackfriars, in which he is known to have owned a share. It is said that
+he dwelt at number 134 Aldersgate Street (the house has been
+demolished), and in that region,--amid all the din of traffic and all
+the strange adjuncts of a new age,--those who love him are in his
+company. Milton was born in a court adjacent to Bread Street, Cheapside,
+and the explorer comes upon him as a resident in St. Bride's
+churchyard,--where the poet Lovelace was buried,--and at the house which
+is now No. 19 York Street, Westminster (in later times occupied by
+Bentham and by Hazlitt), and in Jewin Street, Aldersgate. When secretary
+to Cromwell he lived in Scotland Yard, where now is the headquarters of
+the London police. His last home was in Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields,
+but the visitor to that spot finds it covered by the Artillery barracks.
+Walking through King Street, Westminster, you will not forget Edmund
+Spenser, who died there, in grief and destitution, a victim to the same
+inhuman spirit of Irish ruffianism that is still disgracing humanity and
+troubling the peace of the world. Everybody remembers Ben Jonson's terse
+record of that calamity: "The Irish having robbed Spenser's goods and
+burnt his house and a little child new-born, he and his wife escaped,
+and after he died, for lack of bread, in King Street." Jonson himself is
+closely and charmingly associated with places that may still be seen. He
+passed his boyhood near Charing Cross--having been born in Hartshorn
+Lane, now Northumberland Street--and went to the parish school of St.
+Martin-in-the-Fields; and those who roam around Lincoln's Inn will call
+to mind that this great poet helped to build it--a trowel in one hand
+and Horace in the other. His residence, in his days of fame, was just
+outside of Temple Bar--but all that neighbourhood is new at the present
+time.
+
+The Mermaid, which he frequented--with Shakespeare, Fletcher, Herrick,
+Chapman, and Donne--was in Bread Street, but no trace of it remains; and
+a banking-house stands now on the site of the Devil Tavern, in Fleet
+Street, where the Apollo Club, which he founded, used to meet. The
+famous inscription, "O rare Ben Jonson," is three times cut in the
+Abbey--once in Poets' Corner and twice in the north aisle where he was
+buried, the smaller of the two slabs marking the place of his vertical
+grave.
+
+Illustration: "A Bit from Clare Market."
+
+Dryden once dwelt in a narrow, dingy, quaint house, in Fetter Lane,--the
+street in which Dean Swift has placed the home of Gulliver, and where
+now (1882) the famous Doomsday Book is kept,--but later he removed to a
+finer dwelling, in Gerrard Street, Soho, which was the scene of his
+death. Both buildings are marked with mural tablets and neither of them
+seems to have undergone much change. (The house in Fetter Lane is
+gone--1891.) Edmund Burke's house, also in Gerrard Street, is a
+beer-shop; but his memory hallows the place, and an inscription upon it
+proudly announces that here he lived. Dr. Johnson's house in Gough
+Square bears likewise a mural tablet, and, standing at its time-worn
+threshold, the visitor needs no effort of fancy to picture that uncouth
+figure shambling through the crooked lanes that lead into this queer,
+sombre, melancholy retreat. In that house he wrote the first Dictionary
+of the English language and the immortal letter to Lord Chesterfield. In
+Gough Square lived and died Hugh Kelly, dramatist, author of _The School
+of Wives_ and _The Man of Reason_, and one of the friends of Goldsmith,
+at whose burial he was present. The historical antiquarian society that
+has marked many of the literary shrines of London has rendered a great
+service. The houses associated with Reynolds and Hogarth, in Leicester
+Square, Byron, in Holies Street, Benjamin Franklin and Peter the Great,
+in Craven Street, Campbell, in Duke Street, St. James's, Garrick, in the
+Adelphi Terrace, Michael Farraday, in Blandford Street, and
+Mrs. Siddons, in Baker Street, are but a few of the historic spots which
+are thus commemorated. Much, however, remains to be done. One would like
+to know, for instance, in which room in "The Albany" it was that Byron
+wrote _Lara_[1] in which of the houses of Buckingham Street Coleridge had
+his lodging while he was translating _Wallenstein;_ whereabouts in
+Bloomsbury Square was the residence of Akenside, who wrote _The
+Pleasures of Imagination,_ and of Croly, who wrote _Salathiel;_ or where
+it was that Gray lived, when he established himself close by Russell
+Square, in order to be one of the first--as he continued to be one of
+the most constant--students at the then newly opened British Museum
+(1759).
+
+[1] Byron was born at No. 34 Holies Street, Cavendish Square. While he was
+at school in Dulwich Grove his mother lived in a house in Sloane
+Terrace. Other houses associated with him are No. 8 St. James Street; a
+lodging in Bennet Street; No. 2 "The Albany"--a lodging that he rented
+of Lord Althorpe, and entered on March 28, 1814; and No. 139 Piccadilly,
+where his daughter, Ada, was born, and where Lady Byron left him. This,
+at present, is the home of the genial scholar Sir Algernon Borthwick
+(1893). John Murray's house, where Byron's fragment of Autobiography was
+burned, is in Albemarle Street. Byron's body, when brought home from
+Greece, lay in state at No. 25 Great George Street, Westminster, before
+being taken north, to Hucknall-Torkard church, in Nottinghamshire, for
+burial.
+
+These, and such as these, may seem trivial things; but Nature has denied
+an unfailing source of innocent happiness to the man who can find no
+pleasure in them. For my part, when rambling in Fleet Street it is a
+special delight to remember even so slight an incident as that recorded
+of the author of the _Elegy in a Country Churchyard_,--that he once saw
+there his satirist, Dr. Johnson, rolling and puffing along the sidewalk,
+and cried out to a friend, "Here comes Ursa Major." For the true lovers
+of literature "Ursa Major" walks oftener in Fleet Street to-day than any
+living man.
+
+A good thread of literary research might be profitably followed by him
+who should trace the footsteps of all the poets that have held, in
+England, the office of laureate. John Kay was laureate in the reign of
+Edward IV.; Andrew Bernard in that of Henry VII.; John Skelton in that
+of Henry VIII.; and Edmund Spenser in that of Elizabeth.
+
+Illustration: "Fleet Street in 1780."
+
+Since then the succession has included the names of Samuel Daniel,
+Michael Drayton, Ben Jonson, Sir William Davenant, John Dryden, Thomas
+Shadwell, Nahum Tate, Nicholas Rowe, Lawrence Eusden, Colley Cibber,
+William Whitehead, Thomas Wharton, Henry James Pye, Robert Southey,
+William Wordsworth, and Alfred Tennyson--who, until his death, in 1892,
+wore, in spotless renown, that
+
+      "Laurel greener from the brows
+      Of him that utter'd nothing base."
+
+Most of those bards were intimately associated with London, and several
+of them are buried in the Abbey. It is, indeed, because so many storied
+names are written upon gravestones that the explorer of the old churches
+of London finds so rich a harvest of impressive association and lofty
+thought. Few persons visit them, and you are likely to find yourself
+comparatively alone in rambles of this kind. I went one morning into St.
+Martin--once "in the fields," now in one of the busiest thoroughfares at
+the centre of the city--and found there only a pew-opener preparing for
+the service, and an organist playing an anthem. It is a beautiful
+structure, with its graceful spire and its columns of weather-beaten
+stone, curiously stained in gray and sooty black, and it is almost as
+famous for theatrical names as St. Paul's, Covent Garden, or St.
+George's, Bloomsbury, or St. Clement Danes. Here, in a vault beneath the
+church, was buried the bewitching and affectionate Nell Gwyn; here is
+the grave of James Smith, joint author with his brother Horace--who was
+buried at Tunbridge Wells--of _The Rejected Addresses;_ here rests
+Yates, the original Sir Oliver Surface; and here were laid the ashes of
+the romantic and sprightly Mrs. Centlivre, and of George Farquhar, whom
+neither youth, genius, patient labour, nor sterling achievement could
+save from a life of misfortune and an untimely and piteous death. A
+cheerier association of this church is with Thomas Moore, the poet of
+Ireland, who was here married.
+
+Illustration: "Gray's Inn Square."
+
+At St. Giles-in-the-Fields, again, are the graves of George Chapman, who
+translated Homer, Andrew Marvel, who wrote such lovely lyrics of love,
+Rich, the manager, who brought out Gay's _Beggar's Opera_, and James
+Shirley, the fine old dramatist and poet, whose immortal couplet has
+been so often murmured in such solemn haunts as these--
+
+      "Only the actions of the just
+      Smell sweet and blossom in the dust."
+
+Shirley lived in Gray's Inn when he was writing his plays, and he was
+fortunate in the favour of queen Henrietta Maria, wife to Charles the
+First; but when the Puritan times arrived he fell into misfortune and
+poverty and became a school-teacher in Whitefriars. In 1666 he was
+living in or near Fleet Street, and his home was one of the many
+dwellings that were destroyed in the great fire. Then he fled, with his
+wife, into the parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, where, overcome with
+grief and terror, they both died, within twenty-four hours of each
+other, and were buried in the same grave.
+
+Illustration: "Shield with Gargoyle Head"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+A HAUNT OF EDMUND KEAN
+
+
+To muse over the dust of those about whom we have read so much--the
+great actors, thinkers, and writers, the warriors and statesmen for whom
+the play is ended and the lights are put out--is to come very near to
+them, and to realise more deeply than ever before their close
+relationship with our own humanity; and we ought to be wiser and better
+for this experience. It is good, also, to seek out the favourite haunts
+of our heroes, and call them up as they were in their lives. One of the
+happiest accidents of a London stroll was the finding of the Harp
+Tavern,[1] in Russell Street, Covent Garden, near the stage door of Drury
+Lane theatre, which was the accustomed resort of Edmund Kean.
+
+[1] An account of the Harp, in the _Victuallers' Gazette_, says that this
+tavern has had within its doors every actor of note since the days of
+Garrick, and many actresses, also, of the latter part of the eighteenth
+century; and it mentions, as visitants there, Dora Jordan, Nance
+Oldfield, Anne Bracegirdle, Kitty Clive, Harriet Mellon, Barton Booth,
+Quin, Cibber, Macklin, Grimaldi, Eliza Vestris, and Miss Stephens--who
+became Countess of Essex.
+
+Carpenters and masons were at work upon it when I entered, and it was
+necessary almost to creep amid heaps of broken mortar and rubbish
+beneath their scaffolds, in order to reach the interior rooms. Here, at
+the end of a narrow passage, was a little apartment, perhaps fifteen
+feet square, with a low ceiling and a bare floor, in which Kean
+habitually took his pleasure, in the society of fellow-actors and boon
+companions, long ago. A narrow, cushioned bench against the walls, a few
+small tables, a chair or two, a number of churchwarden pipes on the
+mantlepiece, and portraits of Disraeli and Gladstone, constituted the
+furniture. A panelled wainscot and dingy red paper covered the walls,
+and a few cobwebs hung from the grimy ceiling. By this time the old room
+has been made neat and comely; but then it bore the marks of hard usage
+and long neglect, and it seemed all the more interesting for that
+reason.
+
+Kean's seat is at the right, as you enter, and just above it a mural
+tablet designates the spot,--which is still further commemorated by a
+death-mask of the actor, placed on a little shelf of dark wood and
+covered with glass. No better portrait could be desired; certainly no
+truer one exists. In life this must have been a glorious face. The eyes
+are large and prominent, the brow is broad and fine, the mouth wide and
+obviously sensitive, the chin delicate, and the nose long, well set, and
+indicative of immense force of character. The whole expression of the
+face is that of refinement and of great and desolate sadness. Kean, as
+is known from the testimony of one who acted with him,[1] was always at
+his best in passages of pathos.
+
+[1] The mother of Jefferson, the comedian, described Edmund Kean in this
+way. She was a member of the company at the Walnut Street Theatre,
+Philadelphia, when he acted there, and it was she who sang for him, when
+he acted The Stranger, the well-known lines, by Sheridan,--
+
+      "I have a silent sorrow here,
+      A grief I'll ne'er impart;
+      It breathes no sigh, it sheds no tear,
+      But it consumes my heart."
+
+To hear him speak Othello's farewell was to hear the perfect music of
+heart-broken despair. To see him when, as The Stranger, he listened to
+the song, was to see the genuine, absolute reality of hopeless sorrow.
+He could, of course, thrill his hearers in the ferocious outbursts-of
+Richard and Sir Giles, but it was in tenderness and grief that he was
+supremely great; and no one will wonder at that who looks upon his noble
+face--so eloquent of self-conflict and suffering--even in this cold and
+colourless mask of death. It is easy to judge and condemn the sins of a
+weak, passionate humanity; but when we think of such creatures of genius
+as Edmund Kean and Robert Burns, we ought to consider what demons in
+their own souls those wretched men were forced to fight, and by what
+agonies they expiated their vices and errors. This little tavern-room
+tells the whole mournful story, with death to point the moral, and pity
+to breathe its sigh of unavailing regret.
+
+Many of the present frequenters of the Harp are elderly men, whose
+conversation is enriched with memories of the stage and with ample
+knowledge and judicious taste in literature and art. They naturally
+speak with pride of Kean's association with their favourite resort.
+Often in that room the eccentric genius has put himself in pawn, to
+exact from the manager of Drury Lane theatre the money needed to relieve
+the wants of some brother actor. Often his voice has been heard there,
+in the songs that he sang with so much feeling and sweetness and such
+homely yet beautiful skill. In the circles of the learned and courtly he
+never was really at home; but here he filled the throne and ruled the
+kingdom of the revel, and here no doubt every mood of his mind, from
+high thought and generous emotion to misanthropical bitterness and
+vacant levity, found its unfettered expression. They show you a broken
+panel in the high wainscot, which was struck and smashed by a pewter pot
+that he hurled at the head of a person who had given him offence; and
+they tell you at the same time,--as, indeed, is historically true,--that
+he was the idol of his comrades, the first in love, pity, sympathy, and
+kindness, and would turn his back, any day, for the least of them, on
+the nobles who sought his companionship. There is no better place than
+this in which to study the life of Edmund Kean. Old men have been met
+with here who saw him on the stage, and even acted with him. The room is
+the weekly meeting-place and habitual nightly tryst of an ancient club,
+called the City of Lushington, which has existed since the days of the
+Regency, and of which these persons are members. The City has its Mayor,
+Sheriff, insignia, record-book, and system of ceremonials; and much of
+wit, wisdom, and song may be enjoyed at its civic feasts. The names of
+its four wards--Lunacy, Suicide, Poverty, and Juniper--are written up in
+the four corners of the room, and whoever joins must select his ward.
+Sheridan was a member of it, and so was the Regent; and the present
+landlord of the Harp (Mr. M'Pherson) preserves among his relics the
+chairs in which those gay companions sat, when the author presided over
+the initiation of the prince. It is thought that this club grew out of
+the society of The Wolves, which was formed by Kean's adherents, when
+the elder Booth arose to disturb his supremacy upon the stage. But there
+is no malice in it now. Its purposes are simply convivial and literary,
+and its tone is that of thorough good-will.[1]
+
+[1] A coloured print of this room may be found in that eccentric book _The
+Life of an Actor,_ by Pierce Egan: 1825.
+
+One of the gentlest and most winning traits in the English character is
+its instinct of companionship as to literature and art. Since the days
+of the Mermaid the authors and actors of London have dearly loved and
+deeply enjoyed such odd little fraternities of wit as are typified, not
+inaptly, by the City of Lushington. There are no rosier hours in my
+memory than those that were passed, between midnight and morning, in the
+cosy clubs in London. And when dark days come, and foes harass, and the
+troubles of life annoy, it will be sweet to think that in still another
+sacred retreat of friendship, across the sea, the old armour is gleaming
+in the festal lights, where one of the gentlest spirits that ever wore
+the laurel of England's love smiles kindly on his comrades and seems to
+murmur the charm of English hospitality--
+
+      "Let no one take beyond this threshold hence
+      Words uttered here in friendship's confidence."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+STOKE-POGIS AND THOMAS GRAY
+
+
+It is a cool afternoon in July, and the shadows are falling eastward on
+fields of waving grain and lawns of emerald velvet. Overhead a few light
+clouds are drifting, and the green boughs of the great elms are gently
+stirred by a breeze from the west. Across one of the more distant fields
+a flock of sable rooks--some of them fluttering and cawing--wings its
+slow and melancholy flight. There is the sound of the whetting of a
+scythe, and, near by, the twittering of many birds upon a cottage roof.
+On either side of the country road, which runs like a white rivulet
+through banks of green, the hawthorn hedges are shining and the bright
+sod is spangled with all the wild-flowers of an English summer. An odour
+of lime-trees and of new-mown hay sweetens the air for many miles
+around. Far off, on the horizon's verge, just glimmering through the
+haze, rises the imperial citadel of Windsor. And close at hand a little
+child points to a gray spire[1] peering out of a nest of ivy, and tells me
+that this is Stoke-Pogis church.
+
+[1] In Gray's time there was no spire on the church--nor is the spire an
+improvement to the tower.
+
+If peace dwells anywhere upon the earth its dwelling-place is here. You
+come into this little churchyard by a pathway across the park and
+through a wooden turnstile; and in one moment the whole world is left
+behind and forgotten. Here are the nodding elms; here is the yew-tree's
+shade; here "heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap." All these
+graves seem very old. The long grass waves over them, and some of the
+low stones that mark them are entirely shrouded with ivy. Many of the
+"frail memorials" are made of wood. None of them is neglected or
+forlorn, but all of them seem to have been scattered here, in that sweet
+disorder which is the perfection of rural loveliness. There never, of
+course, could have been any thought of creating this effect; yet here it
+remains, to win your heart forever. And here, amid this mournful beauty,
+the little church itself nestles close to the ground, while every tree
+that waves its branches around it, and every vine that clambers on its
+surface, seems to clasp it in the arms of love. Nothing breaks the
+silence but the sighing of the wind in the great yew-tree at the church
+door,--beneath which was the poet's favourite seat, and where the brown
+needles, falling, through many an autumn, have made a dense carpet on
+the turf. Now and then there is a faint rustle in the ivy; a fitful
+bird-note serves but to deepen the stillness; and from a rose-tree near
+at hand a few leaves flutter down, in soundless benediction on the dust
+beneath.
+
+Illustration: "Stoke-Pogis Church."
+
+Gray was laid in the same grave with his mother, "the careful, tender
+mother of many children, one alone of whom," as he wrote upon her
+gravestone, "had the misfortune to survive her." Their tomb--a low,
+oblong, brick structure, covered with a large slab--stands a few feet
+away from the church wall, upon which is a small tablet to denote its
+place. The poet's name has not been inscribed above him. There was no
+need here of "storied urn or animated bust." The place is his monument,
+and the majestic Elegy--giving to the soul of the place a form of
+seraphic beauty and a voice of celestial music--is his immortal epitaph.
+
+     "There scatter'd oft, the earliest of ye Year,
+          By hands unseen are showers of vi'lets found;
+     The Redbreast loves to build & warble there,
+          And little Footsteps lightly print the ground."
+
+There is a monument to Gray in Stoke Park, about two hundred yards from
+the church; but it seems commemorative of the builder rather than the
+poet. They intend to set a memorial window in the church, to honour him,
+and the visitor finds there a money-box for the reception of
+contributions in aid of this pious design. Nothing will be done amiss
+that serves to direct closer attention to his life. It was one of the
+best lives ever recorded in the history of literature. It was a life
+singularly pure, noble, and beautiful. In two qualities, sincerity and
+reticence, it was exemplary almost beyond a parallel; and those are
+qualities that literary character in the present day has great need to
+acquire. Gray was averse to publicity. He did not sway by the censure of
+other men; neither did he need their admiration as his breath of life.
+Poetry, to him, was a great art, and he added nothing to literature
+until he had first made it as nearly perfect as it could be made by the
+thoughtful, laborious exertion of his best powers, superadded to the
+spontaneous impulse and flow of his genius. More voluminous writers,
+Charles Dickens among the rest, have sneered at him because he wrote so
+little. The most colossal form of human complacency is that of the
+individual who thinks all other creatures inferior who happen to be
+unlike himself. This reticence on the part of Gray was, in fact, the
+emblem of his sincerity and the compelling cause of his imperishable
+renown. There is a better thing than the great man who is always
+speaking; and that is the great man who only speaks when he has a great
+word to say. Gray has left only a few poems; but of his principal works
+each is perfect in its kind, supreme and unapproachable. He did not test
+merit by reference to ill-formed and capricious public opinion, but he
+wrought according to the highest standards of art that learning and
+taste could furnish. His letters form an English classic. There is no
+purer prose in existence; there is not much that is so pure. But the
+crowning glory of Gray's nature, the element that makes it so
+impressive, the charm that brings the pilgrim to Stoke-Pogis church to
+muse upon it, was the self-poised, sincere, and lovely exaltation of its
+contemplative spirit. He was a man whose conduct of life would, first of
+all, purify, expand, and adorn the temple of his own soul, out of which
+should afterward flow, in their own free way, those choral harmonies
+that soothe, guide, and exalt the human race. He lived before he wrote.
+The soul of the Elegy is the soul of the man. It was his thought--which
+he has somewhere expressed in better words than these--that human beings
+are only at their best while such feelings endure as are engendered when
+death has just taken from us the objects of our love. That was the point
+of view from which he habitually looked upon the world; and no man who
+has learned the lessons of experience can doubt that he was right.
+
+Gray was twenty-six years old when he wrote the first draft of the
+Elegy. He began that poem in 1742, at Stoke-Pogis, and he finished and
+published it in 1751. No visitor to this churchyard can miss either its
+inspiration or its imagery. The poet has been dead more than a hundred
+years, but the scene of his rambles and reveries has suffered no
+material change. One of his yew-trees, indeed, much weakened with age,
+was some time since blown down, in a storm, and its fragments have been
+carried away. The picturesque manor house not far distant was once the
+home of Admiral Penn, father of William Penn the famous Quaker.[1]
+
+[1] William Penn and his children are buried in the little Jordans
+graveyard, not many miles away. The visitor to Stoke-Pogis should not
+omit a visit to Upton church, Burnham village, and Binfield. Pope lived
+at Binfield when he wrote his poem on Windsor Forest. Upton claims to
+have had a share in the inspiration of the Elegy, but Stoke-Pogis was
+unquestionably his place of residence when he wrote it. Langley Marish
+ought to be visited also, and Horton--where Milton wrote "L'Allegro,"
+"II Penseroso," and "Comus." Chalfont St. Peter is accessible, where
+still is standing the house in which Milton finished _Paradise Lost_ and
+began _Paradise Regained;_ and from there a short drive will take you to
+Beaconsfield, where you may see Edmund Burke's tablet, in the church,
+and the monument to Waller, in the churchyard.
+
+All the trees of the region have, of course, waxed and expanded,--not
+forgetting the neighbouring beeches of Burnham, among which he loved to
+wander, and where he might often have been found, sitting with his book,
+at some gnarled wreath of "old fantastic roots." But in its general
+characteristics, its rustic homeliness and peaceful beauty, this
+"glimmering landscape," immortalised in his verse, is the same on which
+his living eyes have looked. There was no need to seek for him in any
+special spot. The house in which he once lived might, no doubt, be
+discovered; but every nook and vista, every green lane and upland lawn
+and ivy-mantled tower of this delicious solitude is haunted with his
+presence.
+
+The night is coming on and the picture will soon be dark; but never
+while memory lasts can it fade out of the heart. What a blessing would
+be ours, if only we could hold forever that exaltation of the spirit,
+that sweet, resigned serenity, that pure freedom from all the passions
+of nature and all the cares of life, which comes upon us in such a place
+as this! Alas, and again alas! Even with the thought this golden mood
+begins to melt away; even with the thought comes our dismissal from its
+influence. Nor will it avail us anything now to linger at the shrine.
+Fortunate is he, though in bereavement and regret, who parts from beauty
+while yet her kiss is warm upon his lips,--waiting not for the last
+farewell word, hearing not the last notes of the music, seeing not the
+last gleams of sunset as the light dies from the sky. It was a sad
+parting, but the memory of the place can never now be despoiled of its
+loveliness. As I write these words I stand again in the cool and dusky
+silence of the poet's church, with its air of stately age and its
+fragrance of cleanliness, while the light of the western sun, broken
+into rays of gold and ruby, streams through the painted windows and
+softly falls upon the quaint little galleries and decorous pews; and,
+looking forth through the low, arched door, I see the dark and
+melancholy boughs of the dreaming yew-tree, and, nearer, a shadow of
+rippling leaves in the clear sunshine of the churchway path. And all the
+time a gentle voice is whispering, in the chambers of thought--
+
+     "No farther seek his merits to disclose,
+          Or draw his frailties from their dread abode:
+     (There they alike in trembling hope repose),
+          The bosom of his Father and his God."
+
+Illustration: "Old Church."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+AT THE GRAVE OF COLERIDGE
+
+
+Among the deeply meditative, melodious, and eloquent poems of Wordsworth
+there is one---about the burial of Ossian--that glances at the question
+of fitness in a place of sepulchre. Not always, for the illustrious
+dead, has the final couch of rest been rightly chosen. We think with
+resignation, and with a kind of pride, of Keats and Shelley in the
+little Protestant burial-ground at Rome. Every heart is touched at the
+spectacle of Garrick and Johnson sleeping side by side in Westminster
+Abbey. It was right that the dust of Dean Stanley should mingle with the
+dust of poets and of kings; and to see--as the present writer did, only
+a little while ago--fresh flowers on the stone that covers him, in the
+chapel of Henry the Seventh, was to feel a tender gladness and solemn
+content. Shakespeare's grave, in the chancel of Stratford church,
+awakens the same ennobling awe and melancholy pleasure; and it is with
+kindred feeling that you linger at the tomb of Gray. But who can be
+content that poor Letitia Landon should sleep beneath the pavement of a
+barrack, with soldiers trampling over her dust? One might almost think,
+sometimes, that the spirit of calamity, which follows certain persons
+throughout the whole of life, had pursued them even in death, to haunt
+about their repose and to mar all the gentleness of association that
+ought to hallow it. Chatterton, a pauper and a suicide, was huddled into
+a workhouse graveyard, the very place of which--in Shoe Lane, covered
+now by Farringdon Market--has disappeared. Otway, miserable in his love
+for Elizabeth Barry, the actress, and said to have starved to death in
+the Minories, near the Tower of London, was laid in a vault of St.
+Clement Danes, in the middle of the Strand, where never the green leaves
+rustle, but where the roar of the mighty city pours on in continual
+tumult. That church holds also the remains of William Mountfort, the
+actor, slain in a brawl by Lord Mohun; of Nat Lee, "the mad poet"; of
+George Powell, the tragedian, of brilliant and deplorable memory; and of
+the handsome Hildebrand Horden, cut off by a violent death in the
+springtime of his youth. Hildebrand Horden was the son of a clergyman of
+Twickenham and lived in the reign of William and Mary. Dramatic
+chronicles say that he was possessed of great talent as an actor, and of
+remarkable personal beauty. He was stabbed, in a quarrel, at the Rose
+Tavern; and after he had been laid out for the grave, such was the
+lively feminine interest in his handsome person, many ladies came, some
+masked and others openly, to view him in his shroud. This is mentioned
+in Colley Cibber's _Apology._ Charles Coffey, the dramatist, author of
+_The Devil upon Two Sticks,_ and other plays, lies in the vaults of St.
+Clement; as likewise does Thomas Rymer, historiographer for William
+III., successor to Shadwell, and author of Foedera, in seventeen
+volumes. In the church of St. Clement you may see the pew in which Dr.
+Johnson habitually sat when he attended divine service there. It was his
+favourite church. The pew is in the gallery; and to those who honour the
+passionate integrity and fervent, devout zeal of the stalwart old
+champion of letters, it is indeed a sacred shrine. Henry Mossop, one of
+the stateliest of stately actors, perishing, by slow degrees, of penury
+and grief,--which he bore in proud silence,--found a refuge, at last, in
+the barren gloom of Chelsea churchyard. Theodore Hook, the cheeriest
+spirit of his time, the man who filled every hour of life with the
+sunshine of his wit and was wasted and degraded by his own brilliancy,
+rests, close by Bishop Sherlock, in Fulham churchyard,--one of the
+dreariest spots in the suburbs of London. Perhaps it does not much
+signify, when once the play is over, in what oblivion our crumbling
+relics are hidden away. Yet to most human creatures these are sacred
+things, and many a loving heart, for all time to come, will choose a
+consecrated spot for the repose of the dead, and will echo the tender
+words of Longfellow,--so truly expressive of a universal and reverent
+sentiment--
+
+     "Take them, O Grave, and let them lie
+          Folded upon thy narrow shelves,
+     As garments by the soul laid by
+          And precious only to ourselves."
+
+One of the most impressive of the many literary pilgrimages that I have
+made was that which brought me to the house in which Coleridge died, and
+the place where he was buried. The student needs not to be told that
+this poet, born in 1772, the year after Gray's death, bore the white
+lilies of pure literature till 1834, when he too entered into his rest.
+The last nineteen years of the life of Coleridge were spent in a house
+at Highgate; and there, within a few steps of each other, the visitor
+may behold his dwelling and his tomb. The house is one in a block of
+dwellings, situated in what is called the Grove--a broad, embowered
+street, a little way from the centre of the village. There are gardens
+attached to these houses, both in the front and the rear, and the smooth
+and peaceful roadside walks in the Grove itself are pleasantly shaded by
+elms of noble size and abundant foliage. These were young trees when
+Coleridge saw them, and all this neighbourhood, in his day, was but
+thinly settled. Looking from his chamber window he could see the dusky
+outlines of sombre London, crowned with the dome of St. Paul's on the
+southern horizon, while, more near, across a fertile and smiling valley,
+the gray spire of Hampstead church would bound his prospect, rising
+above the verdant woodland of Caen.[1] In front were beds of flowers, and
+all around he might hear the songs of birds that filled the fragrant air
+with their happy, careless music. Not far away stood the old church of
+Highgate, long since destroyed, in which he used to worship, and close
+by was the Gate House inn, primitive, quaint, and cosy, which still is
+standing, to comfort the weary traveller with its wholesome hospitality.
+
+[1] "Come in the first stage, so as either to walk, or to be driven in
+Mr. Gilman's gig, to Caen wood and its delicious groves and alleys, the
+finest in England, a grand cathedral aisle of giant lime-trees, Pope's
+favourite composition walk, when with the old Earl."--_Coleridge to
+Crabb Robinson. Highgate, June_ 1817
+
+Illustration: "The White Hart."
+
+Highgate, with all its rural peace, must have been a bustling place in
+the old times, for all the travel went through it that passed either
+into or out of London by the great north road,--that road in which
+Whittington heard the prophetic summons of the bells, and where may
+still be seen, suitably and rightly marked, the site of the stone on
+which he sat to rest. Here, indeed, the coaches used to halt, either to
+feed or to change horses, and here the many neglected little taverns
+still remaining, with their odd names and their swinging signs, testify
+to the discarded customs of a bygone age. Some years ago a new road was
+cut, so that travellers might wind around the hill, and avoid climbing
+the steep ascent to the village; and since then the grass has begun to
+grow in the streets. But such bustle as once enlivened the solitude of
+Highgate could never have been otherwise than agreeable diversion to its
+inhabitants; while for Coleridge himself, as we can well imagine, the
+London coach was welcome indeed, that brought to his door such
+well-loved friends as Charles Lamb, Joseph Henry Green, Crabb Robinson,
+Wordsworth, or Talfourd.
+
+To this retreat the author of _The Ancient Mariner_ withdrew in 1815, to
+live with his friend James Gilman, a surgeon, who had undertaken to
+rescue him from the demon of opium, but who, as De Quincey intimates,
+was lured by the poet into the service of the very fiend whom both had
+striven to subdue. It was his last refuge, and he never left it till he
+was released from life. As you ramble in that quiet neighbourhood your
+fancy will not fail to conjure up his placid figure,--the silver hair,
+the pale face, the great, luminous, changeful blue eyes, the somewhat
+portly form clothed in black raiment, the slow, feeble walk, the sweet,
+benignant manner, the voice that was perfect melody, and the
+inexhaustible talk that was the flow of a golden sea of eloquence and
+wisdom. Coleridge was often seen walking there, with a book in his hand;
+and the children of the village knew him and loved him. His presence is
+impressed forever upon the place, to haunt and to hallow it. He was a
+very great man. The wings of his imagination wave easily in the opal air
+of the highest heaven. The power and majesty of his thought are such as
+establish forever in the human mind the conviction of personal
+immortality. Yet how forlorn the ending that this stately soul was
+enforced to make! For more than thirty years he was the slave of opium.
+It blighted his home; it alienated his wife; it ruined his health; it
+made him utterly wretched. "I have been, through a large portion of my
+later life," he wrote, in 1834, "a sufferer, sorely afflicted with
+bodily pains, languor, and manifold infirmities." But behind all
+this,--more dreadful still and harder to bear,--was he not the slave of
+some ingrained perversity of the mind itself, some helpless and hopeless
+irresolution of character, some enervating spell of that sublime yet
+pitiable dejection of Hamlet, which kept him forever at war with
+himself, and, last of all, cast him out upon the homeless ocean of
+despair, to drift away into ruin and death? There are shapes more awful
+than his, in the records of literary history,--the ravaged, agonising
+form of Swift, for instance, and the wonderful, desolate face of Byron;
+but there is no figure more forlorn and pathetic.
+
+This way the memory of Coleridge came upon me, standing at his grave. He
+should have been laid in some wild, free place, where the grass could
+grow above him and the trees could wave their branches over his head.
+They placed him in a ponderous tomb, of gray stone, in Highgate
+churchyard, and in later times they have reared a new building above
+it,--the grammar-school of the village,--so that now the tomb, fenced
+round with iron, is in a cold, barren, gloomy crypt, accessible indeed
+from the churchyard, through several arches, but grim and doleful in all
+its surroundings; as if the evil and cruel fate that marred his life
+were still triumphant over his ashes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+ON BARNET BATTLE-FIELD
+
+
+In England, as elsewhere, every historic spot is occupied; and of course
+it sometimes happens, at such a spot, that its association is marred and
+its sentiment almost destroyed by the presence of the persons and the
+interests of to-day. The visitor to such places must carry with him not
+only knowledge and sensibility but imagination and patience. He will not
+find the way strewn with roses nor the atmosphere of poetry ready-made
+for his enjoyment. That atmosphere, indeed, for the most
+part--especially in the cities--he must himself supply. Relics do not
+robe themselves for exhibition. The Past is utterly indifferent to its
+worshippers. All manner of little obstacles, too, will arise before the
+pilgrim, to thwart him in his search. The mental strain and
+bewilderment, the inevitable physical weariness, the soporific influence
+of the climate, the tumult of the streets, the frequent and
+disheartening spectacle of poverty, squalor, and vice, the capricious
+and untimely rain, the inconvenience of long distances, the ill-timed
+arrival and consequent disappointment, the occasional nervous sense of
+loneliness and insecurity, the inappropriate boor, the ignorant,
+garrulous porter, the extortionate cabman, and the jeering
+bystander--all these must be regarded with resolute indifference by him
+who would ramble, pleasantly and profitably, in the footprints of
+English history. Everything depends, in other words, upon the eyes with
+which you observe and the spirit which you impart. Never was a keener
+truth uttered than in the couplet of Wordsworth--
+
+      "Minds that have nothing to confer
+      Find little to perceive."
+
+To the philosophic stranger, however, even this prosaic occupancy of
+historic places is not without its pleasurable, because humorous,
+significance. Such an observer in England will sometimes be amused as
+well as impressed by a sudden sense of the singular incidental position
+into which--partly through the lapse of years, and partly through a
+peculiarity of national character--the scenes of famous events, not to
+say the events themselves, have gradually drifted. I thought of this one
+night, when, in Whitehall Gardens, I was looking at the statue of James
+the Second, and a courteous policeman came up and silently turned the
+light of his bull's-eye upon the inscription. A scene of more
+incongruous elements, or one suggestive of a more serio-comic contrast,
+could not be imagined. I thought of it again when standing on the
+village green near Barnet, and viewing, amid surroundings both pastoral
+and ludicrous, the column which there commemorates the defeat and death
+of the great Earl of Warwick, and, consequently, the final triumph of
+the Grown over the last of the Barons of England.
+
+It was toward the close of a cool summer day, and of a long drive
+through the beautiful hedgerows of sweet and verdurous Middlesex, that I
+came to the villages of Barnet and Hadley, and went over the field of
+King Edward's victory,--that fatal glorious field, on which Gloster
+showed such resolute valour, and where Neville, supreme and magnificent
+in disaster, fought on foot, to make sure that himself might go down in
+the stormy death of all his hopes. More than four hundred years have
+drifted by since that misty April morning when the star of Warwick was
+quenched in blood, and ten thousand men were slaughtered to end the
+strife between the Barons and the Crown; yet the results of that
+conflict are living facts in the government of England now, and in the
+fortunes of her inhabitants. If you were unaware of the solid simplicity
+and proud reticence of the English character,--leading it to merge all
+its shining deeds in one continuous fabric of achievement, like jewels
+set in a cloth of gold,--you might expect to find this spot adorned with
+a structure of more than common splendour. What you actually do find
+there is a plain monument, standing in the middle of a common, at the
+junction of several roads,--the chief of which are those leading to
+Hatfield and St. Albans, in Hertfordshire,--and on one side of this
+column you may read, in letters of faded black, the comprehensive
+statement that "Here was fought the famous battle between Edward the
+Fourth and the Earl of Warwick, April 14th, anno 1471, in which the Earl
+was defeated and slain."[1]
+
+[1] The words "stick no bills" have been intrusively added, just below
+this inscription.
+
+Illustration: "Column on Barnet Battle-Field."
+
+In my reverie, standing at the foot of this humble, weather-stained
+monument, I saw the long range of Barnet hills, mantled with grass and
+flowers and with the golden haze of a morning in spring, swarming with
+gorgeous horsemen and glittering with spears and banners; and I heard
+the vengeful clash of arms, the horrible neighing of maddened steeds,
+the furious shouts of onset, and all the nameless cries and groans of
+battle, commingled in a thrilling yet hideous din. Here rode King
+Edward, intrepid, handsome, and stalwart, with his proud, cruel smile
+and his long, yellow hair. There Warwick swung his great two-handed
+sword, and mowed his foes like grain. And there the fiery form of
+Richard, splendid in burnished steel, darted like the scorpion, dealing
+death at every blow; till at last, in fatal mischance, the sad star of
+Oxford, assailed by its own friends, was swept out of the field, and the
+fight drove, raging, into the valleys of Hadley. How strangely, though,
+did this fancied picture contrast with the actual scene before me! At a
+little distance, all around the village green, the peaceful, embowered
+cottages kept their sentinel watch. Over the careless, straggling grass
+went the shadow of the passing cloud. Not a sound was heard, save the
+rustle of leaves and the low laughter of some little children, playing
+near the monument. Close by and at rest was a flock of geese, couched
+upon the cool earth, and, as their custom is, supremely contented with
+themselves and all the world.
+
+And at the foot of the column, stretched out at his full length, in
+tattered garments that scarcely covered his nakedness, reposed the
+British labourer, fast asleep upon the sod. No more Wars of the Roses
+now; but calm retirement, smiling plenty, cool western winds, and sleep
+and peace--
+
+      "With a red rose and a white rose
+      Leaning, nodding at the wall."
+
+Illustration: "Farm-house."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+A GLIMPSE OF CANTERBURY
+
+
+One of the most impressive spots on earth, and one that especially
+teaches--with silent, pathetic eloquence and solemn admonition--the
+great lesson of contrast, the incessant flow of the ages and the
+inevitable decay and oblivion of the past, is the ancient city of
+Canterbury. Years and not merely days of residence there are essential
+to the adequate and right comprehension of that wonderful place. Yet
+even an hour passed among its shrines will teach you, as no printed word
+has ever taught, the measureless power and the sublime beauty of a
+perfect religious faith; while, as you stand and meditate in the shadow
+of the gray cathedral walls, the pageant of a thousand years of history
+will pass before you like a dream. The city itself, with its bright,
+swift river (the Stour), its opulence of trees and flowers, its narrow
+winding streets, its numerous antique buildings, its many towers, its
+fragments of ancient wall and gate, its formal decorations, its air of
+perfect cleanliness and thoughtful gravity, its beautiful, umbrageous
+suburbs,--where the scarlet of the poppies and the russet red of the
+clover make one vast rolling sea of colour and of fragrant
+delight,--and, to crown all, its stately character of wealth without
+ostentation and industry without tumult, must prove to you a deep and
+satisfying comfort. But, through all this, pervading and surmounting it
+all, the spirit of the place pours in upon your heart, and floods your
+whole being with the incense and organ music of passionate, jubilant
+devotion.
+
+Illustration: "Falstaff Inn and West Gate, Canterbury."
+
+It was not superstition that reared those gorgeous fanes of worship
+which still adorn, even while they no longer consecrate, the
+ecclesiastic cities of the old world. In the age of Augustine, Dunstan,
+and Ethelnoth humanity had begun to feel its profound and vital need of
+a sure and settled reliance on religious faith. The drifting spirit,
+worn with sorrow, doubt, and self-conflict, longed to be at
+peace--longed for a refuge equally from the evils and tortures of its
+own condition and the storms and perils of the world. In that longing it
+recognised its immortality and heard the voice of its Divine Parent; and
+out of the ecstatic joy and utter abandonment of its new-born,
+passionate, responsive faith, it built and consecrated those stupendous
+temples,--rearing them with all its love no less than all its riches and
+all its power. There was no wealth that it would not give, no toil that
+it would not perform, and no sacrifice that it would not make, in the
+accomplishment of its sacred task. It was grandly, nobly, terribly in
+earnest, and it achieved a work that is not only sublime in its poetic
+majesty but measureless in the scope and extent of its moral and
+spiritual influence. It has left to succeeding ages not only a legacy of
+permanent beauty, not only a sublime symbol of religious faith, but an
+everlasting monument to the loveliness and greatness that are inherent
+in human nature. No creature with a human heart in his bosom can stand
+in such a building as Canterbury cathedral without feeling a greater
+love and reverence than he ever felt before, alike for God and man.
+
+Illustration: "Butchery Lane, Canterbury."
+
+On a day (July 27, 1882) when a class of the boys of the King's School
+of Canterbury was graduated the present writer chanced to be a listener
+to the impressive and touching sermon that was preached before them, in
+the cathedral; wherein they were tenderly admonished to keep unbroken
+their associations with their school-days and to remember the lessons of
+the place itself. That counsel must have sunk deep into every mind. It
+is difficult to understand how any person reared amid such scenes and
+relics could ever cast away their hallowing influence. Even to the
+casual visitor the bare thought of the historic treasures that are
+garnered in this temple is, by itself, sufficient to implant in the
+bosom a memorable and lasting awe. For more than twelve hundred years
+the succession of the Archbishops of Canterbury has remained
+substantially unbroken. There have been ninety-three "primates of all
+England," of whom fifty-three were buried in the cathedral, and here the
+tombs of fifteen of them are still visible. Here was buried the
+sagacious, crafty, inflexible, indomitable Henry the Fourth,--that
+Hereford whom Shakespeare has described and interpreted with matchless,
+immortal eloquence,--and here, cut off in the morning of his greatness,
+and lamented to this day in the hearts of the English people, was laid
+the body of Edward the Black Prince, who to a dauntless valour and
+terrible prowess in war added a high-souled, human, and tender
+magnanimity in conquest, and whom personal virtues and shining public
+deeds united to make the ideal hero of chivalry. In no other way than by
+personal observance of such memorials can historic reading be invested
+with a perfect and permanent reality. Over the tomb of the Black Prince,
+with its fine recumbent effigy of gilded brass, hang the gauntlets that
+he wore; and they tell you that his sword formerly hung there, but that
+Oliver Cromwell--who revealed his iconoclastic and unlovely character in
+making a stable of this cathedral--carried it away. Close at hand is the
+tomb of the wise, just, and gentle Cardinal Pole, simply inscribed
+"Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord"; and you may touch a
+little, low mausoleum of gray stone, in which are the ashes of John
+Morton, that Bishop of Ely from whose garden in Holborn the strawberries
+were brought for the Duke of Gloster, on the day when he condemned the
+accomplished Hastings, and who "fled to Richmond," in good time, from
+the standard of the dangerous Protector. Standing there, I could almost
+hear the resolute, scornful voice of Richard, breathing out, in clear,
+implacable accents--
+
+      "Ely with Richmond troubles me more near
+      Than Buckingham and his rash-levied strength."
+
+The astute Morton, when Bosworth was over and Richmond had assumed the
+crown and Bourchier had died, was made Archbishop of Canterbury; and as
+such, at a great age, he passed away.
+
+Illustration: "Flying Horse Inn, Canterbury."
+
+A few hundred yards from his place of rest, in a vault beneath the
+Church of St. Dunstan, is the head of Sir Thomas More (the body being in
+St. Peter's, at the Tower of London), who in his youth had been a member
+of Morton's ecclesiastical household, and whose greatness that prelate
+had foreseen and prophesied. Did no shadow of the scaffold ever fall
+across the statesman's thoughts, as he looked upon that handsome, manly
+boy, and thought of the troublous times that were raging about them?
+Morton, aged ninety, died in 1500; More, aged fifty-five, in 1535.
+Strange fate, indeed, was that, and as inscrutable as mournful, which
+gave to those who in life had been like father and son such a ghastly
+association in death![1] They show you the place where Becket was
+murdered, and the stone steps, worn hollow by the thousands upon
+thousands of devout pilgrims who, in the days before the Reformation,
+crept up to weep and pray at the costly, resplendent shrine of St.
+Thomas. The bones of Becket, as all the world knows, were, by command of
+Henry the Eighth, burnt, and scattered to the winds, while his shrine
+was pillaged and destroyed. Neither tomb nor scutcheon commemorates him
+here,--but the cathedral itself is his monument.
+
+[1] St. Dunstan's church was connected with the Convent of St. Gregory.
+The Roper family, in the time of Henry the Fourth, founded a chapel in
+it, in which are two marble tombs, commemorative of them, and underneath
+which is their burial vault. Margaret Roper, Sir Thomas More's daughter,
+obtained her father's head, after his execution, and buried it here. The
+vault was opened in 1835,--when a new pavement was laid in the chancel
+of this church,--and persons descending into it saw the head, in a
+leaden box shaped like a beehive, open in front, set in a niche in the
+wall, behind an iron grill.
+
+Illustration: "Canterbury Cathedral."
+
+There it stands, with its grand columns and glorious arches, its towers
+of enormous size and its long vistas of distance, so mysterious and
+awful, its gloomy crypt where once the silver lamps sparkled and the
+smoking censers were swung, its tombs of mighty warriors and statesmen,
+its frayed and crumbling banners, and the eternal, majestic silence with
+which it broods over the love, ambition, glory, defeat, and anguish of a
+thousand years, dissolved now and ended in a little dust! As the organ
+music died away I looked upward and saw where a bird was wildly flying
+to and fro, through the vast spaces beneath its lofty roof, in the vain
+effort to find some outlet of escape. Fit emblem, truly, of the human
+mind which strives to comprehend and to utter the meaning of this
+marvellous fabric!
+
+Illustration: "Alladin's Lamp"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE SHRINES OF WARWICKSHIRE 1882
+
+
+Night, in Stratford-upon-Avon--a summer night, with large, solemn stars,
+a cool and fragrant breeze, and the stillness of perfect rest. From this
+high and grassy bank I look forth across the darkened meadows and the
+smooth and shining river, and see the little town where it lies asleep.
+Hardly a light is anywhere visible. A few great elms, near by, are
+nodding and rustling in the wind, and once or twice a drowsy bird-note
+floats up from the neighbouring thicket that skirts the vacant, lonely
+road. There, at some distance, are the dim arches of Clopton's Bridge.
+In front--a graceful, shapely mass, indistinct in the starlight--rises
+the fair Memorial, Stratford's honour and pride. Further off, glimmering
+through the tree-tops, is the dusky spire of Trinity, keeping its sacred
+vigil over the dust of Shakespeare. Nothing here is changed. The same
+tranquil beauty, as of old, hallows this place; the same sense of awe
+and mystery broods over its silent shrines of everlasting renown. Long
+and weary the years have been since last I saw it; but to-night they are
+remembered only as a fleeting and troubled dream. Here, once more, is
+the highest and noblest companionship this world can give. Here, once
+more, is the almost visible presence of the one magician who can lift
+the soul out of the infinite weariness of common things and give it
+strength and peace. The old time has come back, and the bloom of the
+heart that I thought had all faded and gone. I stroll again to the
+river's brink, and take my place in the boat, and, trailing my hand in
+the dark waters of the Avon, forget every trouble that ever I have
+known.
+
+Illustration: "Stratford-upon-Avon."
+
+It is often said, with reference to memorable places, that the best view
+always is the first view. No doubt the accustomed eye sees blemishes. No
+doubt the supreme moments of human life are few and come but once; and
+neither of them is ever repeated. Yet frequently it will be found that
+the change is in ourselves and not in the objects we behold. Scott has
+glanced at this truth, in a few mournful lines, written toward the close
+of his heroic and beautiful life. Here at Stratford, however, I am not
+conscious that the wonderful charm of the place is in any degree
+impaired. The town still preserves its old-fashioned air, its
+quaintness, its perfect cleanliness and order. At the Shakespeare
+cottage, in the stillness of the room where he was born, the spirits of
+mystery and reverence still keep their imperial state. At the ancient
+grammar-school, with its pent-house roof and its dark, sagging rafters,
+you still may see, in fancy, the unwilling schoolboy gazing upward
+absently at the great, rugged timbers, or looking wistfully at the
+sunshine, where it streams through the little lattice windows of his
+prison. New Place, with its lovely lawn, its spacious garden, the
+ancestral mulberry and the ivy-covered well, will bring the poet before
+you, as he lived and moved, in the meridian of his greatness.
+_Cymbeline, The Tempest,_ and _A Winter's Tale,_ the last of his works,
+undoubtedly were written here; and this alone should make it a hallowed
+spot. Here he blessed his young daughter on her wedding day; here his
+eyes closed in the long last sleep; and from this place he was carried
+to his grave in the chancel of Stratford church. I pass once again
+through the fragrant avenue of limes, the silent churchyard with its
+crumbling monuments, the dim porch, the twilight of the venerable
+temple, and kneel at last above the ashes of Shakespeare. What majesty
+in this triumphant rest! All the great labour accomplished. The
+universal human heart interpreted with a living voice. The memory and
+the imagination of mankind stored forever with words of sublime
+eloquence and images of immortal beauty. The noble lesson of
+self-conquest--the lesson of the entire adequacy of the resolute,
+virtuous, patient human will--set forth so grandly that all the world
+must see its meaning and marvel at its splendour. And, last of all,
+death itself shorn of its terrors and made a trivial thing.
+
+Illustration: "Stratford Church."
+
+There is a new custodian at New Place, and he will show you the little
+museum that is kept there--including the shovel-board from the old
+Falcon tavern across the way, on which the poet himself might have
+played--and he will lead you through the gardens, and descant on the
+mulberry and on the ancient and still unforgiven vandalism of the Rev.
+Francis Gastrell, by whom the Shakespeare mansion was destroyed (1759),
+and will pause at the well, and at the fragments of the foundation,
+covered now with stout screens of wire. There is a fresh and fragrant
+beauty all about these grounds, an atmosphere of sunshine, life, comfort
+and elegance of state, that no observer can miss. This same keeper also
+has the keys of the guild chapel, opposite, on which Shakespeare looked
+from his windows and his garden, and in which he was the holder of two
+sittings. You will enter it by the same porch through which he walked,
+and see the arch and columns and tall, mullioned windows on which his
+gaze has often rested. The interior is cold and barren now, for the
+scriptural wall-paintings, discovered there in 1804, under a thick
+coating of whitewash, have been obliterated and the wooden pews, which
+are modern, have not yet been embrowned by age. Yet this church, known
+beyond question as one of Shakespeare's personal haunts, will hold you
+with the strongest tie of reverence and sympathy. At his birthplace
+everything remains unchanged. The gentle ladies who have so long guarded
+and shown it still have it in their affectionate care. The ceiling of
+the room in which the poet was born--the room that contains "the Actor's
+Pillar" and the thousands of signatures on walls and windows--is slowly
+crumbling to pieces. Every morning little particles of the plaster are
+found upon the floor. The area of tiny, delicate iron laths, to sustain
+this ceiling, has more than doubled (1882) since I first saw it, in
+1877. It was on the ceiling that Lord Byron wrote his name, but this has
+flaked off and disappeared. In the museum hall, once the Swan inn, they
+are forming a library; and there you may see at least one Shakespearean
+relic of extraordinary interest. This is the MS. letter of Richard
+Quiney--whose son Thomas became, in 1616, the husband of Shakespeare's
+youngest daughter, Judith--asking the poet for the loan of thirty
+pounds. It is enclosed between plates of glass in a frame, and usually
+kept covered with a cloth, so that the sunlight may not fade the ink.
+The date of this letter is October 25, 1598, and thirty English pounds
+then was a sum equivalent to about six hundred dollars of American money
+now. This is the only letter known to be in existence that Shakespeare
+received. Miss Caroline Chataway, the younger of the ladies who keep
+this house, will recite to you its text, from memory--giving a delicious
+old-fashioned flavour to its quaint phraseology and fervent spirit, as
+rich and strange as the odour of the wild thyme and rosemary that grow
+in her garden beds. This antique touch adds a wonderful charm to the
+relics of the past. I found it once more when sitting in the
+chimney-corner of Anne Hathaway's kitchen; and again in the lovely
+little church at Charlecote, where a simple, kindly woman, not ashamed
+to reverence the place and the dead, stood with me at the tomb of the
+Lucys, and repeated from memory the tender, sincere, and eloquent
+epitaph with which Sir Thomas Lucy thereon commemorates his wife. The
+lettering is small and indistinct on the tomb, but having often read it
+I well knew how correctly it was then spoken. Nor shall I ever read it
+again without thinking of that kindly, pleasant voice, the hush of the
+beautiful church, the afternoon sunlight streaming through the oriel
+window, and--visible through the doorway arch--the roses waving among
+the churchyard graves.
+
+In the days of Shakespeare's courtship, when he strolled across the
+fields to Anne Hathaway's cottage at Shottery, his path, we may be sure,
+ran through wild pasture-land and tangled thicket. A fourth part of
+England at that time was a wilderness, and the entire population of that
+country did not exceed five millions of persons. The Stratford-upon-Avon
+of to-day is still possessed of some of its ancient features; but the
+region round about it then must have been rude and wild in comparison
+with what it is at present. If you walk in the foot-path to Shottery now
+you will pass between low fences and along the margin of gardens,--now
+in the sunshine, and now in the shadow of larch and chestnut and elm,
+while the sweet air blows upon your face and the expeditious rook makes
+rapid wing to the woodland, cawing as he flies. In the old cottage, with
+its roof of thatch, its crooked rafters, its odorous hedges and climbing
+vines, its leafy well and its tangled garden, everything remains the
+same. Mrs. Mary Taylor Baker, the last living descendant of the
+Hathaways, born in this house, always a resident here, and now an
+elderly woman, still has it in her keeping, and still displays to you
+the ancient carved bedstead in the garret, the wooden settle by the
+kitchen fireside, the hearth at which Shakespeare sat, the great
+blackened chimney with its adroit iron "fish-back" for the better
+regulation of the tea-kettle, and the brown and tattered Bible, with the
+Hathaway family record. Sitting in an old arm-chair, in the corner of
+Anne Hathaway's bedroom, I could hear, in the perfumed summer stillness,
+the low twittering of birds, whose nest is in the covering thatch and
+whose songs would awaken the sleeper at the earliest light of dawn. A
+better idea can be obtained in this cottage than in either the
+birthplace or any other Shakespearean haunt of what the real life
+actually was of the common people of England in Shakespeare's day. The
+stone floor and oak timbers of the Hathaway kitchen, stained and
+darkened in the slow decay of three hundred years, have lost no particle
+of their pristine character. The occupant of the cottage has not been
+absent from it more than a week during upward of half a century. In such
+a nook the inherited habits of living do not alter. "The thing that has
+been is the thing that shall be," and the customs of long ago are the
+customs of to-day.
+
+The Red Horse inn is now in the hands of William Gardner Colbourne, who
+has succeeded his uncle Mr. Gardner, and it is brighter than of
+old--without, however, having parted with either its antique furniture
+or its delightful antique ways. The old mahogany and wax-candle period
+has not ended yet in this happy place, and you sink to sleep on a
+snow-white pillow, soft as down and fragrant as lavender. One important
+change is especially to be remarked. They have made a niche in a corner
+of Washington Irving's parlour, and in it have placed his arm-chair,
+re-cushioned and polished, and sequested from touch by a large sheet of
+plate-glass. The relic may still be seen, but the pilgrim can sit upon
+it no more. Perhaps it might be well to enshrine "Geoffrey Crayon's
+Sceptre" in a somewhat similar way. It could be fastened to a shield,
+displaying the American colours, and placed in this storied room. At
+present it is the tenant of a starred and striped bag, and keeps its
+state in the seclusion of a bureau; nor is it shown except upon
+request--like the beautiful marble statue of Donne, in his shroud,
+niched in the chancel wall of St. Paul's cathedral.[1]
+
+[1] A few effigies are all that remain of old St. Paul's. The most
+important and interesting of them is that shrouded statue of the poet
+John Donne, who was Dean of St. Paul's from 1621 to 1631, dying in the
+latter year, aged 58. This is in the south aisle of the chancel, in a
+niche in the wall. You will not see it unless you ask the privilege. The
+other relics are in the crypt and in the churchyard. There is nothing to
+indicate the place of the grave of John of Gaunt or that of Sir Philip
+Sidney. Old St. Paul's was burned September 2, 1666.
+
+Illustration: "Washington Irving's Chair."
+
+One of the strongest instincts of the English character is the instinct
+of permanence. It acts involuntarily, it pervades the national life,
+and, as Pope said of the universal soul, it operates unspent.
+Institutions seem to have grown out of human nature in this country, and
+are as much its expression as blossoms, leaves, and flowers are the
+expression of inevitable law. A custom, in England, once established, is
+seldom or never changed. The brilliant career, the memorable
+achievement, the great character, once fulfilled, takes a permanent
+shape in some kind of outward and visible memorial, some absolute and
+palpable fact, which thenceforth is an accepted part of the history of
+the land and the experience of its people. England means stability--the
+fireside and the altar, home here and heaven hereafter; and this is the
+secret of the power that she wields in the affairs of the world, and the
+charm that she diffuses over the domain of thought. Such a temple as St.
+Paul's cathedral, such a palace as Hampton Court, such a castle as that
+of Windsor or that of Warwick, is the natural, spontaneous expression of
+the English instinct of permanence; and it is in memorials like these
+that England has written her history, with symbols that can perish only
+with time itself. At intervals her latent animal ferocity breaks
+loose--as it did under Henry the Eighth, under Mary, under Cromwell, and
+under James the Second,--and for a brief time ramps and bellows,
+striving to deface and deform the surrounding structure of beauty that
+has been slowly and painfully reared out of her deep heart and her sane
+civilisation. But the tears of human pity soon quench the fire of
+Smithfield, and it is only for a little while that the Puritan soldiers
+play at nine-pins in the nave of St. Paul's. This fever of animal
+impulse, this wild revolt of petulant impatience, is soon cooled; and
+then the great work goes on again, as calmly and surely as before--that
+great work of educating mankind to the level of constitutional liberty,
+in which England has been engaged for well-nigh a thousand years, and in
+which the American Republic, though sometimes at variance with her
+methods and her spirit, is, nevertheless, her follower and the
+consequence of her example. Our Declaration was made in 1776: the
+Declaration to the Prince of Orange is dated 1689, and the Bill of
+Rights 1628, while Magna Charta was secured in 1215.
+
+Throughout every part of this sumptuous and splendid domain of
+Warwickshire the symbols of English stability and the relics of historic
+times are numerous and deeply impressive. At Stratford the reverence of
+the nineteenth century takes its practical, substantial form, not alone
+in the honourable preservation of the ancient Shakespearean shrines, but
+in the Shakespeare Memorial. That fabric, though mainly due to the
+fealty of England, is also, to some extent, representative of the
+practical sympathy of America. Several Americans--Edwin Booth, Herman
+Vezin, M. D. Conway, and W. H. Reynolds among them--were contributors to
+the fund that built it, and an American gentlewoman, Miss Kate Field,
+has worked for its cause with excellent zeal, untiring fidelity, and
+good results. (Miss Mary Anderson acted--1885--in the Memorial Theatre,
+for its benefit, presenting for the first time in her life the character
+of Rosalind.) It is a noble monument. It stands upon the margin of the
+Avon, not distant from the church of the Holy Trinity, which is
+Shakespeare's grave; so that these two buildings are the conspicuous
+points of the landscape, and seem to confront each other with
+sympathetic greeting, as if conscious of their sacred trust. The vacant
+land adjacent, extending between the road and the river, is a part of
+the Memorial estate, and is to be converted into a garden, with
+pathways, shade-trees, and flowers,--by means of which the prospect will
+be made still fairer than now it is, and will be kept forever unbroken
+between the Memorial and the Church. Under this ample roof are already
+united a theatre, a library, and a hall of pictures. The drop-curtain,
+illustrating the processional progress of Queen Elizabeth when "going to
+the Globe Theatre," is gay but incorrect. The divisions of seats are in
+conformity with the inconvenient arrangements of the London theatre of
+to-day. Queen Elizabeth heard plays in the hall of the Middle Temple,
+the hall of Hampton Palace, and at Greenwich and at Richmond; but she
+never went to the Globe Theatre. In historic temples there should be no
+trifling with historic themes; and surely, in a theatre of the
+nineteenth century, dedicated to Shakespeare, while no fantastic regard
+should be paid to the usages of the past, it would be tasteful and
+proper to blend the best of ancient ways with all the luxury and
+elegance of these times. It is much, however, to have built what can
+readily be made a lovely theatre; and meanwhile, through the
+affectionate generosity of friends in all parts of the world, the
+library shelves are continually gathering treasures, and the hall of
+paintings is growing more and more the imposing expository that it was
+intended to be, of Shakespearean poetry and the history of the English
+stage.
+
+Illustration: "The Stratford Memorial."
+
+Many faces of actors appear upon those walls--from Garrick to Edmund
+Kean, from Macready to Henry Irving, from Kemble to Edwin Booth, from
+Mrs. Siddons to Ellen Terry, Ada Rehan, and Mary Anderson. Prominent
+among the pictures is a spirited portrait of Garrick and his wife,
+playing at cards, wherein the lovely, laughing lady archly discloses
+that her hands are full of hearts. Not otherwise, truly, is it with
+sweet and gentle Stratford herself, where peace and beauty and the most
+hallowed and hallowing of poetic associations garner up, forever and
+forever, the hearts of all mankind.
+
+In previous papers upon this subject I have tried to express the
+feelings that are excited by personal contact with the relics of
+Shakespeare--the objects that he saw and the fields through which he
+wandered. Fancy would never tire of lingering in this delicious region
+of flowers and of dreams. From the hideous vileness of the social
+condition of London in the time of James the First, Shakespeare must
+indeed have rejoiced to depart into this blooming garden of rustic
+tranquillity. Here also he could find the surroundings that were needful
+to sustain him amid the vast and overwhelming labours of his final
+period. No man, however great his powers, can ever, in this world,
+escape from the trammels under which nature enjoins and permits the
+exercise of the brain. Ease, in the intellectual life, is always
+visionary. The higher a man's faculties the higher are his
+ideals,--toward which, under the operation of a divine law, he must
+perpetually strive, but to the height of which he will never absolutely
+attain. So, inevitably, it was with Shakespeare.
+
+Illustration: "Mary Arden Cottage."
+
+But, although genius cannot escape from itself and is no more free than
+the humblest toiler in the vast scheme of creation, it may--and it
+must--sometimes escape from the world: and this wise poet, of all men
+else, would surely recognise and strongly grasp the great privilege of
+solitude amid the sweetest and most soothing adjuncts of natural beauty.
+That privilege he found in the sparkling and fragrant gardens of
+Warwick, the woods, fields and waters of the Avon, where he had played
+as a boy, and where love had laid its first kiss upon his lips and
+poetry first opened upon his inspired vision the eternal glories of her
+celestial world. It still abides there, for every gentle soul that can
+feel its influence--to deepen the glow of noble passion, to soften the
+sting of grief, and to touch the lips of worship with a fresh sacrament
+of patience and beauty.
+
+      ------
+
+     THE ANNE HATHAWAY COTTAGE.
+
+_April,_ 1892.--A record that all lovers of the Shakespeare shrines have
+long wished to make can at last be made. The Anne Hathaway Cottage has
+been bought for the British Nation, and that building will henceforth be
+one of the Amalgamated Trusts that are guarded by the corporate
+authorities of Stratford. The other Trusts are the Birthplace, the
+Museum, and New Place. The Mary Arden Cottage, the home of Shakespeare's
+mother, is yet to be acquired.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+A BORROWER OF THE NIGHT
+
+
+      _"I must become a borrower of the night,
+      For a dark hour or twain."_--MACBETH.
+
+Midnight has just sounded from the tower of St. Martin. It is a peaceful
+night, faintly lit with stars, and in the region round about Trafalgar
+Square a dream-like stillness broods over the darkened city, now slowly
+hushing itself to its brief and troubled rest. This is the centre of the
+heart of modern civilisation, the middle of the greatest city in the
+world--the vast, seething alembic of a grand future, the stately
+monument of a deathless past. Here, alone, in my quiet room of this old
+English inn, let me meditate a while on some of the scenes that are near
+me--the strange, romantic, sad, grand objects that I have seen, the
+memorable figures of beauty, genius, and renown that haunt this classic
+land.
+
+Illustration: "Church of St. Martin."
+
+How solemn and awful now must be the gloom within the walls of the
+Abbey! A walk of only a few minutes would bring me to its gates--the
+gates of the most renowned mausoleum on earth. No human foot to-night
+invades its sacred precincts. The dead alone possess it. I see, upon its
+gray walls, the marble figures, white and spectral, staring through the
+darkness. I hear the night-wind moaning around its lofty towers and
+faintly sobbing in the dim, mysterious spaces beneath its fretted roof.
+Here and there a ray of starlight, streaming through the sumptuous rose
+window, falls and lingers, in ruby or emerald gleam, on tomb, or pillar,
+or dusky pavement. Rustling noises, vague and fearful, float from those
+dim chapels where the great kings lie in state, with marble effigies
+recumbent above their bones. At such an hour as this, in such a place,
+do the dead come out of their graves? The resolute, implacable Queen
+Elizabeth, the beautiful, ill-fated Queen of Scots, the royal boys that
+perished in the Tower, Charles the Merry and William the Silent--are
+these, and such as these, among the phantoms that fill the haunted
+aisles? What a wonderful company it would be, for human eyes to behold!
+And with what passionate love or hatred, what amazement, or what haughty
+scorn, its members would look upon each other's faces, in this
+miraculous meeting? Here, through the glimmering, icy waste, would pass
+before the watcher the august shades of the poets of five hundred years.
+Now would glide the ghosts of Chaucer, Spenser, Jonson, Beaumont,
+Dryden, Cowley, Congreve, Addison, Prior, Campbell, Garrick, Burke,
+Sheridan, Newton, and Macaulay--children of divine genius, that here
+mingled with the earth. The grim Edward, who so long ravaged Scotland;
+the blunt, chivalrous Henry, who conquered France; the lovely,
+lamentable victim at Pomfret, and the harsh, haughty, astute victor at
+Bosworth; James with his babbling tongue, and William with his
+impassive, predominant visage--they would all mingle with the spectral
+multitude and vanish into the gloom. Gentler faces, too, might here once
+more reveal their loveliness and their grief--Eleanor de Bohun,
+brokenhearted for her murdered lord; Elizabeth Claypole, the meek,
+merciful, beloved daughter of Cromwell; Matilda, Queen to Henry the
+First, and model of every grace and virtue; and sweet Anne Neville,
+destroyed--if his enemies told the truth--by the politic craft of
+Gloster. Strange sights, truly, in the lonesome Abbey to-night!
+
+In the sombre crypt beneath St. Paul's cathedral how thrilling now must
+be the heavy stillness! No sound can enter there. No breeze from the
+upper world can stir the dust upon those massive sepulchres. Even in
+day-time that shadowy vista, with its groined arches and the black tombs
+of Wellington and Nelson and the ponderous funeral-car of the Iron Duke,
+is seen with a shudder. How strangely, how fearfully the mind would be
+impressed, of him who should wander there to-night! What sublime
+reflections would be his, standing beside the ashes of the great
+admiral, and thinking of that fiery, dauntless spirit--so simple,
+resolute, and true--who made the earth and the sea alike resound with
+the splendid tumult of his deeds. Somewhere beneath this pavement is the
+dust of Sir Philip Sidney--buried here before the destruction of the old
+cathedral, in the great fire of 1666--and here, too, is the nameless
+grave of the mighty Duke of Lancaster, John of Gaunt. Shakespeare was
+only twenty-two years old when Sidney fell, at the battle of Zutphen,
+and, being then resident in London, he might readily have seen, and
+doubtless did see, the splendid funeral procession with which the
+body of that heroic gentleman--radiant and immortal example of
+perfect chivalry--was borne to the tomb. Hither came Henry of
+Hereford--returning from exile and deposing the handsome, visionary,
+useless Richard--to mourn over the relics of his father, dead of sorrow
+for his son's absence and his country's shame. Here, at the venerable
+age of ninety-one, the glorious brain of Wren found rest at last,
+beneath the stupendous temple that himself had reared. The watcher in
+the crypt tonight would see, perchance, or fancy that he saw, those
+figures from the storied past. Beneath this roof--the soul and the
+perfect symbol of sublimity!--are ranged more than fourscore monuments
+to heroic martial persons who have died for England, by land or sea.
+Here, too, are gathered in everlasting repose the honoured relics of men
+who were famous in the arts of peace. Reynolds and Opie, Lawrence and
+West, Landseer, Turner, Cruikshank, and many more, sleep under the
+sculptured pavement where now the pilgrim walks. For fifteen centuries a
+Christian church has stood upon this spot, and through it has poured,
+with organ strains and glancing lights, an endless procession of
+prelates and statesmen, of poets and warriors and kings. Surely this is
+hallowed and haunted ground! Surely to him the spirits of the mighty
+dead would be very near, who--alone, in the darkness--should stand
+to-night 'within those sacred walls, and hear, beneath that awful dome,
+the mellow thunder of the bells of God.
+
+Illustration: "Westminster Abbey."
+
+How looks, to-night, the interior of the chapel of the Foundling
+hospital? Dark and lonesome, no doubt, with its heavy galleries and
+sombre pews, and the great organ--Handel's gift--standing there, mute
+and grim, between the ascending tiers of empty seats. But never, in my
+remembrance, will it cease to present a picture more impressive and
+touching than words can say. Scores of white-robed children, rescued
+from shame and penury by this noble benevolence, were ranged around that
+organ when I saw it, and, with artless, frail little voices, singing a
+hymn of praise and worship. Well-nigh one hundred and fifty years have
+passed since this grand institution of charity--the sacred work and
+blessed legacy of Captain Thomas Coram--was established in this place.
+What a divine good it has accomplished, and continues to accomplish, and
+what a pure glory hallows its founder's name! Here the poor mother,
+betrayed and deserted, may take her child and find for it a safe and
+happy home and a chance in life--nor will she herself be turned adrift
+without sympathy and help. The poet and novelist George Croly was once
+chaplain of the Foundling hospital, and he preached some noble sermons
+there; but these were thought to be above the comprehension of his usual
+audience, and he presently resigned the place. Sidney Smith often spoke
+in this pulpit, when a young man. It was an aged clergyman who preached
+there within my hearing, and I remember he consumed the most part of an
+hour in saying that a good way in which to keep the tongue from speaking
+evil is to keep the heart kind and pure. Better than any sermon, though,
+was the spectacle of those poor children, rescued out of their
+helplessness and reared in comfort and affection. Several fine works of
+art are owned by this hospital and shown to visitors--paintings by
+Gainsborough and Reynolds, and a portrait of Captain Coram, by Hogarth.
+May the turf lie lightly on him, and daisies and violets deck his
+hallowed grave! No man ever did a better deed than he, and the darkest
+night that ever was cannot darken his fame.
+
+Illustration: "Middle Temple Lane."
+
+How dim and silent now are all those narrow and dingy little streets and
+lanes around Paul's churchyard and the Temple, where Johnson and
+Goldsmith loved to ramble! More than once have I wandered there, in the
+late hours of the night, meeting scarce a human creature, but conscious
+of a royal company indeed, of the wits and poets and players of a
+far-off time. Darkness now, on busy Smithfield, where once the frequent,
+cruel flames of bigotry shed forth a glare that sickened the light of
+day. Murky and grim enough to-night is that grand processional walk in
+St. Bartholomew's church, where the great gray pillars and splendid
+Norman arches of the twelfth century are mouldering in neglect and
+decay. Sweet to fancy and dear in recollection, the old church comes
+back to me now, with the sound of children's voices and the wail of the
+organ strangely breaking on its pensive rest. Stillness and peace over
+arid Bunhill Fields---the last haven of many a Puritan worthy, and
+hallowed to many a pilgrim as the resting-place of Bunyan and of Watts.
+In many a park and gloomy square the watcher now would hear only a
+rustling of leaves or the fretful twitter of half-awakened birds. Around
+Primrose Hill and out toward Hampstead many a night-walk have I taken,
+that seemed like rambling in a desert--so dark and still are the walled
+houses, so perfect is the solitude. In Drury Lane, even at this late
+hour, there would be some movement; but cold and dense as ever the
+shadows are resting on that little graveyard behind it, where Lady
+Dedlock went to die. To walk in Bow Street now,--might it not be to meet
+the shades of Waller and Wycherley and Betterton, who lived and died
+there; to have a greeting from the silver-tongued Barry; or to see, in
+draggled lace and ruffles, the stalwart figure and flushed and
+roystering countenance of Henry Fielding? Very quiet now are those grim
+stone chambers in the terrible Tower of London, where so many tears have
+fallen and so many noble hearts been split with sorrow. Does Brackenbury
+still kneel in the cold, lonely, vacant chapel of St. John; or the sad
+ghost of Monmouth hover in the chancel of St. Peter's? How sweet tonight
+would be the rustle of the ivy on the dark walls of Hadley church, where
+late I breathed the rose-scented air and heard the warbling thrush, and
+blessed, with a grateful heart, the loving kindness that makes such
+beauty in the world! Out there on the hillside of Highgate, populous
+with death, the starlight gleams on many a ponderous tomb and the white
+marble of many a sculptured statue, where dear and famous names will
+lure the traveller's footsteps for years to come. There Lyndhurst rests,
+in honour and peace, and there is hushed the tuneful voice of
+Dempster--never to be heard any more, either when snows are flying or
+"when green leaves come again." Not many days have passed since I stood
+there, by the humble gravestone of poor Charles Harcourt, that fine
+actor, and remembered all the gentle enthusiasm with which (1877) he
+spoke to me of the character of Jaques--which he loved--and how well he
+repeated the immortal lines upon the drama of human life. For him the
+"strange, eventful history" came early and suddenly to an end.
+
+Illustration: "The Castle Inn."
+
+In that ground, too, I saw the sculptured medallion of the well-beloved
+George Honey--"all his frolics o'er" and nothing left but this. Many a
+golden moment did we have, old friend, and by me thou art not forgotten!
+The lapse of a few years changes the whole face of life; but nothing can
+ever take from us our memories of the past. Here, around me, in the
+still watches of the night, are the faces that will never smile again,
+and the voices that will speak no more--Sothern, with his silver hair
+and bright and kindly smile, from the spacious cemetery of Southampton;
+and droll Harry Beckett and poor Adelaide Neilson from dismal Brompton.
+And if I look from yonder window I shall not see either the lions of
+Landseer or the homeless and vagrant wretches who sleep around them; but
+high in her silver chariot, surrounded with all the pomp and splendour
+that royal England knows, and marching to her coronation in Westminster
+Abbey, the beautiful figure of Anne Boleyn, with her dark eyes full of
+triumph and her torrent of golden hair flashing in the sun. On this spot
+is written the whole history of a mighty empire. Here are garnered up
+such loves and hopes, such memories and sorrows, as can never be spoken.
+Pass, ye shadows! Let the night wane and the morning break.
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Shakespeare's England, by William Winter
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