ries on a bookseller's shelf! The parson and Madame appeared to be old acquaintances, and my presence did not in the least prevent their amorous parley, after the ponderous lady had unmasked all her battery of charms. Indeed, before we got to our journey's end, his Reverence must have "popped the question,' as the two fat turtles deserted the coach in a very abrupt manner! The inside passengers consisted of old maids, fox-hunters and their dogs! We stopped more than 20 times on the road, and were continually "bothered" with quarrels about the fare getting up and getting down-damsels showing their legs in scrambling up, and giving their petticoats a taste of the mud gathered on the wheels! In passing through Warrington near Liverpool, one of the travellers told us a very nasty anecdote about a club of Corydon ardebat Alexims that was discovered here, some time ago; soon afterwards an honest Jack tar walked through the streets with a label hanging behind, on which was inscribed "Man traps and Spring guns on these premises!" In the evening, we were in Staffordshire, one of the rich. est counties in England. The Marquis of Stafford, Lord St. Vincent, the Earl of Harrowby and Earl Talbot have estates in this shire. Trentam, the seat of the Marquis of Stafford, is the most beautiful and valuable of these domains. The noble river which gives its name to the estate, was brimful and as bright as li quid silver. As we passed through this magnificent place, the firmament was bright; a sea of clouds o'ercanopied the valley, and the highest trees were seen projecting into the clear atmosphere like green islands in a crystal lake; they were decked with all their vernal charms, brightened by the sun-beams, that appeared to repose upon them. We drove along, admiring these beauties of nature, "till evening turn'd the blue vault gray;"-the moon admitted through the thick arches of quivering leaves, gleamed on the trunk of the veteran oak, on the gently waving grass, or on the woody sprays which played amid the deep shade. As we travelled along, we saw this quiet pastoral country to the best advantage; the sun was sinking below the horizon, and the gray twilight destroying the strong contrast of light and shade, gave to the landscape a character wholly its own. We arrived very late at Stony Stratford, the birth place of the immortal Shakspeare. Determined not to lose time, I rose while the stars still twinkled amidst the gray clouds, and I soon beheld the first rosy beams of the morning dawn. I walked on the shores of the Avon, which serpentined and babbled along quite in a poetic manner. I sat down on a rustic bench near the stream, and watched the ducks on it plume their variegated wings. The calm beauty of the landscape, the willows arching over the sparkling water and stooping their silver foliage" as if to drink," and the recol lections which the birth place of "Nature's darling" gave rise to, filled me with indescribable emotions. The few bright clouds scattered over the blue of heaven, the dew-drops glittering on the hawthorn hedges or the green lawn, and the flowers of all hues which embroidered the ground and "wrought mosaic," recalled to mind he singularly beautiful and expressive line of Tassoni: "Parean stellati i campi, e il ciel fiorito.""* I visited the house in which Shakspeare was born. It is a very coarse building, paved with bricks, and walled with the same materials roughly plastered over; it is now kept by a butcher! My cicerone was an old woman with a nose like a beet root; her eyes resembled the unextinguished snuff of a farthing candle, gleaming through the horn of a dark lantern! Her cap was about as clean as a dishclout, and her elf-locks dangled from it in wild disorder. She showed me all the Shaksperian relics, with as much assiduity as an old Neapolitan priest exhibits the pieces of true cross, St. January's blood, et id genus omne! I sat in Shakspeare's chair, handled the frustum of his matchlock, and peeped into Friar Laurence's lantern, very much to the satisfaction of my guide. The body of the great poet of nature lies in the chancel of a very old and mouldering church on the banks of the murmuring Avon. * The fields with stars, the sky with flow'rs seem'd dressed. It is discovered on a little sequestered spot, near which the stream brawls, overshadowed by beautiful shrubbery. Leading to the church gate, is an avenue made of the interlacing of boughs, forming a luxuriant arched way, which cannot be better described than in the words of the delightful author whose spirit appears to pervade this sacred spot: "A pleach'd bower Where honey-suckles, ripened by the sun, Shakspeare is undoubtedly the first of modern poets who hailed the glories of the antique world, dawning through the dark abyss of time. His plays alone are expressions of the passions, not descriptions of them; he appears to identify himself with the character he represents, and to pass from one to the other, like the same soul animating different bodies; he throws his imagination out of himself into the personage he creates, and he makes us feel all that passes within his soul; the gusts of passion come and go like sounds of music borne on the winds! His writing is beautiful in all its varieties; it is wrapt up in a rich and redundant veil of poetry, where every thing breathes the pure essence of genius and sensibility. How great is the folly of those who pretend to institute a parallel between him and Racine, or any other poet, who had acted a conspicuous and applauded part on the crowded theatre of public fame! Racine proves to us the value of a classical education, which refines the impurities of the imagination, imparts to it all the treasures of the most gifted men in every age, and forms a taste that polishes the mind, and enables it to exert its natural fertility in exquisite productions. "Racine, plein des anciens (says Geoffroy,) ne s'approprie leurs idées que pour les embellir; et lors même qu'il imite, il est toujours inventeur." The productions of this great author are enveloped in the folds of the most voluptuous sensibility. Even when depicting the dreadful tumult of the passions, he never shocks us with naked exhibitions of atrocity or of demoniacal energy. When the tender Monime (in " Mithridate") resolves to strangle herself, and addresses the fatal instrument of death, I almost forget the horror of her situation, in my admiration of the poetry, which is a model of the most exquisite and most polished composition. He who admires Nature in all her wildness and irregularities, will exclaim "Shakspeare, with all thy faults I love thee still!" Indeed, I am fully persuaded that a classical education would have cramped his great and original genius, and that instead of becoming the scribe of nature, he would have been a most faultless, elegant and polished versifyer, like Otway, and would not have taken a much higher flight. But it is not by the lulling murmurs of Zephyr sleeping in the ear, that the mighty tempest of the passions is to be awakened; louder tones must be found to wield that thunder, and di |