Loftier houses only became general in the sixteenth century. Yet this house, lowly as it seems, is constructed with a ponderosity that will yet resist time's efforts for centuries.

Looking curiously yet reverentially at the old timbered house, with its open butcher's window (for one of the Hart family descended from Joan Shakespeare here carried on the trade of a butcher), we enter. The floor is paved with stones that, characteristically enough, are cut up into a host of splinters and fragments, as if really hacked by a butcher's cleaver. On one side is an ample fire-place, with cozy sitting places on either side; for in those smoky days, with penetrating draughts coming in on all sides, happy was he who was privileged to take the chimney corner. We proceed into the kitchen, lighted by a side window looking into the Swan yard. Here a most enormous beam-doubtless from an oak in the old forest of Arden-supports the mantel. The fire-place is ample enough to roast a sheep, with recesses as usual on either side for the gaffer and his dame, with a wide chimney gaping up to the sky, and ready to pour out a volcano of smoke, as doubtless it often has done, from a pile of crackling wood. If the fire is out now, our feelings sparkling back upon the past, must rekindle it. That Shakespeare himself has stood here before the cheerful blaze, no one can doubt. Perhaps as a boy he may have sat in the corner, feasting his galloping imagination from a spark in the ashes. His father at any rate lived and

died here, and he must have often walked in when in Stratford to see the old man.

From the kitchen, a flight of about a dozen stairs leads into the chamber that must be ever sacred, where the great bard first entered as an actor upon the seven ages of life. It is a low, moderate-sized room, nine paces by seven, with a window of four combined casements, and has a fire-place with an enormous beam supporting its mantel. We presume not here to dictate to the pilgrim-he must meditate for himself. But the room feels close as if the breath from a thousand whispers murmured against the old walls "And Shakespeare was born here?" Here have thousands paid their willing homage: and look at the scribbled tapestry of the walls! it is the devotion paid at the shrine of genius, the inscription of the votary's mark that they yield to the potent spell: for if some presume to score a noteless name merely to deface the hallowed place with wishes vain as 66 airy nothing," we may trust the great majority write as devotees bound to the great master who has enthralled them, and only witnessing their own sensitiveness as subjects of an empire where he reigned supreme. But there is nothing left here now but the bare walls-no petty relics !-it is enough! -SHAKESPEARE WAS BORN HERE! One hint we would hopefully and in good feeling give to the pilgrim who wishes to record his name here-do not mark your name in lamp-black, as with the rough hand of a porter. Walter Scott's name is written very small-imitate him, or think only.

C

How many write upon these walls,
To look upon their own queer scrawls;
Yet surely thought would better speed,
To open SHAKESPEARE !—and to READ.

A book is, however, now kept here, where those who are fond of writing may inscribe their names-in aid of the fund for the complete purchase of Shakespeare's House for the use of the public for ever. The property was purchased by the Committee for £3820; yet, notwithstanding the strenuous efforts made to collect subscriptions, £400 yet remain a burden upon the house, and had to be obtained by mortgage.

Between the room in which Shakespeare was born and another bedchamber, now used by the person who keeps the house, is a small ante-room, with a door opening upon some stairs that lead to the beams and rafters of the roof. In childhood we may be sure that roguish Willie would here often wander, roving and playing about among the cross-beams. Those have been touched by no desecrating hand:-look up among them!" surely, as a boy-for it is certain that Shakespeare's father lived here many years-the incipient bard has made those blackened beams resound with the buoyant shouts of youthful merriment-he had brothers to play with.

But we must proceed from the cradle of the great bard, and contemplate him in the character of a schoolboy,

with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school."

This will take us to the Grammar School in Chapelstreet, not far off, where it is pretty certain he went, `r was sent there, unless

"When daisies pied, and violets blue,

And lady-smocks all silver white,

And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue,

Do paint the meadows with delight,"

he ventured on a truant stroll to Shottery, or over the mill bridge by the broad margin of the silvery Avonnot at all unlikely "on occasion."