ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE. pleasant path that led through luxurious meadows gayly bedight with wild flowers, we in a half hour's walk reached Shottery, a quaint little hamlet of about a dozen old thatched half-timbered tenements, numbering among them a petite road-side inn-"The Shakspeare"-and Richard Hathaway's cottage, built before Sir Philip Sidney was born, and which remained in his family until within the past twenty years. the same path that we pursued did the youthful Shakspeare oft wend his steps to this spot to visit his lady-love, the village belle. The home of the Hathaways, situated in the midst of a quiet and luxurious landscape, is By John Barnard, and with her death the direct | but little changed from what it was in the days of line of William Shakspeare's family ceased. Then comes the grave of Dr. John Hall, a man of education and wealth, who married Shakspeare's eldest daughter. Next to Dr. Hall's tomb is a stone commemorating the final resting-place of his wife Susanna. On it is seen this inscription: HEERE LYETH Y BODY OF SVSANNA Witty above her sexe, but that's not all, To weepe with her that wept with all? Them up with comforts cordiall. Before leaving this interesting and beautiful church with its charming associations, the sexton showed us several books containing the autographs of visitors. Among them were the names of pilgrims to the shrine of genius from every Christian clime. Kings and princes; great soldiers and greater statesmen; men eminent in the Church, eminent in the law, eminent in literature, from all lands seek out that secluded Warwickshire village to do homage to "the gentle Shakspeare." Inquiring for the signature of Washington Irving, we were told that the book containing his name, as well as those of two of our greatest poets, had been stolen by a countryman of ours. A mile or two distant is another spot intimately connected with Shakspeare-the home of "sweet Anne Hathaway." Following a Shakspeare. Proceeding down a pretty lane you cross a murmuring brook; a few yards further and you are at the porch. It is a long, low thatched tenement of timber and plaster, substantially built upon a foundation of squared slabs of lias shale, which is a characteristic of Warwickshire cottages. This house, like Shakspeare's birth-place, has been subdivided into three. By referring to the engraving this will be clearly understood. The square, compact, and taller half of the tenement to the left forms one house. The other two are divided by the passage which runs entirely through the lower half, and which serves for both buildings. That to the right on entering consists of one large room below, with a chimney extending the whole width of the house, with an oven and boiler, showing that this was the principal kitchen when the house was all in The door to the left leads into the parlor. one. It is a large low-roofed room, with strong oak beams, much resembling the kitchen in Henley Street. A Shakspearian commentator, who visited Shottery some sixty years since, saw and purchased an antique carved oak chair called "Shakspeare's courting chair." With a similar desire to please relic-hunters to that which has been already shown to exist elsewhere, this chair, although removed threescore years ago, has a successor dignified by the same name. It is, how ever, but fair to add that skeptical persons are not met by bold assertions of its genuineness, while all credulous and nothing-doubting individuals are allowed the full benefit of their faith. In addition to the chair, the purchaser was shown a parse which had belonged to the poet, and Fanded down from him to his grand-daughter, Lady Barnard, and by her to the Hathaways. At the time of the Stratford Jubilee a brother of the eminent tragedian, David Garrick, bought this purse, also a pair of fringed gloves said to have been worn by Shakspeare. David, with characteristic caution, purchased no such doubtful wares. In the chamber over the parlor stands an antique carved bedstead of oak, certainly as old as the Shakspearian era, and which may have been used by the Hathaways at that time. The tradition is that the bed, and the room in which it stands, were "Sweet Anne's." A dilapidated dog-eared Bible was produced, which the simple woman who showed the house assured us had been used by Anne and her lover, sitting side by side on a rude bench that stood near the entrance. Although the bench seemed a product of more modern days, we were very willing to believe that we might be mistaken, and that "Gentle Will" and Anne Hathaway might have sat thereon, while he was stealing away her heart with many a vow of love. But in the fact that either had ever seen or opened the venerable vol ume, our faith was considerably shaken by the discovery that it was printed in the year 1676; showing a trifling discrepancy of nearly ninety years-William and Anne Shakspeare having been made man and wife in the year 1582. On our return from Shottery we were met by an aged mendicant, who claimed alms from us as being a descendant or in some way related to Shakspeare. Without very closely investigating the correctness of his claims we presented him with half a crown, quite willing to believe that we had possessed the privilege of assisting a person related, however distantly, to the great dramatist. Truly has Washington Irving said of Stratford-upon-Avon, "The mind refuses to dwell on any thing not connected with Shakspeare. This idea pervades the place," and also, we may add. Charlecote. Charlecote! who is not familiar with the name? There stands the old Elizabethan mansion infact as it appeared three hundred years ago, in the glorious days of Sidney and Spenser and Sir Walter Raleigh. The same hills and valleys-the same gnarled oaks and venerable birches dotted over the noble park, through which flows the same sweet Avon. There may still be seen "the native burghers" of the forest, browsing under antique elms, or standing by the water side. Dugdale has given the history of Charlecote and its lord with 'much minuteness. Its old Saxon name, Ceorlcote-the home of the husbandman-carries us back to years before the Conquest. The present structure of brick was erected by Sir Thomas Lucy, who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1593. It forms three sides of a quadrangle, the fourth being occupied by a large central gate-house some distance in advance of the main building, between which is a spacious court-yard ornamented with shrubs and flowers. The great hall is a noble room, with a fine arched roof and a large bow window. A few armorial bearings of the Lucys, some with the date 1558-the year of its erection-are still to be seen on the stained glass. On the ancient fire-place are the initials T. L., and the date 1558, in relief and gilt. The hall is hung with numerous family portraits, some of which are of great antiquity. A five-minutes' walk from the mansion, through the park-in which were herds of deer-brought us to Charlecote Church, near which is the manse and a little group of ivy-embowered cottages. In this tasteful temple are buried the remains of Sir Thomas, and his wife, Lady Joyce Lucy. They are executed in a masterly manner, and are deemed reliable portraits. Sir Thomas appears to have been an exemplary country gentleman, and that he had a good heart is most conclusively shown by the beautiful epitaph on one side of the monument. own name is not mentioned, but his wife's virtues are recorded in the following touching inscription: With singular good taste his Here entombed lyeth the Lady Joyce Lucy, wife of Sir Thomas Lucy, of Cherlecote, in the County of Warwick, Knight, Daughter and heir of Thomas Acton, of Sutton, in the County of Worcester. Esquier, who departed out of this wretched world to her Heavenly Kingdome, the tenth day of February, in the year of our Lord God 1595, of her age lx. and three. All the time of her life a true and faithful servant of her Good God, never dctected of any crime or vice: in religion most sound; in love to her husband most faithfull and true; in friendship most constant; to what was in trust 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 of 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 by 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. The absurd story of the Shakspeare deer-stealing exploit and the harsh trial that followed, as well as his having been a hanger-on at the Blackfriars' Theatre, gaining sixpences by holding the horses of play-goers, has been most successfully refuted by Charles Knight; and we think that no one, after reading the above touching tribute to his wife, and looking upon the accompanying cut, a careful copy of the noble head of Sir Thomas Lucy, can possibly identify him with Justice Shallow upon any such shallow evidence as that the armorial bearings of the one was twelve, of the other three, pike. We must not omit, in our brief description of Stratford-upon-Avon, to make mention of their genuine old-fashioned English inns, in one of which each of the rooms is named after some play of Shakspeare's; and it is no unusual occurrence for mine host to be heard crying out, "A mug of 'alf an' 'alf for Macbeth," some "sack for Othello," or "a bottle of Heidsick for Hamlet." Our quarters were elsewhere: at the cozy and comfortable "Red Horse Inn," where we occupied the chamber known as the "Washington Irving room." During our last evening in Stratford, the worthy wife of honest John Gardner, mine host of the Red Horse Inn, invited us into her little parlor, as she wished to let us see something occasionally shown to American occupants of her house. Taking from her capacious pocket a formidable bunch of keys, with one of which a drawer of her bureau was unlocked and opened, there appeared an oblong object, carefully wrapped in baize. Lifting it with great care and untying sundry pieces of tape with which it was bound, there appeared imprimis a shovel, next a poker, and lastly a pair of tongs, all bright and apparently new. In answer to our looks of amazement and inquiry, good Mistress Gardner informed us that they were used by Washington Irving when he last honored her poor house with his presence, and that since that time they had not been used by any other person, and should not be, "unless the kind and good gentleman should come back again." In the beautiful words of Irving, who now sleeps on the banks of that noble river he loved so well, and amidst the scenes he celebrated, "How would it have cheered the spirit of the youthful bard, when wandering forth upon a doubtful world he cast back a heavy look upon his paternal home, could he have foreseen that, before many years, he should return to it covered with renown; that his ashes should be religiously guarded as the most precious treasure; and that its lessening spire, on which his eyes were fixed in tearful contemplation, should one day become the beacon, towering amidst the gentle landscape, to guide the literary pilgrim of every nation to his tomb!" TH OTTAWA CITY. THE CAPITAL OF THE CANADAS. HE Grand, or Ottawa, River of Canada, de- nita lying to the north and east of the French riving its source from innumerable lakes River and Lake Nipissing, in about the fortyand tributaries in the heart of that terra incog-eighth degree of north latitude, with broad and circuitous flow for upward of four hundred miles, rushes into the still greater St. Lawrence in two channels at the island of Montreal. This isl and is formed at the confluence of the Ottawa branches with the St. Lawrence, and is the highest point of ship navigation from the Gulf. Sixty-five or seventy years ago Montreal was the ultima Thule of Canadian civilization, and the waters of the Ottawa above the island were seldom disturbed by white men, except occasionally by the adventurous fur traders. The Indian alone on this river was ruler. The forest waved in primeval luxuriousness and grandeur, and the Ottawa, unchecked by dam or bridge, ran beneath its canopy as free as the untamed horse of the Ukraine. The Ottawa in these days of newspapers, tourists, and travelers, is celebrated for the number and variety of its falls and rapids; but the most striking, grand, and fearful is the fall called by the early French pioneers the Chaudière, or, in unpolished English, the "Big Kettle." It occurs in the course of the river at a distance of about one hundred and twenty miles from the island of Montreal. Above it, for a few miles, are several small chutes, indicating the abrupt descent of the bottom plane, and the rapidity and force of the immense river are augmented for the grand rush at the Chaudière, where it falls perpendicularly some fifteen or twenty feet over a precipitous limestone rock. Here the river is about a quarter of a mile wide, and the term Chaudière is only properly applicable to a part of the fall. There is a gap of about two hundred feet in width, and some three hundred indenting back or up the river in the straight line of the cataract. Within this gap, or "kettle," the great volume of the Ottawa boils and foams and hisses, and, rushing in wild masses around from side to side, eventually escapes in a high mountain of foam, and expands to half a mile in width in a short distance in its course below. Above the Chaudière the banks on both sides are nearly level, with a gradual ascent from the water; but immediately at and below the falls walls of decayed limestone rise perpendicularly, lessening off abruptly on the north side in half a mile to a plain, but on the south rising higher, and circuitously higher, to a precipitous altitude of one, two, and three hundred feet. Coming up the river, these heights, clothed with stubby pine and wavy hemlock, are most striking and impressive. These, with the Fall of the Chaudière and the undulating banks of the northern side, present altogether a variety and picturesqueness of scenery unsurpassed in Canada, or perhaps in America. The fur trader or voyageur in the old days here no doubt paused, in admiration of the beauty of the prospect; or, if he had no taste for the striking scenes in nature, here he had to pause from necessity. On the one side were lofty hills; before him the great river came down with roar and foam and mist with sudden leap, frightening away all thought of attempt at navigation. To explore above these dangers, then, the alternative was in the pleasant bank of the north side, which, with gradual ascent, would bring him in a few miles above the Chaudière and rapids to the quiet waters of the Upper Ottawa. Thus, to pass the Chaudière and the rapids above it-the portage of eight miles in a straight line across the circuit of the river, which is here at least twelve or fifteen miles-was by the first adventurers tramped out. These adventurers were, as I have already said, fur traders. They paddled their way quietly through from Montreal, camping out at night on the banks of the silent river, keeping vigilant watch for the stealthy Indian, and looked forward to the weary portage of the Chaudière-across which canoe and traps were to be carried-as the heaviest work of the route. Occasionally, on a little cleared spot at the beginning of this portage, would they find the camp of the Indian and his family. It was, no doubt, from its situation-at the foot of the Chaudière-a very old resting spot of the native. Here, too, was he buried, as a recent exhumation of bones testifies. But beyond this little opening of the forest on the bank of the river, with its line of portage behind, were no evidences of the settlement of man, white or red. One autumn day, toward the close of the last century, an unusual sight might be seen, if any body had been there to see, in the bay below the Chaudière: several canoes laden with white men and a very unusual amount and variety of freight. They came wearily up the river, and as the voyageurs came within full view of the magnificent scenery shining and looming around, they instinctively stayed the stroke of the paddle and gazed. The precipitous heights on the left looked gravely back in return; the mist shone and looked up brightly from the Chaudière; and the little cleared spot at the portage on the right looked and said in the glance as plainly as ever glance spoke, "This is the place to land: there is no other around.' "Here we are to land," said Mr. Wright, the leader of the party, after a long and steady inspection, and pointing to the portage, "and the sooner the better." Mr. Wright and his party had come all the way from Boston by the sea-shore, and sought a home in the almost untracked wilderness on the Ottawa, near the Chaudière. Whether it were a desire for gain, or a repugnance to the new state of political matters in the State of Massachusetts, history saith not; but Mr. Wright and all his followers went to sleep this eventful night with the intention of going at hard work the next morning, and before the hardest of the work should commence to fix on a site for a village, a site for mills, and for other edifices of importance to new settlers. The hard work was, however, postponed for two or three days. With the aid of a couple of Indians the land on both sides was examined. That beyond the hills was utterly condemned as unfit for farm or town; being composed altogether, and truly enough, of rock, sand, and swamp. That on the portage, |