reign. The exterior remains very nearly in its original state, and may be considered a fair specimen of the residence of a wealthy country gentleman of those days. A great gateway opens from the park into a kind of courtyard in front of the house ornamented with a grassplot, shrubs and flower-beds. The gateway is in imitation of the ancient barbican, being a kind of outpost and flanked by towers, though evidently for mere ornament instead of defence. The front of the house is completely in the old style, with stone-shafted casements, a great bow-window of heavy stone work and a portal with armorial bearings over it, carved in stone. At each corner of the building is an octagon tower surmounted by a gilt ball and weathercock.

The Avon, which winds through the park, makes a bend just at the foot of a gentlysloping bank which sweeps down from the rear of the house. Large herds of deer were feeding or reposing upon its borders, and swans were sailing majestically upon its bosom. As I contemplated the venerable old mansion I called to mind Falstaff's encomium on Justice Shallow's abode and the affected indifference and real vanity of the latter:

Falstaff. You have here a goodly dwelling

and a rich.

Shallow. Barren, barren, barren; beggars all, beggars all, Sir John. Marry, good sir!

Whatever may have been the joviality of the old mansion in the days of Shakespeare, it had now an air of stillness and solitude. The great iron gateway that opened into the courtyard was locked; there was no show of servants bustling about the place; the deer

gazed quietly at me as I passed, being no longer harried by the moss-troopers of Stratford. The only signs of domestic life that I met with was a white cat stealing with wary look and stealthy pace toward the stables, as if on some nefarious expedition. I must not omit to mention the carcase of a scoundrel crow which I saw suspended against the barn wall, as it shows that the Lucys still inherit that lordly abhorrence of poachers and maintain that rigorous exercise of territorial power which was so strenuously manifested in the case of the bard.

After prowling about for some time, I at length found my way to a lateral portal which was the every-day entrance to the mansion. I was courteously received by a worthy old housekeeper, who with the civility and communicativeness of her order showed me the interior of the house. The greater part has undergone alterations and been adapted to modern tastes and modes of living. There is a fine old oaken staircase, and the great hall-that noble feature in an ancient manor-house-still retains much of the appearance it must have had in the days of Shakespeare. The ceiling is arched and lofty, and at one end is a gallery in which stands an organ. The weapons and trophies of the chase which formerly adorned the hall of a country gentleman have made way for family portraits. There is a wide, hospitable fireplace calculated for an ample old-fashioned wood-fire, formerly the rallying-place of winter festivity. On the opposite side of the hall is the huge Gothic bow-window with stone shafts which looks out upon the courtyard. Here are emblazoned in stained glass the armorial bearings of the Lucy family for many generations, some being dated in

quarterings the three white luces by which the character of Sir Thomas was first identified with that of Justice Shallow. They They are mentioned in the first scene of the Merry Wives of Windsor, where the justice is in a rage with Falstaff for having "beaten his men, killed his deer and broken into his lodge." The poet had no doubt the offences of himself and his comrades in mind at the time, and we may suppose the family pride and vindictive threats of the puissant Shallow to be a caricature of the pompous indig

Evans. It is not meet the council hear of a riot; there is no fear of Got in a riot; the council, hear you, shall desire to hear the fear of Got, and not to hear a riot; take your vizaments in that.

Shallow. Ha! o' my life, if I were young again, the sword should end it.

Near the window thus emblazoned hung a portrait by Sir Peter Lely of one of the Lucy family, a great beauty of the time of Charles

she pointed to the picture and informed me that this lady had been sadly addicted to cards, and had gambled away a great portion of the family estate, among which was that part of the park where Shakespeare and his comrades had killed the deer. The lands thus lost had not been entirely regained by the family even at the present day. It is but justice to this recreant dame to confess that she had a surpassingly fine hand and arm.

The picture which most attracted my attention was a great painting over the fireplace containing likenesses of Sir Thomas Lucy and his family, who inhabited the hall in the latter part of Shakespeare's lifetime. I at himself, but the housekeeper assured me first thought it was the vindictive knight that it was his son, the only likeness extant of the former being an effigy upon his tomb in the church of the neighboring hamlet of Charlecot.* The picture gives a lively

*This effigy is in white marble, and represents the knight in complete armor. Near him lies the effigy of his wife, and on her tomb is the following inscription, which, if really composed by her husband, places him quite above the

intellectual level of Master Shallow:

"Here lyeth the Lady Joyce Lucy, wife of Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecot in ye county of Warwick, Knight, Daughter and heir of Thomas Acton of Sutton in ye county of Worcester Esquire who departed out of this wretched world to her heavenly kingdom ye 10 day of February in ye yeare of our Lord God 1595 and of her age 60 and three. All the time of her lyfe a true and faythful servant of her good God, never detected of any cryme or vice. In religion most sounde, in love to her husband most faythful and true. In friendship most constant; to what in trust was committed unto her most secret. In wisdom excelling. In governing of her house, bringing up of youth in ye fear of God that did converse with her most rare and singular. A great maintayner of hospitality.

Greatly esteemed of her betters; misliked of none unless of the envyous. When all is spoken that can be saide a woman so garnished with virtue as not to be bettered and

idea of the costume and manners of the time. Sir Thomas is dressed in ruff and doublet, white shoes with roses in them, and has a peaked yellow-or, as Master Slender would say, “a cane-colored"-beard. His lady is seated on the opposite side of the picture in wide ruff and long stomacher, and the children have a most venerable stiffness and formality of dress. Hounds and spaniels are mingled in the family group; a hawk is seated on his perch in the foreground, and one of the children holds a bow, all intimating the knight's skill in hunting, hawking and archery, so indispensable to an accomplished gentleman in those days.*

I regretted to find that the ancient furniture of the hall had disappeared; for I had hoped to find the stately elbow-chair of carved oak in which the country squire of former days was wont to sway the sceptre of empire over his rural domains, and in which, it might be presumed, the redoubted Sir Thomas sat enthroned in awful state when the recreant Shakespeare was brought before him. As I like to deck out pictures

hardly to be equalled by any. As shee lived most virtuously so shee died most Godly. Set down by him yt best did knowe what hath byn written to be true.

"

Thomas Lucye." *Bishop Earle, speaking of the country gentleman of his time, observes: "His housekeeping is seen much in the different families of dogs, and serving-men attendant on their kennels; and the deepness of their throats is the

depth of his discourse. A hawk he esteems the true burden of nobility, and is exceedingly ambitious to seem delighted with the sport and have his fist gloved with his jesses." And Gilpin, in his description of a Mr. Hastings, remarks: "He kept all sorts of hounds that run buck, fox,

hare, otter and badger, and had hawks of all kinds, both

long and short winged. His great hall was commonly strewed with marrowbones and full of hawk-perches, hounds, spaniels, and terriers. On a broad hearth paved with brick lay some of the choicest terriers, hounds and spaniels."

for my entertainment, I pleased myself with the idea that this very hall had been the scene of the unlucky bard's examination on the morning after his captivity in the lodge. I fancied to myself the rural potentate surrounded by his body-guard of butler, pages and blue-coated serving-men with their badges, while the luckless culprit was brought in, bedroofed and chapfallen, in the custody of gamekeepers, huntsmen and whippers-in, and followed by a rabble rout of country clowns. I fancied bright faces of curious housemaids peeping from the half-opened doors, while from the gallery the fair daughters of the knight leaned gracefully forward, eyeing the youthful prisoner with that pity "that dwells in womanhood." Who would have thought that this poor varlet thus trembling before the brief authority of a country squire and the sport of rustic boors was soon to become the delight of princes, the theme of all tongues and ages, the dictator to the human mind, and was to confer immortality on his oppressor by a caricature and a lampoon?

I was now invited by the butler to walk into the garden, and I felt inclined to visit the orchard and arbor where the justice treated Sir John Falstaff and Cousin Silence "to a last year's pippin of his own graffing, with a dish of caraways;" but I had already spent so much of the day in my ramblings that I was obliged to give up any further investigations. When about to take my leave I was gratified by the civil entreaties of the housekeeper and butler that I would take some refreshment-an instance of good old hospitality which I grieve to say we castle-hunters seldom meet with in modern days. I make no doubt it is a virtue which

the present representative of the Lucys inherits from his ancestors; for Shakespeare, even in his caricature, makes Justice Shallow importunate in this respect, as witness his pressing instances to Falstaff:

By cock and pye, sir, you shall not away to-night. I will not excuse you; you shall not be excused; excuses shall not be admitted; there is no excuse shall serve; you shall not be excused.... Some pigeons, Davy; a couple of short-legged hens; a joint of mutton; and any pretty little tiny kick

shaws, tell William Cook.

I now bade a reluctant farewell to the old hall. My mind had become so completely possessed by the imaginary scenes and characters connected with it that I seemed to

be actually living among them. Everything brought them as it were before my eyes, and as the door of the dining-room opened I almost expected to hear the feeble voice of Master Silence quavering forth his favorite ditty:

'Tis merry in hall when beards wag all,
And welcome merry Shrove-tide!"

On returning to my inn I could not but reflect on the singular gift of the poet, to be able thus to spread the magic of his mind over the very face of nature, to give to things and places a charm and character not their own, and to turn this "working-day world" into a perfect fairy-land. He is indeed the true necromancer whose spell operates, not upon the senses, but upon the imagination and the heart. Under the wizard influence of Shakespeare I had been walking all day in a complete delusion. I had surveyed the landscape through the prism of poetry, which tinged every object with the hues of the rainbow. I had been

surrounded with fancied beings-with mere airy nothings conjured up by poetic power, yet which to me had all the charm of reality. I had heard Jacques soliloquize beneath his oak, had beheld the fair Rosalind and her

companion adventuring through the woodlands, and, above all, had been once more present in spirit with fat Jack Falstaff and his contemporaries, from the august Justice Shallow down to the gentle Master Slender and the sweet Anne Page. Ten thousand and the sweet Anne Page. honors and blessings on the bard who has thus gilded the dull realities of life with and unbought pleasures in my chequered innocent illusions, who has spread exquisite path and beguiled my spirit in many a lonely hour with all the cordial and cheerful

sympathies of social life!

As I crossed the bridge over the Avon on my return I paused to contemplate the distant could not but exult in the malediction which church in which the poet lies buried, and has kept his ashes undisturbed in its quiet and hallowed vaults. What honor could his name have derived from being mingled in dusty companionship with the epitaphs and escutcheons and venal eulogiums of a titled multitude? What would a crowded corner in Westminster Abbey have been compared with this reverend pile which seems to stand in beautiful loneliness as his sole mausoleum? The solicitude about the grave may be but the offspring of an overwrought sensibility, but human nature is made up of foibles and prejudices, and its best and tenderest affections are mingled with these factitious feelings. He who has sought renown about the world, and has reaped a full harvest of worldly favor, will find, after all, that there is no love, no