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The inscription is clumsy enough, but proves that the poet's greatness was not, as sometimes alleged, unrecognised in his own generation. The epitaph on Mistress Susanna Hall, a higher note. Thus it began

"Witty above her sex—but that's not all—
Wise to salvation, was good Mistress Hall.
Something of Shakspere was in that; but this
Wholly of Him with Whom she's now in bliss."

It is to be regretted that this inscription has been effaced, to make room for the epitaph of some obscure descendant. That to Shakespere's widow, the wife of his youth, Anne Hathaway however remains placed over Her grave by her son; there is something in it pathetically and nobly Christian. It is in Latin, and may be rendered freely: "My mother: thou gavest me milk and life: alas, for me, that I can but repay thee with a sepulchre! Would that some good angel might roll the stone away, and thy form come forth in the Saviour's likeness! But my prayers avail not. Come quickly, O Christ! then shall my mother, though enclosed in the tomb, arise and mount to heaven!"

Before leaving the church we may note some monuments worth attention, at least in any other place; as well as a stained glass window, not yet complete, but intended to illustrate from Scripture Shakspere's Seven Ages of Man. Moses the infant, Jacob the lover, Deborah the Judge, and one or two other representations are finished, but the observer feels that the types of character are not Shakspere's.

The day's explorations are not yet over. The epitaph on Anne Hathaway's tomb, if nothing else, has quickened our desire to know something more of her surroundings in those days when Shakspere won and wooed her in her rustic home. Retracing our steps through the town, we are directed to a field-path bearing straight for Shottery, a village but a mile distant. It is not difficult to picture the youthful lover, perhaps, out here in the fair open country, among the wild flowers which line the walk, and which he has so well described, for there are few traditions of Stratford-upon-Avon better authenticated than that which represents this as Shakspere's walk in the clays when he "went courting." The village is a straggling one, with a look of comfort about its farmsteads and cottages; and, at the furthest extremity from Stratford, in a pleasant dell, opposite a willow-shaded stream, we find the cottage, not much altered, it may be, in externals, since the poet, then a lad of eighteen, there found his bride. The capacious chimney-corner, where no doubt the lovers sat, is genuine; and other antique relics, from a carved bed to an old Bible, carry the mind back, at least, to the era of the poet; while the garden and orchard, with the well of pure spring water, must be much as Shakspere saw them.

And now having returned to our comfortable hotel—where almost every room, by the way, is named after one of the dramas, ours being "All's well that ends well"—what was the net result of the visit in regard to the personality and history of the great poet? It may seem a strange thing to confess, but the effect of the whole was to put Shakspere himself further from us, and to deepen the mystery which every student of his life and works finds so perplexing. For, save the monument and the tomb, there was absolutely nothing to tell of the poet's life; no scrap of his writing, no book known to have been his, no original authentic record of his words and deeds, no contemporary portrait, no object, whether article of furniture, pen, inkstand, or other implement of daily use, associated with his name. Strange that a generation, which, as we have seen, so honoured his genius and character, should not have preserved the poorest or smallest memorial of his life among them! True, there is an old, worm-eaten desk in the birth-place, at which he may have, sat in the grammar-school; in a room in the town above the seed-shop there is a rude piece of carving, representing David and Goliath, which once ornamented a room of the house in Henley Street, and bears an inscription, "said to have been composed by Shakspere," A.D. 1606. Let our readers judge:

"Goliath comes with sword and spear,
And David with his sling:
Although Goliath rage and swear
Down David doth him bring."

For the rest, the relics are evidently imported: an ancient bedstead, old-fashioned chairs, and the like; interesting in their way, but with nothing to tell us of the poet. He remains to the most zealous relic-hunter as great a mystery as Homer himself. Or if in anything here we see the poet, it is in those scenes of external nature which he has so vividly pictured. We find him among the flowers: beside the