'The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Shall, like an unsubstantial pageant faded,
Or like the baseless fabric of a vision,
Leave not a rack behind.'
Well—like all dutiful travellers, I of course added my name to the list of illustrious pilgrims in the Album at Stratford-on-Avon. The birth-place and the tomb of Shakspeare! Who would go to England, and pass them by without a visit? What a host of grandissimos, beside the multitude of humbler gentry, have deigned to worship at this intellectual shrine!—or, in other words, to follow the old cicerone up those narrow back stairs to the lowly apartment where the Bard of Nature was cradled, and there to scribble their names on the rude walls, or in the goodly quarto. There I saw the autographs of 'William Henry, Duke of Clarence,' 'Walter Scott,' 'Countess Guicciolli,' 'Coleridge,' 'Charles Lamb,' and scores of similar names, beside an army from the United States. I copied some of the many inscriptions in the 'Ollapod' of an album, which you may like to have:
'Of mighty Shakspeare's birth, the room we see,
That where he died, in vain to find, we try;
Useless the search; for all immortal He,
And they who are immortal, never die.
Washington Irving.'
'Shakspeare! Thy named rever'd is no less,
By us, who often reckon, sometimes guess;
Though England claims the glory of thy birth,
None more appreciate thy page's worth,
Nor more admire thy scenes well acted o'er,
Than we of 'states unborn' in ancient lore.
James H. Hackett.'
The esteemed and lamented Carter:
'1825, Nov. 18.
N. H. Carter, }
H. J. Eckford.}