CHAPTER XII.
SHAKESPEARE'S HOME
It is the everlasting glory of Stratford-upon-Avon that it was the birthplace of Shakespeare. Situated in the heart of Warwickshire, which has been called "the garden of England," it nestles cosily in an atmosphere of tranquil loveliness and is surrounded with everything that soft and gentle rural scenery can provide to soothe the mind and to nurture contentment. It stands upon a plain, almost in the centre of the island, through which, between the low green hills that roll away on either side, the Avon flows downward to the Severn. The country in its neighbourhood is under perfect cultivation, and for many miles around presents the appearance of a superbly appointed park. Portions of the land are devoted to crops and pasture; other portions are thickly wooded with oak, elm, willow, and chestnut; the meadows are intersected by hedges of fragrant hawthorn, and the region smiles with flowers. Old manor-houses, half-hidden among the trees, and thatched cottages embowered with roses are sprinkled through the surrounding landscape; and all the roads that converge upon this point—from Birmingham, Warwick, Shipton, Bidford, Alcester, Evesham, Worcester, and other contiguous towns—wind, in sun and shadow, through a sod of green velvet, swept by the cool, sweet winds of the English summer.
Such felicities of situation and such accessories of beauty, however, are not unusual in England; and Stratford, were it not hallowed by association, though it would always hold a place among the pleasant memories of the traveller, would not have become a shrine for the homage of the world. To Shakespeare it owes its renown; from Shakespeare it derives the bulk of its prosperity. To visit Stratford is to tread with affectionate veneration in the footsteps of the poet. To write about Stratford is to write about Shakespeare.
More than three hundred years have passed since the birth of that colossal genius and many changes have occurred in his native town within that period. The Stratford of Shakespeare's time was built principally of timber, and it contained about fourteen hundred inhabitants. To-day its population numbers more than eight thousand. New dwellings have arisen where once were fields of wheat, glorious with the shimmering lustre of the scarlet poppy. Many of the older buildings have been altered. Manufacture has been stimulated into prosperous activity. The Avon has been spanned by a new bridge, of iron—a path for pedestrians, adjacent to Clopton's bridge of stone. (The iron bridge was opened November 23, 1827. The Clopton Bridge was 376 yards long and about 16 yards wide. Alterations of the west end of it were made in 1814.) The streets have been levelled, swept, rolled and garnished till they look like a Flemish drawing, of the Middle Ages. Even the Shakespeare cottage, the old Harvard house in High Street, and the two old churches—authentic and splendid memorials of a distant and storied past—have been "restored." If the poet could walk again through his accustomed haunts, though he would see the same smiling country round about, and hear, as of old, the ripple of the Avon murmuring in its summer sleep, his eyes would rest on but few objects that once he knew. Yet, there are the paths that Shakespeare often trod; there stands the house in which he was born; there is the school in which he was taught; there is the cottage in which he wooed his sweetheart; there are the traces and relics of the mansion in which he died; and there is the church that keeps his dust, so consecrated by the reverence of mankind