his own department of study finds that there he sees the most reason to wonder at, and to reverence the comprehensive and all but unerring genius of the poet.

The pageant has its round of localities to perform; but we will anticipate its movements. In what a deep, and most eloquent silence every one who visits Stratford for the first time, looks on the house in Henley Street, in one of the rooms of which tradition, not unsupported by evidences, says the poet first saw the light: and from whence he was to send forth another kind of radiance that should extend gradually, but surely to the remotest corners of the earth. It is but a mean-looking place in itself, with rude timber beams, and rough walls of plaster, but lustrous beyond the power of the imagination to look steadily on it, in the fact of his birth; and in the thousand of names, each involving its own world of associations, that cover the walls. As we return to the street, and take yet another lingering look at the exterior, we are attracted by an inscription, which modestly informs us, that the house was purchased for the nation, and restored as far as possible to its original state, by means of funds derived from the performance of a play of Shakspere, in each of the principal theatres of England, on the night of the 23rd of April, 184. This is as it should be. The poet himself was an actor. What he wrote, he wrote for actors to expound. By an actor, Burbage, he was in all probability first introduced into that public life which was to be of so momentous a character. His friends and associations were chiefly actors. To actors, he extended the sacred office of literary executorship; and consequently to actors (Heninge and Condell) does the world owe the first authorised and complete edition of his marvellous series of dramas an edition, which after two centuries of open and con

* We leave others to fill up the omission of this date. Would that the suggestion here thrown out, or some other and better one were adopted, while there is yet time. We all know what Shakspere has done for us'; what have we done for him? Nothing. Not even protected the few memorials that have been left of his presence among us. In consequence even the inscriptions of the room where he was born have been once covered over with whitewash; and though the mischief has been partially remedied, perhaps the next attempt may be more successful. Or perhaps even the house itself may fall into hands with whom Shakspere's fame will be looked upon but as a practical daily annoyance, and be destroyed by some new Mr. Gastrell, as was the mulberry tree, planted by the poet's own hand. To the actors and managers of England, we would carefully commend this matter.

cealed scornful disrespect, in containing all sort of passages as "foisted in by the players," now again is adopted by Mr. Knight as the basis of the incomparably best edition of the poet that has been published. To an actor, Betterton, we owe nearly all the information we possess with regard to the poet's life; for it was he, who in single minded love for the memory of Shakspere, "took a journey into Warwickshire on purpose to gather up what remains he could of a name for which he had so great a veneration."* Lastly, to whom but actors generally do the people of England, as distinguished from the mere readers of England, owe their knowledge of the author of Hamlet and Lear? True, they have not for the latter part of the last two centuries represented him with the literary integrity that one could wish; but who is to blame for that, but the very class of men who are generally foremost in condemning the mutilations and distortions of the " players?" It is the literary, and not the histrionic tastes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that are really answerable for having originated these disfigurings of the poet: the last are necessarily to a great extent at all times the reflex of the first; the theatre is essentially a school for acting, not criticism; for the delivery of the received and popular text, not the study of whether it ought to be so received. The lesson, however, should not be lost. In future the heads of the profession will do well to take nothing for granted. If they then err and are blamed, they will at least have the consolation of reflecting they are punished for their own offences. Truly, literature is not without its cant: and this-its treatment of actors, is one of them. As we emerge upon the fields round Stratford, we find ourselves among a crowd of eager pedestrians, evidently bent on a similar errand. They have left the pageant behind, with its uproar still ringing in their ears, and are now bounding along footpaths, and by hedgerows, that they know he must have once trod, towards the village whence his mother, Mary Arden, was led by his father, to take a new name and a new home, and to Acton Cantlow still further on, where they were married; and then returning they cast a glance westward and southward toward Bedford, and Great Hillborough, and other places mentioned in certain verses, that the inhabitants of Stratford with more affection than discrimination attribute to the poet.

Rowe's Life.

"Piping Petworth, dancing Marston,
Haunted Hillborough, hungry Grafton,
Dudging Exhall, Papist Wicksford,

Beggarly Broom, and drunken Bedford."

Near Bedford, too, was the crab-tree, beneath which Shakspere, saith tradition, after a drinking bout with the topers of the adjoining village, laid himself down, and slept the night away, sheltered from the falling dews by the natural canopy. As we get nearer back towards Stratford, a still more attractive spot awaits us-Shottery," the prettiest of hamlets," where the poet wooed and won his bride, Anne Hathaway, and which was seen in all the rural splendour and gaiety natural to the day; and by the light of the setting sun presents one of those pictures which continue to haunt the eye and the imagination long after the scene and the time have passed away. We must yet fine time to thread once more the giddy crowds of Stratford, and pause by the site of New Place, where the poet lived in all peace and honour the last few years of his life, and where he died. We must also send our thoughts, if no more, over the meadows eastward, in the direction of the Avon that winds through them; for there, within an hour's walk, lies Charlecote, the abode of Sir Thomas Lucy, who, according to tradition, was the means of banishing Shakspere from his individual and local to his intellectual and universal home-from the town of Stratford to the stage of Blackfriars, and that larger stage in which "all the men and women are merely players."

The shades of evening are gathering rapidly round the beautiful old church of Stratford, and enveloping, and as it were, hushing into harmony with itself, the busy multitudes who have accompanied the pageant hither on the last solemn place of visitation. The font, in which the poet was baptized, was, after long absence from the church, restored to the place † from which it never ought to have been taken, and the memorial that points out his last resting-place, have each been visited by thousands of worshippers during the day; but now, at the close of the solemnity, at such an hour, and in such a presence, all mere incidents of the life pass away from the thoughts; and life itself, in all its grandeur and beauty, seems to rise before us, unconsciously

* Sulky-in dudgeon.

The date of that restoration, also, we regret to say, cannot yet Le furnished.

challenging our eternal gratitude and reverence. Thoughts, too high and solemn to find expression in words, expand and elevate every heart. We feel as though our overwrought feelings should have voice, but are restrained and kept silent by the reflection-what tongue can be adequate to them, and the occasion? Haply, higher and purer natures are above us, doing that which we are incapable of. In and around this old church of Stratford fancy conceives the sounds must be eternally rising heavenwards of a host of heavenly christians— "But whilst this muddy nature of decay

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it."

MOTHERS' LOVE.

AT Père la Chaise there is an infant's tomb,-
A little chapel plainly wrought of stone;
Its painted window panes just tint the gloom
That shows an altar with immortelles strewn :
The happy sleeper's toys-most childish things—
Are there enshrined, as though the Mother's heart
Still struggles with despair, and doating clings
To all that of her darling seems a part.

O Love parental! growing by its loss,

And springing up when most 'tis trodden down,
Great Nature's alchemy, that maketh dross
More precious than the jewels of a crown!
Is love like this the tenant of one breast?

No; 'tis as universal as the air;

A TRUTH that shows the Atheist's creed a jest ;
For Chance must vary-Love is everywhere.

The Mother claims her child by Nature's right,
In kingly halls or at the workhouse door;
Let Power then be chary of its might
To make that love a torture to the poor.

THE HEDGEHOG LETTERS.

CONTAINING THE OPINIONS AND ADVENTURES OF JUNIPER HEDGEHOG, CABMAN, LONDON; AND WRITTEN ΤΟ HIS RELATIVES AND ACQUAINTANCE, IN

VARIOUS PARTS OF THE WORLD.

LETTER IX.-To MRS. HEDGEHOG, OF NEW YORK.

DEAR GRANDMOTHER-It was very kind of you-though away from Old England-to have prayers put up for the Bishops of Exeter and London, and Mr. Courtenay and Mr. Ward, with all the unfortunate young clergymen who've been frightening their good mother Church, for all the world like young ducklings that, hatched by a hen, would take water. The bishops, you will be glad to learn, are much better; and now, Sunday after Sunday, the young parsons are taking off their white surplices and putting on their old gowns, just like idle, flashy, young dogs, who 've been making a noise at a masquerade, but are once more prepared to go back to their serious counters. Mr. Courtenay and two or three of his kidney did think of putting on chain-armour under their surplices, like the Templars that you once saw in the play of Ivanhoe; but whether the Bishop of Exeter has interfered or not, I can't say; the thing's given up.

Mr. Ward, who has been turned out of Oxford, for his Ideal of a Christian Church-which means a church with censers and candlesticks, and pictures of the Virgin, and martyrs' bones, and other properties-is going to be married; if the business isn't done already. I shouldn't have written upon the matter, only Mr. W. has printed a letter in all the papers, giving his notions of the holy state. They, certainly, are very sweet and complimentary to the lady chosen by Mr. Ward: for he says"First, I hold it most firmly as a truth even of natural religion, that celibacy is a higher condition of life than marriage."

Now, if celibacy is the highest condition of life, how is it that Adam and Eve came together while they were yet in Paradise ? Their union-according to Mr. Ward-ought to have taken place after they both fell. Matrimony should have followed as a punishment for the apple. And then when it was commanded to