dream of absolute dominion was at an end; so abdicating my
throne, like a prudent potentate, to avoid being deposed, and
putting the Stratford Guide-Book under my arm, as a pillow
companion, I went to bed, and dreamt all night of Shakspeare,
the Jubilee, and David Garrick.

The next morning was one of those quickening mornings
which we sometimes have in early spring; for it was about
the middle of March. The chills of a long winter had sud-
denly given way; the north wind had spent its last gasp;
and a mild air came stealing from the west, breathing the
breath of life into nature, and wooing every bud and flower to
burst forth into fragrance and beauty.

I had come to Stratford on a poetical pilgrimage. My
first visit was to the house where Shakspeare was born, and
where, according to tradition, he was brought up to his
father's craft of wool-combing. It is a small mean-looking
edifice of wood and plaster, a true nestling place of genius,
which seems to delight in hatching its offspring in by-corners.
The walls of its squalid chambers are covered with names and
inscriptions in every language, by pilgrims of all nations, ranks,
and conditions, from the prince to the peasant; and present a
simple, but striking instance of the spontaneous and universal
homage of mankind to the great poet of nature.

The house is shown by a garrulous old lady, in a frosty
red face, lighted up by a cold blue anxious eye, and garnished
with artificial locks of flaxen hair, curling from under an ex-
ceedingly dirty cap. She was peculiarly assiduous in exhib-
iting the relics with which this, like all other celebrated
shrines, abounds. There was the shattered stock of the very
matchlock with which Shakspeare shot the deer, on his poach-
ing exploits. There, too, was his tobacco-box; which proves
that he was a rival smoker of Sir Walter Raleigh; the sword
also with which he played Hamlet; and the identical lantern
with which Friar Laurence discovered Romeo and Juliet at the
tomb! There was an ample supply also of Shakspeare's
mulberry-tree, which seems to have as extraordinary powers of

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