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chimney stood an old oak chair, which had for a number of years received nearly as many adorers as the celebrated shrine of the Lady of Loretto. This relic was purchased in July, 1790, by the Princess Czartoryska, who made a journey to this place in order to obtain intelligence relative to Shakespeare. Being told that he often sat in this chair, she placed herself in it, and expressed an ardent wish to become its purchaser. She was informed, that it was not to be sold at any price; when, depositing a handsome gratuity for old Mrs. Hart, she left the place with apparent regret. About four months after, the anxiety of the princess could no longer be withheld; and her secretary was dispatched, express, as the fit agent to purchase this treasure at any rate. The sum of twenty guineas was the price fixed upon; and the secretary and the chair, with a proper certificate of its authenticity on stamped paper, set off in a chaise for London." Washington Irving-whose name will ever be connected with the literature of the United States-was one of those who made a pilgrimage to the birthplace, and also to the tomb of Shakespeare, just before the former passed out of the hands of the Harts; and he has recorded the sensations which the visit occasioned. "My first visit," he says, in his Sketch Book, "was to the house where Shakespeare 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 nesting-place of genius, which seems to delight in hatching its offspring in bye-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 homage of mankind to the great poet of nature. The house is shown by a garrulous old lady, with a frosty red face, lighted up by a cold blue anxious eye, and garnished with artificial locks of flaxen hair, curling from under an exceedingly dirty cap." Poor Mrs Hart;-she was no very congenial representative of the Shakespeare family. "She was peculiarly assiduous in exhibiting the relics, with which this, like all other celebrated shrines, abounds. Here was the shattered stock of the very matchlock with which Shakespeare shot the deer on his poaching 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 Lawrence discovered Romeo and Juliet at the tomb. There was an ample supply, also, of Shakespeare's mulberry-tree, which seems to have extraordinary powers of self-multiplication;" and, notwithstanding the sale to the Princess Czartoryska, a chair was still shown as Shakespeare's, and was, says Mr. Irving, "the most favourite object of curiosity. It stands in the chimney-nook of a small gloomy chamber, just behind what was his father's shop. Here he may, many a time, have sat when a boy, watching the slowlyrevolving spit with all the longing of an urchin; or of an evening, listening to the cronies and gossips of Stratford, dealing forth churchyard tales and legendary anecdotes of the troublesome times of England. In this chair, it is the custom of every one that visits the house to sit: whether this be done with the hope of acquiring any of the inspiration of the bard, I am at a loss to say. I merely mention the fact; and mine hostess privately assured me, that, though built of solid oak, such was the fervent zeal of devotees, that the chair had to be new-bottomed at least once in three years. It is worthy of notice, also, in the history of this extraordinary chair, that it partakes something of the volatile nature of the Santa Casa of Loretto, or the flying chair of the

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Arabian enchanter; for, though sold some few years ago to a northern princess, yet, strange to tell, it has found its way back again to the old chimney corner. I am always," adds the genial-hearted American, "of easy faith in such matters, and am ever willing to be deceived, where the deceit is pleasant, and costs nothing. I am therefore a ready believer in relics, legends, and local anecdotes of goblins and great men; and would advise all travellers, who travel for their gratification, to be the same. What is it to us whether these stories be true or false, so long as we can persuade ourselves into the belief of them, and enjoy all the charm of the reality."

Our engraving exhibits the interior of the bedroom, as it existed about the time Washington Irving visited it, and some of the relics. The top view shows the chamber, as it appears when the visitor enters it; that at the bottom, is its appearance when the back is placed towards the window. The centre engraving depicts one of the corners of the chamber. Fifty years later, after the Shakespeare Club had purchased the premises, they were visited by another celebrated American-this time a lady, Mrs. Beecher Stowe. In the summer of 1853, this lady was at Stratford, and she approached it, influenced by thoughts of the poet and his times. "Deep down in our hearts,” she writes, "we were going back to English days; the cumbrous, quaint, queer, old, picturesque times; the dim haunted times between cock-crowing and morning; those hours of national childhood, when popular ideas had the confiding credulity, the poetic vivacity, and versatile life which distinguish children from grown-up people." In this state of feeling the authoress of Uncle Tom's Cabin approached the birthplace of him who gave "a local habitation and a name" to the vivid creations of his fancy. "She saw," she says, "a good many old houses somewhat similar to it on the road, particularly resembling it in the manner of plastering, which shows all the timber on the outside." On arriving at the house, Mrs. Stowe and her friends passed from a lower room, up a rude flight of stairs, "to the world-famed bedroom." "The prints of this room," she writes, "which are generally sold, allow themselves considerable poetical license; representing it, in fact, as quite an elegant apartment; whereas, though it is kept scrupulously neat and clean, the air of it is ancient and rude. The roughly plastered walls are so covered with names, that it seemed impossible to add another. The name of almost every modera genius, names of kings, princes, and dukes are shown here; and it is really curious to see by what devices some really insignificant personages have endeavoured to make their own names conspicuous in the crowd." "At the back of this room were some smal

bedrooms; and, what interested me most, a staircase leading up into a dark garret. I could not but fancy I saw a bright-eyed, curly-headed boy creeping up the stairs, zealous to explore the mysteries of that dark garret. There, perhaps, he saw the cat, with 'eyne of burning coal, crouching 'fore the mouse's hole.' Doubtless, in this old garret were wondrous mysteries to him; curious stores of old cast-off goods and furniture, and rats and mice, and cob-webs. I fancied the indignation of some old belligerent grandmother or aunt, who finds Willie up there watching a mouse-hole, with the cat, and hands him down straightway, grumbling that Mary did not govern that child better."

Neither Irving nor Mrs. Stowe give any description which will convey a correct idea of the old house. We will avail ourselves of a few particulars from a local publicstion. "Looking curiously, yet reverentially," writes Edwin Lees, "at the old chambered

* Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands.

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house, with its open butcher's window, we enter. The floor is paved with stones, that, characteristically enough, are cut up into a host of splinters and fragments, as if really hacked by a butcher's cleaver. On one side is an ample fireplace, with cozy sitting-places on either side; for, in those smoky days, with penetrating draughts coming in from all sides, happy was he who was privileged to take the chimney corner. We proceed into the kitchen, lighted by a side window, looking into the Swan yard. Here a most enormous beam-doubtless from an oak in the forest of Arden-supports the mantel. The fireplace is ample enough to roast a sheep; with recesses, as usual, on either side for the gaffer and his dame, with a wide chimney gaping up to the sky, and ready to pour out a volcano of smoke, as doubtless it often has done, from a pile of crackling wood. If the fire is out now, our feelings sparkling back upon the past, must rekindle it. That Shakespeare himself has stood here before the cheerful blaze, no one can doubt. Perhaps, as a boy, he may have sat in the corner, feeding his galloping imagination from a spark in the ashes. His father, at any rate, lived and died here; and he must have often walked in, when at Stratford, to see the old man. From the kitchen, a flight of about a dozen stairs leads into the chamber, that must be ever sacred, where the great bard first entered, as an actor, upon the seven ages of life. It is a low, moderate-sized room, nine paces by seven, with a window of four combined casements, and has a fireplace, with an enormous beam supporting its mantel." Its furniture is simple, but the tables and chairs are of the antique pattern; one of the former looks as if it might have existed since the age of Elizabeth. Of the small back-rooms, mentioned by Mrs. Stowe, one is now an ante-room; the other was the sleeping apartment of the person who shows the house; it is now unoccupied.

On the table standing in front of the window, a book is now placed, in which the visitors inscribe their names; and, till recently, were requested to add what sum (if any) they might please to give towards "the fund for the complete purchase of Shakespeare's house, for the use of the public for ever." As already observed, the walls are covered with autographs; some of the names, both on the wall and in the book, are accompanied with a few lines of poetry-very few of these mottoes, however, being worthy the subject. Some names, and the mottoes, occupy a wide space: the most eminent man who ever visited the hallowed retreat-himself possessing much of the genius of Shakespeare-has contented himself with writing his name in a small neat hand; that man was Sir Walter Scott.-We select three of the best of the poetical autographs, which will show that their general character does not come up to mediocrity.

1. WASHINGTON IRVING'S.

"Of mighty Shakespeare's birth the room we see,
That where he died in vain do try

Useless the search, for all immortal, he;

And those who are immortal, never die."

2. LUCIEN BUONAPARTE'S.

"The eyes of Genius glisten to admire,

How memory hails the sound of Shakespeare's lyre:
One tear he shed, to form a crystal shrine,
For all that's great, immortal, and divine."

* Stratford as connected with Shakespeare.

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3. MRS. CORNWALL BARON WILSON'S.
"Bard of the deathless rhyme,

Bard of the song that ne'er grows old,
Thy lays were all for time,

Their lyric fire can ne'er grow cold;

Quenchless the light that sprang from thee,
Thou master-spell of poesy."

Notwithstanding that tradition is, as we have shown, supported by documentary evidence, there are those who still "doubt" as to the house in Henley-street being that in which Shakespeare was born. When Mrs. Stowe and her husband visited Stratford, they were accompanied by a gentleman named C, and by Joseph Sturge, the eminent Quaker corn-merchant of Birmingham; one of the last persons we should have supposed, à priori, to be likely to go on pilgrimage to the birthplace of a dramatist. In "the drizzly evening," after their visit, writes the lady, "over our comfortable tea-table, C ventured to intimate, pretty decidedly, that he considered the whole thing a bore; whereat I thought I saw a slight twinkle around the eyes and mouth of our most Christian and patient friend, Joseph Sturge. Mr. S. (the writer's husband), laughingly told him, that he thought it the greatest exercise of Christian tolerance, that he should have trailed round with us in the mud all day in our sight-seeing, bearing with our unreasonable raptures. He smiled, and said quietly, I must confess, that I was a little pleased that our friend Harriet was so zealous to see Shakespeare's house, when it wasn't his house, and so earnest to get sprigs from his mulberry, when it wasn't his mulberry.' We were quite ready to allow the foolishness of the thing; and to join in the laugh at our own expense." It would seem, therefore, as if the authoress, any more than the solemn matter-of-fact Quaker, had no great faith in the traditionary legends of Stratford. But if doubts-unreasonable doubts we must think them-are raised as to the identity of the place of the poet's birth, there can be none as to that of his education. He attended the grammar-school of his native town; "there," says Rowe, "he learned what Latin he was master of;" but the biographer thinks that he was obliged, by family circumstances, to leave school before he had made himself complete master of the language.

In Chapel-street, Stratford, as early as 1269, Robert de Stratford built an hospital and a chapel, by permission of the Bishop of Worcester. Here a guild was instituted, of which the founder was the first master. Henry IV. conferred letters-patent upon it, and granted the members power to constitute a fraternity or guild, in honour of the Holy Cross and John the Baptist; and to provide two priests for the purpose of celebrating divine service. Thomas Jolyffe, a priest of this guild, and a native of the town, endowed it with certain lands and tenements in 1482, for the purpose of maintaining "a priest fit and able in knowledge to teach grammar freely to all scholars coming to the school." This was the origin of the grammar-school, which, with the guild, fell into the hands of King Henry VIII., when he suppressed so many religious establishments. His son and successor, however, Edward VI., in the seventh year of his reign, restored the property to the corporation of Stratford, for charitable and educational purposes. At the same time, he granted, as we have already stated, a charter of incorporation to the inhabitants; one clause of which provides, that "the free grammar-school, for the instruction and education

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