and the tenderness that such beauty gives, you find in the pages of Shakspere; and it is not too much to say that he painted them, because they were ever associated in his mind with all that he held precious and dear, both of the earliest and the latest scenes of his life.

Therefore I repeat, that it was well that Shakspere was born here. And I dwell especially upon his love for flowers, a love always manifested by our great poets:

Gilds every mountain top, which late the humorous night
Bespangled had with pearl, to please the morning's sight;
On which, the mirthful quires, with their clear open throats
Unto the joyful morn so strain their warbling notes,
That hills and valleys ring, and e'en the echoing air
Seems all composed of sounds about them everywhere.
The throstle with shrill sharps, as purposely he sung
To awake the listless sun, or chiding that so long
He was in coming forth that should the thickets thrill;
The woosel near at hand, that hath a golden bill,
As nature him had marked, of purpose t' let us see
That from all other birds his tunes should different be:
For with their vocal sounds they sing to pleasant May;
Upon his dulcet pipe the merle doth only play.
When, in the lower brake, the nightingale hard by,

In such lamenting strains the joyful hours doth ply,

As though the other birds she to her tunes would draw.

But the passage does but faint justice to the sweetness of the birds in the Warwickshire woodlands. The reader will remember how, in the Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakspere sings of the nightingale, and the "wooselcock with his orange tawny bill," and "the throstle with his note so true;" and they may still all be heard singing as sweetly as ever in the woods around Stratford.

by Spenser, and Chaucer, and Milton, who seem to regard . them with a human sympathy, and to endow them, too, with human feelings. So Shakspere loved, as Lord Herbert of Cherbury would have said, "our fellow-creatures the plants;" and so speak Imogen and Perdita of them, and so, too, Ophelia. Violets Ophelia would have given to her brother; but they died all, when her father died. And I dwell also upon this love for flowers, because we must remember that God has given them, as it were, as a peculiar gift to the poor (that is, to the great body of mankind), for their delight and their contemplation. Other things they have not-pictures, nor gardens, nor libraries, nor sculpture-galleries; but flowers they always have, and it is the contemplation and the love of them that distinguishes us from the beasts of the field.*

Happy, indeed, therefore, was Shakspere's lot to have been born in the country among such scenes! far happier

*It is true that Shakspere can paint sea-cliffs, as in Lear; or mountains, as in Cymbeline; or the sea in a storm, as in the Tempest; but he never dwells upon them with that fondness with which he paints his own lowland meadows. This must certainly, in a great measure, be attributed to the reasons given in the text, but partly also to the fact, that man in Shakspere's day had not yet learnt to see a beauty in the clouds, or the wild ravine, or the stormy sea. For this insight we must thank our modern poets and painters; though we must ever remember that there are touches and lines in Shakspere describing mountains and storm, and sunset scenes and clouds, which have never been equalled.

than befell his great fellow-poets, Spenser and Milton, both born in the turmoil of London. And surely, too, it was well that he was born amongst country rustics, and that from the scenes of early life he was able to gather strength, and to idealize, without weakening their reality, his Christopher Slys, his Quinces the carpenters, and his Snugs the joiners, such as we may easily conceive he saw and knew in his boyhood.

I know that it is often brought as a reproach against him that he should have drawn them; but I, for my own part, find in this Shakspere's greatest merit, feeling assured that there is nothing insignificant in humanity, and that the humblest man is by no means the worthless thing generally thought. Surely I think, that in painting these rough forms so lovingly, we may detect Shakspere's true greatness of mind. And the simple thought that nature has made the most numerous of the world's family these same so-called common men, might inspire us with a wish to know and to love them. By painting them, Shakspere could better paint the complexities and troubles of daily life, with its hard toil, such as will last as long as the world lasts. These things may be in themselves very paltry, but they cease to be paltry when we know that by them millions of human beings are strangely affected.

And here let me take the opportunity of saying, what

has been often said before, but which cannot be too often repeated, that Shakspere's chief excellence lies in this, that he has not drawn mere lay-figures, but human, breathing, complex men and women-not Romans, not Greeks, but simply men; that he has never obtruded mere party creeds, but given us true religion; never painted mere finite systems, but true perennial human sympathy; and that he has never forgotten the broad principle, that whether Saxon or Celt, Jew or Gentile, we are all brothers; that, in fact, to use his own words, he has ever "held the mirror up to nature," reflecting there all forms and shapes, but reflecting them with the charity that looks upon a brother's shortcomings in pity, knowing well how utterly impossible it is to judge another.

THIS little country town lies in the Vale of the Red Horse, so called from the giant figure of a horse cut in the red marl on the side of the Edgehills, some twelve miles off, and which gives its name, like its fellow on the Berkshire hills, to the surrounding country. The Avon, after passing