traces her descent from the Hathaways, who have continued to refide in the house ever fince the fixteenth Upstairs is a bed-chamber, where Mrs. Baker shows an old oak bed and a pair of very beautifully worked sheets and pillow-cafes. She fays fhe inherited them from her father, and that they have been in the family from time immemorial, and used on state occafions, fuch as marriages, births, and deaths. They are marked “Elizabeth Hathaway," but whether the character of the work be ancient or modern I am not fuch an adept in needlework as to determine. About the house are feveral old oak chefts, chairs, and fettles, but none, I fhould imagine, older than the feventeenth century. Much has been written refpecting Shakefpere's marriage, and perhaps a good deal of it rafhly. The circumstances are not, affuredly, very fatisfactory. In the first place he was under nineteen when he married, and Anne Hathaway was fix and twenty. And though he was not a man to make literary capital out of his domestic relations, or to whine in public over his regrets and forrows, like the fnivelling hypocrite Greene, yet I cannot perfuade myself that his own cafe was not present to his mind when he wrote the well-known lines in "Twelfth Night: " "Let the woman take An elder than herfelf; fo wears fhe to him; Then let thy love be younger than thyself, Or thy affection cannot hold the bent." Anne Hathaway was the daughter of one Richard Hathaway, a small farmer. The marriage bond and license were difcovered in the Confiftorial Court at Worcester in the year 1836, by Sir Robert Phillipps. They are dated November 28, 1582, and are marked with croffes. One of the feals has the initials "R. H.," fuppofed to be thofe of the bride's father, Richard Hathaway. There is no record of the marriage in Stratford church; it therefore must have been folemnised in the church of fome neighbouring village, where the registers have not been preserved, or perhaps in a private house. The register of Stratford bears witness, however, to the birth of the firft-born of William Shakespere and Anne Hathaway, in May, 1583. From these ugly facts, Mr. de Quincy, in his article on Shakespere, in the "Encyclopædia Britannica," has perhaps drawn unwarrantable conclufions. The agreement to live as man and wife is held, I believe, by the canon law to constitute marriage. Manzoni's “I Promeffi Spofi" is founded upon this principle, which still prevails even in Proteftant Scotland, while the law of the country follows that of Rome in many of its principles and forms. The religious ceremony was held to be merely a folemn ratification of a contract already complete, and to be in nowise effential to its perfection. Hence, the marriage of heathens has always been held good, and not to be repeated on the parties becoming Christians. Every nation has, of course, a right to require certain forms to be gone through in order to prevent clandeftine marriages, and to make the crime of bigamy more difficult to commit; and those who choose to dispense with such legal forms in their own case, thereby show, or may be prefumed to show, that they have not really consented to be bound by the laws of marriage. But the question is, Was the custom of holding troth-plight to be equivalent to marriage prevalent in England in Shakefpere's time? There may, of |