himself little about decorating his abode, and, if he attempted decoration, feldom produced anything but deformity." This is the historian's estimate of fuch houses as Charlecote, and Helmingham in Suffolk, and Blickling in Norfolk, and their class, the deformity of which he contrafts with the elegance of those cold, melancholy, barrack-like ftructures, with a Grecian portico ftuck on to them, which, till within the laft few years, was confidered the right fort of abode for an English gentleman when he went to spend the dull season in the country. But then it must be remembered that the English country gentleman of the fixteenth and seventeenth century was a Tory.

The church is, unfortunately, quite new, having been rebuilt a few years ago by the mother of the prefent poffeffor of the estate. It contains, however, the old monuments, amongst which is that erected to commemorate Sir Thomas Lucy, who died in 1595. His recumbent figure in armour, befide his wife, gives one the idea that he was a fine-looking man, and not the starveling described by Shakespere-but marble is deceptive. The "three white Luces" appear every

where.

A walk across the park and fields by the margin of Avon brought me to my inn at about fix o'clock, and fo ended one of the pleasantest days of my pilgrimage.

CHAPTER VII.

AND now, in order the better to understand the process by which Shakespere, having left his beloved Stratford under a cloud, returned to it in a few years, gilded with the sunshine of profperity, we must accompany him in his expedition to feek his fortunes in London.

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In 1583, a few months after his marriage, his eldest child, Sufanna, was born, and was followed in the fucceeding year by the twins, Judith and Hamnet. family increasing at this rate, combined with his father's embarrassments, was enough to warn him that he must beftir himself if he would not fink into utter poverty. But perhaps these strong inducements were quickened by the fear of a profecution by the game-preferving fquire of Charlecote. However this may be, we find him in London in the year 1586 at latest.

Good fortune, or his inclination, led him, on his arrival, to the theatre. It seems to me extremely probable that he had dabbled in theatrical affairs

even before his departure from Stratford. Stage-plays were, before the general diffufion of knowledge, a favourite amusement with the common people, and formed a part of every great festivity, just as, before the multiplication of books, ftory-telling was a favourite mode of spending a winter's evening or a fultry fummer's afternoon. He was probably only depicting the immemorial usage when, in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," he reprefented the "base mechanicals" of Athens as welcoming Thefeus and Hippolyta with a play. In "Love's Labour's Loft," too, a ftage-play is the obvious mode which prefents itself to the pedant and the parfon of entertaining the court and showing their own wit and learning; and when Falstaff wants to be extremly merry, he proposes to the Prince to extemporise a play. I, for one, cannot believe that the English people awoke fuddenly, about the middle of the fixteenth century, to a knowledge and a love of the drama. In one form or other, the people had always had stage-plays, or stories in action, at their festivities; and there can be little doubt that a young fellow like Shakefpere, with the natural proclivity to the drama, which every one must acknowledge he had, took a part in fuch entertainments of the kind as were performed in his native village. The fame love of amusement which led him into all unluckiness in

ftealing venifon and rabbits, would alfo lead him to make one in any project for private theatricals that might be on foot.

The taste for the stage had been for centuries fostered among all claffes of the English people by the religious plays, which formed part of the celebration of the great feafts of the Church. At Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide worldly business was laid aside for several days, and even weeks. The fovereign and principal nobility kept their courts with great magnificence at some favourite palace, and sometimes at a rich monastery of which they had been the benefactors; and mafques, plays, and interludes were performed in their halls by players and musicians, whom they specially retained, and who were therefore called their "fervants." For the general public the Church provided its Mysteries, Miracles, and Moralities, and these were played in the spacious naves of cathedrals and minsters, in inn yards, where the audience might see them from the galleries and the chambers, or upon scaffolds in market-places.

Antiquaries, of course, need not be told what is meant by Mysteries, Miracles, and Moralities; but as this little book is intended for the general reader, I think I had better fay that Myfteries were dramatic verfions of the great events upon which the Christian

religion is founded, fuch as the Nativity, the Paffion, the Resurrection, Ascension, and Descent of the Holy Ghoft at Whitfuntide. These were reduced to the form of a dialogue carried on by the feveral characters, almost in the very words of Scripture. They are still performed in the Tyrol, and last year several letters from tourists, describing them, appeared in the papers. The Miracles were dramatic reprefentations of fome miraculous exertion of Divine power through the intervention of a faint; and the Moralities were allegorical dramas, representing the action of certain virtues and vices perfonified. Several of these ancient dramatic works have been collected and published by the Shakefpere Society. Many of them poffefs confiderable humour and dramatic power, and are, indeed, plays to all intents and purposes, though they are not divided into acts and scenes. They bear quite as much resemblance to a modern drama as the dialogues recited by the peasants and shepherds, and faid by Horace to have been invented by Thefpis, did to the Prometheus, the Edipus, the Medea, and the Nephela. Chaucer alludes to the Myfteries when, defcribing Abfolon, in the "Milleres Tale," he says:

"Some time, to fhew his lightness and maiftrye,

He playeth Herod on a scaffold high.”

Herod, of courfe, was a character of great prominence

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