old long-drawn-out tenements of the class identical with the "Anne Hathaway" at Shottery and "Mary Arden" home at Wilmcote, may be found, and in much better condition. It is undisputable that thatching in the highly perfected manner shown by the roofs of old rural houses of the period is a lost art, and not likely to be recovered. Men are to be found who can thatch a hay or wheat stack, but try any of these at the old fifteenth century style of work and they are nowhere. The quantity of straw consumed in the covering-in of such roofs was enormous, and

of dimensions larger than could be included in the span of two trees joined at the apex. These cottages abound in the better-cared-for villages in the counties named; the age of many is clearly of Henry VII. period, and their now existent comparatively sound condition is conclusive proof of the Arden and Hathaway homesteads being, so far as age is concerned, all they are represented. The thatch on this class of houses was estimated to serve its purpose for sixty years, this without much repair, owing to the great thickness of straw used; after that, repairs would be

The Back Mary andons богаще

now proves utterly preventive in these times, when straw has increased to a value equal to the grain it bears. Such residences as those of Mary Arden and Anne Hathaway, even in the period of their erection, were exceptional, and were built by the owners of the estates on which situate, as residences for families of acknowledged position as landowners. The smaller cottages of the period will be found to possess the distinct peculiarity, the result of legal enforcement of the time of Henry VII., when, without special permission, it was ordered that no house should be erected

needed to prolong efficiency, and it is well known that one thatching followed by periods of repair has ofttimes sufficed for eighty and more years.

Mary Arden, Shakespeare's mother, has hitherto received but little thought from biographers; although from the various scraps that have come down to us regarding her, it is quite clear that by her natural gifts and character, as well as by her business turn of mind, she eminently deserved and justified the confidence placed in her by a fond father, who laid upon her great responsibilities. Her father's preference for her was very likely in some degree owing to her stated remarkable cheerfulness, and which brightened many a weary hour during a long illness, and dispelled many of the gloomy thoughts that affected him in the later part of his life. There were but few books available in those days to relieve the tedium of long winter nights. He calls himself in his will "sick in body." The German biographer, Carl

Else, says that by the brightness of her spirit, as well as by the practical uprightness of her character, which enabled her to transact business matters without discord and friction, she resembled Goethe's mother. May not her son have inherited his joyous nature and his delight in poetic creations from her, as Goethe inherited his from his mother. If, as experience teaches in very numerous cases, illustrious men inherit a large portion of their mental and moral qualities from the maternal side, it is more than reasonable to draw such inference in the case of Shakespeare's mother.

If a truly great man or woman needs no exalted descent, how must it be with the greatest of the human race? Yet to the proper and intelligent comprehension of Shakespeare's authorship, it is necessary to know something of his original condition in life, whether he was of gentle blood, or base-born, as his libellers impudently and wickedly assert.

Whether he was educated in the ordinary sense of that term, or merely self-taught, can never make his writings worse or better, or affect any sensible person's estimate of them. But the circumstances of his birth and education, his manner of living, and his means of knowledge, do affect materially the influences which may be drawn from his writings. They are, therefore, important and essential conditions in the problem of his authorship. Shakespeare's immediate paternal ancestors were plain, honest yeomen or husbandmen, although early as the fourteenth century families bearing the martial name of Shakespeare were settled in Warwickshire, and were folk of consideration.

Alec Nelson, in an excellent and unpretending little periodical, The Chimes, charmingly conducts a pilgrim to Mary's village home.

"The home of Shakespeare's mother, in which her infancy and girlhood were passed, is attainable by vehicular or pedestrian setting out from Stratford, as the centre best suited for gaining correct knowledge of the

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Shakespeare country. There are more ways than one to Wilmcote. One is to make for the Birmingham Road, turn off to the left opposite Clopton Lane, and march by the side of the canal from the ugliest part of Stratford (if it be possible for anything ugly to exist in the spot so saturated of Shakespeare), to the prettiest part of Wilmcote. This walk, however, has a drawback in the knowledge that the canal was not created in his day, and that he never could have gone that way. So instead of turning to the left, we keep straight on the same Birmingham Road through all the unsavoury gas-creating, and other anti-rural works, until the real country of orchards and charming

a peep:at The Farmyard, Mary irdens

meadows greets the view. If in leafy June, the hayfields soon disclose themselves, and the pilgrim enters on fields and pastures, with ditches of flowers such as England only knows, without any narrowing of the road, trees close in upon you from above and overarch the way, as a bird broods over her young. After a time, the path climbs up, and roses are growing between

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you and the road below. To the east the red brown of the fields toils on and upwards against the sky. Here on the right is the turning to Snitterfield, where the Shakespeares lived, and a little later the wood that has been hanging yonder on the brow of a low hill draws something nearer the road.

It is well to look backwards and forwards now; and, indeed, often along this way. We are in the midst of a vast one-sided amphitheatre. The tiers of seats are two ranges of hills in the west. The farther

range is faint and melts into the sky, as clouds melt into the horizon. In the wood upon the eastern side there is a sudden break of green sward; the road slopes steadily down before us to the Dun Cow. Just beyond that humble hostelry is the mouth of the lane on the left leading to Wilmcote.

Once more the path lifts itself from the road on to a green bank, whose fellow rises on the right, shutting out for a while fields, woods, and a section of the sky itself. At the foot of this hill, by the Dun Cow, the necessity of looking back becomes absolute; then the road is seen to be a clean cut, whose crest is a sharply defined line against the faint blue of the hills far beyond. On a sudden, a solitary figure steps over the crest; thrown up against the sky, in that clear air, the figure seems to be marching straight out of heaven. Perhaps it may be a princess in the dress of fairy tales, upon whose footsteps charms, for good or ill, attend. Perhaps and when the figure grows out of the skyline down the hill, to you waiting below, it is that of a careworn woman, with the marks of labour on her bronzed face and hands.

Another road to Snitterfield and the larger Warwick to the right; the passing of a farmer's cart, or gig or so, whose driver is, in some cases, so old that this might be his last outing; then a tumbledown barn on the left, a delta of green beyond it, and between the lane swinging round towards Wilmcote.

How sweet the lane is! It goes curving away to the south-west between rose hedges, and has, at times, not so much as a semblance of path. Here and there is a house covered with ivy, and if the day has crept on from early dawn and draws near eventide, the sunset light comes filtering to you through the hedges on your right with tinges of green from the leaves and of a new red from the roses. There is young life in plenty, as there should be, nearing his mother's home. White calves, with liquid eyes, stare stupidly at you through and over the hedgerows. A brown foal, all legs, scampers off like a translated rocking-horse towards a distant gap, fringed with hawkweed as to its lower border. By the wayside a red-haired boy is climbing a tree, with no earthly object. For the last time the road rises; not in homage to Mary Arden and her home, but by reason of a railway bridge crossing the Great Western line, on the which Wilmcote is the penultima Thule for him whose ultima is Stratford. Dogged

steadfast folk ascend the white path from the station. Almost to a man, woman, and child, they turn rightwards and, taking no notice of the railway bridge, over the which we have toiled, cross another, very beautiful, that in its turn crossed our oldyoung friend, the canal. The canal, here, has the path we might have taken to our left, and on the other side reflects a mill that seems as much older than it as the earth and the sky are. A few yards more and you are by Mary Arden's house. But there is a more excellent way from Stratford to Wilmcote by the Evesham Road, half-way to Binton, which is half-way to Bidford, which is half-way to Evesham. All of which sounds like the genealogies in the Old Testament, but is only part of an itinerary. We must climb Borden Hill and drop down its western slope, then strike northwards across the fields towards Wilmcote until reaching two cottages standing by the roadside, with a large farmhouse lying somewhat farther inland. One of the cottages is that of the gamekeeper to the Marquis of Hertford, owner of the land hereabouts in Shakespeare's country. At the right time of the year the way is by corn and clover, passionately red, over the sweep of fields. The path grows faint, and has to be made out by aid of occasional cart-ruts and an instinctive passage from gate unto gate; but there is no chance of losing it. The birds seem to guide one, though I daresay that is all wrong. Nevertheless, somehow the quiverring sweetness of the larks' songs are all roofing over the way we ought to take; the thrushes are busy in the hedge along which we must pass; the grey plover's lazy flap of wing points out the road. A little later the nightingales-there is a chorus of them in that slip of wood yonder-sing in the darkness, "This is the way to Mary Arden's."

Titania's bank lies to our right in this early part of the journey, and the humbler flowers, not allowed to grow there, accompany us. The hay is lying in the fields; the thistle-down puffs off in filmy gusts into the air; agrimony, convolvulus, the restharrow, are among the grass and in this green lane, not unmixed with mud; to our left the sedges are growing.

The grass lane leads to and through Drayton Farm, midway between the Bidford and Alcester roads. Alcester, in Midland nineteenth century dialect, is pronounced as if there were no lce in it, and the a was aw.

At Drayton there is a pond and a walnut

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tree, and opinionated geese, and more opinionated turkeys, and a close-clipped red haystack, that seems never to be touched all the year round, and a dog that strives to strangle himself with his chain, and to choke himself with barking. And beyond Drayton are such elms-some, alas! felled, and marked, R. 23 and so forth-and a lazy cart, carrying home the late hay, with a wooden rake hung up by its teeth behind. Parting company with the slow-moving, heavily shaking mass of hay, a man and woman, with their child, pass away to the left. The child's face is the most sunburnt. Through the open gap left by a vanished gate placid cows are seen, and a farm beyond. Now we have rye and the musical barley instead of wheat; charlock, vetches, and forget-menots for bindweed and rest-harrow; and the only birds are starlings, in hundreds. Beyond the brown ploughed field, away on the uplands towards Redhill Wood, sheep, with dog attendant, are feeding. Here is a gate opening right on to the Alcester road, and on the other side of the road another and yet another " down right," as the stage folks say. By either of these you can go Wilmcotewards. The former is better, as it takes you farther from the farmhouse, over-prim, and too much like an artisan's dwelling in a Midland town, where there are co-operative stores. You will miss a wonderful rick or so, but you will go through swishing grasses of every form and