been lodged for centuries in private hands. They silently affirm that, though the acres may be private property, the landscape is the inalienable possession of the English people. In May, when the hawthorn is in bloom and the nightingale is in full song, a Warwickshire foot-path leads one into a world as ideal as the island in "The Tempest" or the fairy-haunted country of the "Midsummer Night's Dream." That Shakespeare knew these pathways into the realm of the imagination there is ample evidence; that he was familiar with these byways about Stratford is beyond a doubt. Does not one of them still lead to Shottery? Kenilworth, which was a noble and impressive stronghold in Shakespeare's boyhood, ample enough to entertain a court with long-continued and magnificent pageants, is not less imposing in its vast ruins than in the day when knights rode at one another, spears at rest, in the tilting-yard and the Queen was received at the great gate by Leicester. In the loveliness of its surroundings, the beauty of its outlook, the romantic interest of its ivy-covered ruins, and the splendour and tragedy of its historic fortunes, it symbolizes the harmony of natural and human association which invests all Warwickshire with perennial charm. Much of this charm has come since Shakespeare's time, but it was there in quality and characteristic when he roamed afield on summer afternoons, or, on holidays, made his way to Kenilworth, Warwick, or Coventry. It was in key with his own poised and harmonious spirit; its quality is diffused through his work. For nature in the plays is always subordinate to the unfolding of character through action, but is so clearly limned, so constantly in view, so much and so significantly a part of the complete impression which conveys not only a drama but its setting and atmosphere, that it must have had large space in the poet's spiritual life. There are touches of Warwickshire in all Shakespeare's work: in "The Winter's Tale" the flowers of Warwickshire are woven together in one of the most exquisite calendars of season and blossom in the whole range of poetry; in "As You Like It" the depths and hollows and long stretches of shade of the old Forest of Arden rise before the imagination; in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" there are bits of landscape which are now in fairyland, but were once good solid Warwickshire soil. The valley of the Tweed and the mountains about the Scotch lakes form a natural background for Scott's poetry; the Ayrshire landscape rises into view again and again in the verse of Burns; the lake district of Cumberland, with its mists and multitudinous voices of hidden streams, lies behind Wordsworth's verse. In like manner, Warwickshire lies always in the background of Shakespeare's mind, and gives form, quality, and colour to the landscape of his poetry. Unless dramatic necessity imposes catastrophic effects upon him, as in "Lear" and "Macbeth," Shakespeare's landscape is reposeful, touched with ripe and tender beauty, happily balanced between extremes in temperature, happily poised between austerity and prodigality in beauty. Its loveliness has more solidity and substance than that which the New England poets loved so well, and the fragrance of which, as delicate as that of the arbutus, they have caught and preserved; while, on the other hand, it has not the voluptuous note, the beguiling and passionate sensuousness, of the Italian landscape. The beauty of the country in which Rosalind wanders and Jacques meditates is more harmonious with man's spiritual fortunes and less sympathetic with his passion than that in which Romeo and Juliet live out the brief and ardent drama of that young love which sees nothing in the world save the reflection of itself. The landscape of the Forest of Arden knows all the changes of the season, and bends the most obsequious courtier to its conditions; it has a quiet and pervasive charm for the senses, but its deepest appeal is to the imagination; there is in it a noble reticence and restraint which exact much before it surrenders its ultimate loveliness, and in its surrender it reinvigorates instead of relaxing and debilitating. Its beauty is as much a matter of structure as of form; as much a matter of atmosphere as of colour. And this is the charm of Warwickshire. It does not know the roll and thunder of the sea, which Tennyson thought were more tumultuous and resonant on the coast of Lincolnshire than anywhere else in England; it is not overlaid with the bloom which makes Kent a garden when the hop-vines are in flower; it lacks that something, half legendary and half real, which draws to Cornwall so many lovers of the idylls of Arthur; the noble largeness of the Somerset landscapes is not to be found within its boun daries; but its harmonious, balanced, and ripe loveliness is its own and is not to be found elsewhere. There are many points at which one feels this characteristic charm. From Kenilworth to Stratford, if one goes by the way of Warwick and Charlecote, it is continuous. There are sweet and homely places along the road where the houses seem to belong to the landscape and the roses climb as if they longed for human intercourse; there are stretches of sward so green and deep that one is sure Shakespeare's feet might have pressed them; there are trees of such girth and circumference of shade that Queen Elizabeth might have waited under them; there are vines and mosses and roses everywhere; and everywhere also there are bits of history clinging like old growths to fallen walls, and densely shaded hill, and stately mansion set far back in noble expanse of park. Through the trees the low square tower guides one church set among ancient graves, with a sweet solemnity enfolding it in silence and peace. The fields are richly strewn with wild flowers, and every cliff, stone, and bit of ruined wall is hung deep with vine and moss, as if nature could not care enough for beauty in a country in which men care so much for nature. to an ancient Warwick is a busy town on court and market days, but the old-world charm is still in its streets. Its ancient and massive gates prepare one for its quaint and narrow streets, on which half-timbered houses still stand; the venerable and picturesque Leicester hospital, founded by Lord Dudley in 1571, rising above the narrow entrance to the town, as one ap proaches it from Stratford, like a custodian of the oldtime ways and men. The stream of sightseers which pours through the Castle cannot lessen its impressiveness, nor dull the splendour of the ancient baronial life which invests it with perennial interest. The view from the plant house, with the lovely stretch of sward to the Avon, the old-fashioned garden on the left, the Castle rising in massive lines, the terraces bright with flowers, the cedars of Lebanon dark in the foreground, is one of the loveliest in England for its setting of opulent and dignified English life. But the view which Shakespeare must have loved is that from the Avon below the ruined bridge, whose piers, crowned with foliage, rise out of the quiet water in monumental massiveness. It was a fortunate hour which relieved them from the everyday work of a highway for traffic and made them tributary to its romantic interest and beauty. The dark tower rising from the river's brink, the long, massive front set with a multitude of shining windows, the gardener's cottage blossoming with roses to the very apex of the roof, the quiet river in which, on soft afternoons, all this beauty and grandeur seem to sink into the heart of nature this is Warwickshire; where nature, legend, and history commingle in full and immemorial stream to nourish and enrich an ancient and beautiful landscape. Warwick Castle is a type of the great baronial home; Charlecote belongs to another and more gracious order of architecture. It is a stately house, with the characteristic environment of a great English estate - |