Shakespeare's England

It is the everlasting glory of Stratford-upon-Avon that it was the birthplace of Shakespeare. Situated in the heart of Warwickshire, which has been called "the garden of England...

Night, in Stratford-upon-Avon--a summer night, with large, solemn stars, a cool and fragrant breeze, and the stillness of perfect rest. From this high and grassy bank I look for...

Once again, as it did on that delicious summer afternoon which is for ever memorable in my life, the golden glory of the westering sun burns on the gray spire of Stratford churc...

It is strange that the life of the past, in its unfamiliar remains and fading traces, should so far surpass the life of the present, in impressive force and influence. Human cha...

It is not strange that Englishmen should be--as certainly they are--passionate lovers of their country; for their country is, almost beyond parallel, peaceful, gentle, and beaut...

Sight-seeing, merely for its own sake, is not to be commended. Hundreds of persons roam through the storied places of England, carrying nothing away but the bare sense of travel...

Midnight has just sounded from the tower of St. Martin. It is a peaceful night, faintly lit with stars, and in the region round about Trafalgar Square a dream-like stillness bro...

All old cities get rich in association, as a matter of course and whether they will or no; but London, by reason of its great extent, as well as its great antiquity, is richer i...

The American who, having been a careful and interested reader of English history, visits London for the first time, half expects to find the ancient city in a state of mild deca...

Those persons upon whom the spirit of the past has power--and it has not power upon every mind!--are aware of the mysterious charm that invests certain familiar spots and object...

If the beauty of England were only superficial it would produce only a superficial effect. It would cause a passing pleasure and would be forgotten. It certainly would not--as n...

It is a cool afternoon in July, and the shadows are falling eastward on fields of waving grain and lawns of emerald velvet. Overhead a few light clouds are drifting, and the gre...

Among the deeply meditative, melodious, and eloquent poems of Wordsworth there is one---about the burial of Ossian--that glances at the question of fitness in a place of sepulch...

The coast-line recedes and disappears, and night comes down upon the ocean. Into what dangers will the great ship plunge? Through what mysterious waste of waters will she make h...

The mind that can reverence historic associations needs no explanation of the charm that such associations possess. There are streets and houses in London which, for pilgrims of...

There is so much to be seen in London that the pilgrim scarcely knows where to choose and certainly is perplexed by what Dr. Johnson called "the multiplicity of agreeable consci...

All the way from London to Warwick it rained; not heavily, but with a gentle fall. The gray clouds hung low over the landscape and softly darkened it; so that meadows of scarlet...

One of the most impressive spots on earth, and one that especially teaches--with silent, pathetic eloquence and solemn admonition--the great lesson of contrast, the incessant fl...

The Byron Memorial Loan Collection, that was displayed at the Albert Memorial Hall, for a short time in the summer of 1877, did not attract much attention: yet it was a vastly i...

To muse over the dust of those about whom we have read so much--the great actors, thinkers, and writers, the warriors and statesmen for whom the play is ended and the lights are...

About the middle of the night the great ship comes to a pause, off the coast of Ireland, and, looking forth across the black waves and through the rifts in the rising mist, we s...

In England, as elsewhere, every historic spot is occupied; and of course it sometimes happens, at such a spot, that its association is marred and its sentiment almost destroyed...

_This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,_ _This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,_ _This other Eden, demi-paradise,_ _This fortress built by Nature for herself, . . ....