s older, at
Charlecote, at Grove Park, and at Warwick. And probably there were a few
roe in the wilder parts of the Forest of Arden, which came down within
three miles of Stratford, and covered the whole of the country north of
the Avon, out to Nuneaton and Birmingham. We can fancy how the boys
stole out to watch the Grevilles and Leycesters and Lucys and Verneys on
some great hunting party, and whispered to each other,

"Under this thick-grown brake we'll shroud ourselves,
For through this lawnd anon the deer will come."

But the time of all others in the year that we connect most closely with
Shakspere is the sweet spring-time, when the long cold winter--very long
and very cold among those undrained clay-lands of Warwickshire--had come
to an end. How closely little Will watched for

"daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty";

and for

"violets, cowslips, and pale primroses."

We can fancy the little boys hunting in some sheltered nook in the
Welcombe woods for the first primroses; and climbing up Borden Hill just
beyond Shottery, perhaps with Anne Hathaway from the pretty old house in
the orchards below, to the bank--the only one in the neighborhood,--

"where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips, and the nodding violet grows";

or wandering over the flat sunny meadows along the Avon valley, picking
cowslips, and looking into each tiny yellow bell for the spots in their
gold coats,--

"Those be rubies, fairy favors,
In those freckles live their savors,"--

as they brought home baskets of the flower-heads for their mother to
make into cowslip wine.

Spring, in this Stratford country, is exquisite. The woods are carpeted
with primroses and wild hyacinths; while in the "merry month of May" the
nightingale swarms among the hawthorn trees white with blossom.

On every village green there stood a painted May pole--one is still
standing at Weston, near Stratford; and May-Day is still kept in
Warwickshire with a "May feast" upon old May-Day, the 12th of May. Every
one knows how the prettiest girl in the village was chosen Queen o' the
May, and how all joined in the "Whitsun Morris-dance."

[Illustration: A BUNCH OF COWSLIPS.]

Long Marston,--"Dancing Marston," as it has been called ever since
Shakspere's time,--a few miles from Stratford, was famous till within
the memory of man for a