he many
interesting books, manuscripts, works of art, antiques and relics, found
in this Library and Museum. Among them stands the desk at which little
"Willie" sat at school, also a ring which he wore at his thumb (later in
life), and upon which are engraved the letters "W.S." and a "true lover's
knot." I spent nearly an hour here, a studying how things looked in
Shakespeare's time. The ground floors of the house, are covered with
flagstones broken in varied forms, as accident would have it, while the
rough massive timbers of the floors above stand out unpainted and
unplastered. After taking a pleasant walk, with a gay party, through the
garden, in which are cultivated all the flowers of which Shakespeare
speaks in his works, and, (I must not fail also to mention), after having
taken our turns in sitting upon _Shakespeare's chair_, I bade the sociable
company "good-by!" and started for

Shottery,

"a genuine country village, consisting of a few straggling farm-houses
and brick and timber cottages, standing apart from each other in their old
gardens and orchard-crofts. Simple, old-fashioned, and almost untouched by
the innovations of modern life, we are here amidst the charmed past of
Shakespeare's time." Here is still to be seen, the cottage in which was
born and lived Anne Hathaway, the wife of Wm. Shakespeare. This village
lies about a mile from Stratford, and is approached by a pleasant walk
across quiet and fertile fields and pasture lands, the same path along
which "Willie" used to steal when he went a-wooing his Anne. The Hathaway
cottage is a large old-fashioned thatch-roofed building--very plain but
very homely. The clumsy string-lifted wooden door-latches, and the wooden
pins fixing the framing, and which have never been cut off, but stick up
some inches from the wall, are still all there. It was dusk before I got
there. My rap at the door was responded to by the appearance of an old
lady custodian, a descendent of the Hathaway family, who immediately
busied herself to light a tallow candle. That being successfully
accomplished, she commenced her story by pointing out the old hearth, and
explaining the kitchen arrangements of olden times. Among the old articles
of furniture, is a plain wooden settee or bench which used to stand
outside against the house near the door, during the summer, and which, as
tradition, has it, was Willie's and Anne's courting settee. Pictures of
their courtships hang against th