r to feel them, for, if Shakspeare's ghost
would rise at any provocation, it must have shown itself then; but it is
my sincere belief, that, if his figure had appeared within the scope of
her dark-lantern, in his slashed doublet and gown, and with his eyes
bent on her beneath the high, bald forehead, just as we see him in the
bust, she would have met him fearlessly, and controverted his claims to
the authorship of the plays, to his very face. She had taught herself to
contemn "Lord Leicester's groom" (it was one of her disdainful epithets
for the world's incomparable poet) so thoroughly, that even his
disembodied spirit would hardly have found civil treatment at Miss
Bacon's hands.

Her vigil, though it appears to have had no definite object, continued
far into the night. Several times she heard a low movement in the
aisles: a stealthy, dubious foot-fall prowling about in the darkness,
now here, now there, among the pillars and ancient tombs, as if some
restless inhabitant of the latter had crept forth to peep at the
intruder. By-and-by the clerk made his appearance, and confessed that he
had been watching her ever since she entered the church.

About this time it was that a strange sort of weariness seems to have
fallen upon her: her toil was all but done, her great purpose, as she
believed, on the very point of accomplishment, when she began to regret
that so stupendous a mission had been imposed on the fragility of a
woman. Her faith in the new philosophy was as mighty as ever, and so was
her confidence in her own adequate development of it, now about to be
given to the world; yet she wished, or fancied so, that it might never
have been her duty to achieve this unparalleled task, and to stagger
feebly forward under her immense burden of responsibility and renown. So
far as her personal concern in the matter went, she would gladly have
forfeited the reward of her patient study and labor for so many years,
her exile from her country and estrangement from her family and friends,
her sacrifice of health and all other interests to this one pursuit, if
she could only find herself free to dwell in Stratford and be forgotten.
She liked the old slumberous town, and awarded the only praise that ever
I knew her to bestow on Shakspeare, the individual man, by acknowledging
that his taste in a residence was good, and that he knew how to choose a
suitable retirement for a person of shy, but genial temperament. And at
this point,