erary sensibilities than all but
the very profoundest and brightest of Englishmen. But they are not a
courageous body of men; they dare not think a truth that has an odor of
absurdity, lest they should feel themselves bound to speak it out. If
any American ever wrote a word in her behalf, Miss Bacon never knew it,
nor did I. Our journalists at once republished some of the most brutal
vituperations of the English press, thus pelting their poor countrywoman
with stolen mud, without even waiting to know whether the ignominy was
deserved. And they never have known it, to this day, nor ever will.

The next intelligence that I had of Miss Bacon was by a letter from the
mayor of Stratford-on-Avon. He was a medical man, and wrote both in his
official and professional character, telling me that an American lady,
who had recently published what the mayor called a "Shakspeare book,"
was afflicted with insanity. In a lucid interval she had referred to me,
as a person who had some knowledge of her family and affairs. What she
may have suffered before her intellect gave way, we had better not try
to imagine. No author had ever hoped so confidently as she; none ever
failed more utterly. A superstitious fancy might suggest that the
anathema on Shakspeare's tombstone had fallen heavily on her head in
requital of even the unaccomplished purpose of disturbing the dust
beneath, and that the "Old Player" had kept so quietly in his grave,
on the night of her vigil, because he foresaw how soon and terribly he
would be avenged. But if that benign spirit takes any care or cognizance
of such things now, he has surely requited the injustice that she sought
to do him--the high justice that she really did--by a tenderness of love
and pity of which only he could be capable. What matters it, though she
called him by some other name? He had wrought a greater miracle on her
than on all the world besides. This bewildered enthusiast had recognized
a depth in the man whom she decried, which scholars, critics, and
learned societies, devoted to the elucidation of his unrivalled scenes,
had never imagined to exist there. She had paid him the loftiest honor
that all these ages of renown have been able to accumulate upon his
memory. And when, not many months after the outward failure of her
life-long object, she passed into the better world, I know not why we
should hesitate to believe that the immortal poet may have met her
on the threshold and led her in, rea