had long been a show-place in private hands.
A general feeling declared itself in favour of the purchase of the
house for the nation. Public sentiment was in accord with the
ungrammatical grandiloquence of the auctioneer, the famous Robins,
whose advertisement of the sale included the sentence: "It is trusted
the feeling of the country will be so evinced that the structure may
be secured, hallowed, and cherished as a national monument almost as
imperishable as the poet's fame." A subscription list was headed by
Prince Albert with L250. A distinguished committee was formed under
the presidency of Lord Morpeth (afterwards the seventh Earl of
Carlisle), then Chief Commissioner of Woods and Forests, who offered
to make his department perpetual conservators of the property. (That
proposal was not accepted.) Dickens, Macaulay, Lord Lytton, and the
historian Grote were all active in promoting the movement, and it
proved successful. The property was duly secured by a private trust in
behalf of the nation. The most important house identified with
Shakespeare's career in Stratford was thus effectively protected from
the risks that are always inherent in private ownership. The step was
not taken with undue haste; two hundred and thirty-one years had
elapsed since Shakespeare's death.

Fourteen years later, in very similar circumstances, the still vacant
site of Shakespeare's demolished residence, New Place, with the great
garden behind it, and the adjoining house, was acquired by the public.
A new Shakespeare Fund, to which the Prince Consort subscribed L100,
and Miss Burdett-Coutts (afterwards Baroness Burdett-Coutts) L600, was
formed not only to satisfy this purpose, but to provide the means of
equipping a library and museum which were contemplated at the
Birthplace, as well as a second museum which was to be provided on the
New Place property. It was appropriate to make these buildings
depositories of authentic relics and books which should illustrate the
poet's life and work. This national Shakespeare Fund was actively
promoted, chiefly by the late Mr Halliwell-Phillipps, for more than
ten years; a large sum of money was collected, and the aims with which
the Fund was set on foot were to a large extent fulfilled. It only
remained to organise on a permanent legal basis the completed
Stratford Memorial of Shakespeare. By an Act of Parliament passed in
1891 the two properties of New Place and the Birthplace were
definitely form