disproportionately spacious and has high stained-glass windows at the
sides and end. In front of the altar, beneath slabs of gray stone, are
the graves of Shakespeare and his family. The widow, who survived him
seven years, lies nearest the wall, and on the other side Susanna and
her husband, Dr. Hall. The removal of the dust to Westminster Abbey
has been prevented by the profane imprecation of the inexplicable
epitaph by which the tenant of the tomb, as if in anticipation of the
irreconcilable mysteries posterity would discover in his history,
bequeathed an undying curse to him who should disturb his repose.

Some distance away, and at a considerable height in the north wall of
the chancel, upon a bracket between two windows, is a half-length bust
of Shakespeare with a pedantic Latin inscription. It was placed in
1623 by Dr. Hall, and being so nearly contemporary, may be considered
a portrait. A few years ago the church authorities permitted an
American artist to erect a platform from which to study the work
minutely. He found one cheek-bone higher than the other, and was of
opinion, from the position of the lips and tongue, that it was
modelled from a cast taken after death. It is a beefy, commonplace
countenance, heavy, dull, and vacant, rendered trivial and conceited
by foppish mustaches curled up beneath the nostrils. It bears little
resemblance to the familiar Droeshout portrait engraved for the first
edition of the plays, and still less to the so-called Stratford
portrait exhibited at the museum on Henley Street. This picture was
discovered many years ago in the shop of a London antiquarian by an
unknown person, who thought the upper part of the head resembled
Shakespeare's. The face bore a heavy beard, which was supposed to have
been added to save the work from destruction by the Puritans! As the
incidents are related there is no evidence of its genuineness or
authenticity. One of the chief attractions of the Memorial Museum in
the lovely park near the church, on the banks of the Avon, is a series
of photographs of a plaster cast purporting to be a death-mask of
Shakespeare, now in the possession of some German potentate, which one
of the most eminent English judges declares to be established by
evidence sufficient to maintain any proposition in a court of law. It
should be genuine, if it is not, for it represents the loftiest and
noblest type of the Anglo-Saxon race. The other portraits are vapid,
affected, a