metropolis "whereunto the tribes of men assemble." To "do Stratford" is
an article of faith with American visitors, even if they have no more
than a week in which to master the wonders of Great Britain and Ireland.
Germany sends many admirers, for nowhere is Shakespeare's genius more
widely recognised, more highly esteemed, than in that country. London
and the big midland towns of England send visitors daily.

Let it be suggested, with all due respect to those who think otherwise,
that there is no reward for those who seek to discover Shakespeare's
land in the course of a few hours' hurried travel. They will see
Shakespeare's alleged birthplace, and the room in which he is said,
without much authority, to have been born. They will pass through the
Museum, Library, and Picture Gallery; they may even admire the rather
poor monument in Holy Trinity Church, and perhaps a few other sights
that the town affords; and then, with a welter of confused impressions,
will return whence they came. There is no reward for this frenzied
exercise; it is impossible to gather any impression of the scenes in
which the poet passed his early and later days, from a hurried scamper
through the town and a frank acceptance of local traditions, concerning
which some of our leading Shakespearian scholars have much destructive
critical comment to offer. He who wishes to establish some manner of
association with the poet must enter Stratford as the poet left it--by
the road. He should leave the railway and walk in from Warwick, find
quiet lodgings, of which there is no lack, in the town, and visit in
turn the highways and by-ways of Stratford, Snitterfield, Wilmcote,
Aston Clinton, Shottery, Wotten Wawens, Charlecote, and a dozen other
points of interest, of which he will learn when he has definitely left
the ranks of excursionists and has made friends among the people of
Shakespeare's countryside. He will not add a jot to our knowledge of
country or people--a hundred pens have said all there is to say--but he
will come away with a measure of appreciation and recognition that will
make the significance of the poet, as an interpreter of a life that
never changes, far more vital and true. Here is no small reward for a
truly delightful holiday in country full of the best traditions of rural
England. And the intelligent visitor will be one with the great lovers
of Shakespeare, living and dead, from Ben Jonson, Michael Drayton, and
Milton down to Matthew