some thirty or forty minutes carries us from Birmingham to Coventry, whence a branch line turns off to Kenilworth, Leamington, and Warwick; the result is, that we can reach Kenilworth as early by this conveyance as Dudley by coach: so that, after all, Coventry, and Kenilworth, and Warwick are next-door neighbours to Birmingham. Stratford-upon-Avon lies further to the south-west, about eight miles from Warwick, or twenty-three from Birmingham, by coach-road. When the new railway schemes are completed, the Birmingham and Oxford line will give ready access to Stratford from Birmingham; while the Narrow Gauge Company, on their part, are shortening and improving the line from Birmingham to Kenilworth and Warwick. We must beg of the poets, and painters, and anglers, and lovers of the picturesque, to concede to us this point: that if railways sometimes break up a beautiful scene by ugly embankments and yawning cuttings, and disturb the calm serenity of country life by the shrieking tones of the railway whistle, they afford good compensation, by opening up to the denizens of busy towns scenes which they would never have met with but for the aid afforded by these media of communication. It is more fanciful than true to draw the distinction, "God made the country, man made the town;" but it is perfectly true, that if the town-man can become occasionally a country-man, he will be all the better for it. Birmingham, then, in spite of all its iron and coal, is not without its beauty-spots, as soon as the greenfields are reached. We have named a few of them; and a rambler who is not frightened by a good tough walk, or a railway excursionist who can spare a shilling or two, might easily meet with others. 76 WARWICK-LEAMINGTON-STONELEIGH ABBEY-GUY'S CLIFF. Before leaving Birmingham, it may afford some gratification to speak of WARWICK, Leamington and STRATFORD-UPON-AVON, which are so celebrated in the history of the county of Warwick, and at the same time so replete with local interest. The city of WARWICK is one of the most ancient in the kingdom. After having been destroyed by the Danes, it was restored by Ethelfreda, daughter of Alfred the Great, who built a fort there, A. D. 913. It returned Members to Parliament so early as Edward I., and received its first charter of incorporation in the time of Philip and Mary. The city stands on the west side of the river Avon -Shakspere's Avon-from which it is separated by Warwick Castle and grounds. It was formerly a little county metropolis; many of the families of rank and fortune had winter residences there; the Warwick balls were frequented by a select and exclusive set; a small theatre was well supported; and few races assembled more distinguished company than used to throng the Warwick course once a-year, in family coaches and four-in-hands. All this grandeur has departed. Leamington has absorbed the wealth and fashion of Warwick; the town mansions have fallen into plebeian hands; the theatre has ceased to be a training school for the London boards; and the streets, except on particular occasions, are silent. Warwick deserves a long journey, if it were only for the sake of the fine woodland scenery which surrounds it for ten miles. But the castle is the especial object of attraction. This interesting edifice rises upon the brink of the river, which foams past over the weir of an ancient mill, where once the inhabitants of the borough were bound by feudal service to grind all their corn. The best approach is from the Leamington Lower Road, over a bridge of one arch, built by a late Earl of Warwick. Cæsar's and Guy's towers rise into sight from a surrounding grove. The entrance is through an arched gateway, past a lodge, where the relics of Earl Guy, the Dun Cow slayer, are preserved; and a winding avenue cut in solid rock effects a sort of surprise, which, as the castle comes again suddenly into view, is very pleasing. The exterior realizes a baronial abode of the fourteenth or fifteenth century; the interior has been modernized sufficiently to be made comfortable, still retain ing many striking features of its ancient state. A closely-cropped green sward covers the quadrangle, which was formerly the tilting-ground. The date of Cæsar's tower, the oldest part of the building, is uncertain. Guy's tower, of the latter part of the fourteenth century, is in fine preservation. The great entrance hall, a grand old room sixty-two feet by thirty-seven, is adorned with armour and other appurtenances to feudal state. LEAMINGTON, about two miles distant from the city of Warwick, may be reached by turnpike-roads and a pleasant footpath. Mineral waters, fashion, a clever physician, the Warwickshire hounds, the surplus capital of Birmingham, speculative builders, and excellent sanitary regulations, have contributed to the rapid rise of this picturesque and fashionable watering-place. The waters, which resemble mild Epsom salts, first brought the village into notice, in 1794; although the existence of mineral springs at Leamington Priory had been recorded by Camden and Dugdale. At a later period, the talents of Dr. Jephson attracted an army of invalids and would-be-invalids; Sir Walter Scott's novels brought Kenilworth and Warwick Castle into fashion, just as Garrick, like a second Peter the Hermit, preached up a pilgrimage to Stratford-on-Avon. The number of interesting places within an easy walk or drive of Leamington forms one of its great advantages. Either on foot or in a carriage (and Leamington is extremely well provided with carriages for hire), Warwick Castle, or Stratfordon-Avon, or Guy's Cliff, and Kenilworth, or Stoneleigh Abbey, may be visited in the course of a day. STONELEIGH ABBEY, the residence of Lord Leigh, is noticeable for its fine woodland scenery– splendid oaks adorn the Park-and as having been the subject of a series of very extraordinary trials at the suit of claimants of the estate and ancient title. In the incidents of the Leigh Peerage are the materials of half-a-dozen romances. GUY'S CLIFF where Guy Earl of Warwick, and slayer of the Dun Cow, lived and died as a hermit, fed daily by his Countess, without knowing whom she fed-is situated on the banks of the Avon, about a mile from Warwick, on the high road to Kenilworth, and may be approached by footpaths across the fields leading to the same village. STRATFORD-ON-AVON (with SHOTTERY, where Ann Hathaway was courted by Shakspere), and CHARLECOTE, the residence of the Sir Thomas Lucy whom the poet immortalized as Justice Shallow, are all within ten miles of Leamington. spere. WASHINGTON IRVING, in one of his pleasantest papers in the Sketch Book,' speaking of the tomb of Shakspere, in the chancel of Stratford Church, says, " There are other monuments around, but the mind refuses to dwell on anything that is not connected with ShakThis idea pervades the place." The American essayist could only look upon this fine old church as Shakspere's mausoleum.' Through the same predominant association, the pleasant town of Stratford, the gentle river, the quiet meadows, the old woods, the pretty villages, which are as interesting in themselves as many a locality which the topographer has delighted to describe, appear to have no value but in connexion with the memory of him who was born here and died here, who had knelt in this church, and conversed with neighbours in these streets, and gazed upon this river, and rambled amidst these meadows and woods, and had been familiar with all the features of these scenes that two centuries and a half of change have not yet obliterated. It is the Stratford of William Shakspere that we are about to present to our reader, and nothing more.* In the custody of the vicar of Stratford is a venerable book—a tall, thick, narrow book, whose leaves are of fine vellum-which contains various records that are interesting to us-to all Englishmen to universal mankind. It is the 'Register of the Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials of the Parish of Stratford.' record commences in 1558, the first year of Elizabeth, when the regulation for keeping such registers was strictly enforced. Let us pause on the one entry of that book, which most concerns the human race : The 1564, April 26.-GULIELMUS FILIUS JOHANNES SHAKSPERE." John Shakspere, the father of William, was thus unquestionably dwelling in Stratford in 1564. He was dwelling there in 1558, for the same register in that year records the baptism of a daughter. His wife was Mary, the daughter of Robert Arden, of Wilmecote, (a neighbouring village,) who was unmarried in 1556, as we learn from the will of her father. Various have been the stories as to the occupation of John Shakspere: In 1556, the year that Robert, the father of Mary Arden, died, John Shakspere was admitted at the Court-leet as the purchaser of two copyhold estates in Stratford. In 1570 John Shakspere is holding, as tenant under William Clopton, a meadow of fourteen acres, with its appurtenance, called Ingon, at the annual rent of eight pounds-equivalent to at least forty pounds of our present money. When John Shakspere * Many of the passages in the following paper will be necessarily repeated from the writer's William Shakspere. A Biography.' The local descriptions of that work were the result of diligent observation. They are here condensed and brought together. married, his wife's estate of Asbies, within a short ride of Stratford, came also into his possession. With these facts before us, scanty as they are, can we reasonably doubt that John Shakspere was living upon his own land, renting the land of others, actively engaged in the business of cultivation, in an age when tillage was becoming rapidly profitable,—so much so that men of wealth very often thought it better to take the profits direct than to share them with the tenant? A yeoman he might call himself, a yeoman he might be called by his neighbours; but he was in that social position that he readily passed out of the yeoman into the gentleman, and in all registers and records after 1569 he was styled Master John Shakspere. The parish of Stratford, then, was unquestionably the birth-place of William Shakspere. But in what part of Stratford dwelt his parents in the year 1564? It was ten years after this that his father became the purchaser of two freehold houses in Henley-street— houses which still exist-houses which the people of England are at this moment called upon to preserve as a precious relic of their greatest brother. William Shakspere, then, might have been born at either of his father's copyhold houses, in Greenhill-street, or in Henley-street; he might have been born at Ingon; or his father might have occupied one of the two freehold houses in Henley-street at the time of the birth of his eldest son. Tradition says, that William Shakspere was born in one of these houses; tradition points out the very room in which he was born. Whether Shakspere were born here, or not, there can be little doubt that this property was the home of his boyhood. It was purchased by John Shakspere, from Edmund Hall and Emma his wife, for forty pounds. In a copy of the chirograph of the fine levied on this occasion (which is now in the possession of Mr. Wheler, of Stratford) the property is described as two messuages, two gardens, and two orchards, with their appurtenances. This document does not define the situation of the property beyond its being in Stratford-upon-Avon; but in the deed of sale of another property in 1591, that property is described as situate between the houses of Robert Johnson and John Shakspere; and in 1597 John Shakspere himself sells a toft, or parcel of land,' in Henley-street, to the purchaser of the property in 1591. The properties can be traced, and leave no doubt of this house in Henley-street being the residence of John Shakspere. Stratford, in the middle of the 16th century, was a scattered town,-no doubt with gardens separating the low and irregular tenements, sleeping ditches intersecting the properties, and stagnant pools exhaling in the road. Even in the reigns of Elizabeth and James the town was nearly destroyed by fire; and as late as 1618 the privy council represented to the corporation of Stratford that great and lamentable loss had "happened to that town by casualty of fire, which, of late years, "WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE WAS BORN IN THIS HOUSE. It is not now used as a butcher's shop, but there are the arrangements for a butcher's trade in the lower room-the cross-beams with hooks, and the windowboard for joints. We are now told by a sign-board, "THE IMMORTAL SHAKSPERE WAS BORN IN THIS HOUSE." Twenty-five years ago, when we made our first pilgrimage to Stratford, the house had gone out of the family of the Harts, and the last alleged descendant was recently ejected. It had been a gainful trade to her for some years to show the old kitchen behind the shop, and the honoured bed-room. When the poor old woman, the last of the Harts, had to quit her vocation (she claimed to have inherited some of the genius, if she had lost the possessions, of her great ancestor, for she had produced a marvellous poem on the Battle of Waterloo), she set up a rival show-shop on the other side of the street, filled with all sorts of trumpery relics pretended to have belonged to Shakspere. But she was in ill odour. In a fit of resentment, the day before she quitted the ancient house, she whitewashed the walls of the bed-room, so as to obliterate the pencil inscriptions with which they were covered. It has been the work of her successor to remove the plaster; and manifold names, obscure or renowned, again see the light. The house has a few ancient articles of furniture about it; but there is nothing hath been very frequently occasioned by means of thatched cottages, stacks of straw, furzes, and suchlike combustible stuff, which are suffered to be erected and made confusedly in most of the principal parts of the town without restraint." If such were the case when the family of William Shakspere occupied the best house in Stratford, it is not unreasonable to suppose that sixty years earlier the greater number of houses in Stratford must have been mean timber buildings, thatched cottages run up of combustible stuff; and that the house in Henley Street which John Shakspere occupied and purchased, and which his son inherited and bequeathed to his sister for her life, must have been an important house,—a house fit for a man of substance; a house of some space and comfort, compared with those of the majority of the surrounding population. John Shakspere retained the property during his life; and it descended, as his heir-at-law, to his son William. In the last testament of the poet is this bequest to his "sister Joan :"-" I do will and devise unto her the house, with the appurtenances, in Stratford, wherein she dwelleth, for her natural life, under the yearly rent of twelve-pence." His sister Joan, whose name by marriage was Hart, was residing there in 1639, and she probably continued to reside there till her death in 1646. The one house in which Mrs. Hart resided was doubtless the half of the building now forming the butcher's shop and the tenement adjoining; for the other house was known as the Maidenhead Inn, in 1642. In another part of Shak-which can be considered as originally belonging to it spere's will he bequeaths, amongst the bulk of his property, to his eldest daughter, Susanna Hall, with remainder to her male issue, "two messuages or tenements, with the appurtenances, situate, lying, and being in Henley-street, within the borough of Stratford." There are existing settlements of this very property in the family of Shakspere's eldest daughter and grand-daughter; and this grand-daughter, Elizabeth Nash, who was married a second time to Sir John Barnard, left both houses; namely, "the inn, called the Maidenhead, and the adjoining house and barn," to her kinsmen Thomas and George Hart, the grandsons of her grandfather's "sister Joan.” These persons left descendants, with whom this property remained until the beginning of the present century. But it was gradually diminished. The orchards and gardens were originally extensive: a century ago tenements had been built upon them, and they were alienated by the Hart then in possession. The Maidenhead Inn became the Swan Inn, and is now the Swan and Maidenhead. The White Lion, on the other side of the property, was extended, so as to include the remaining orchards and gardens. The house in which Mrs. Hart had lived so long became divided into two tenements; and at the end of the last century the lower part of one was a butcher's shop. Mr. Wheler, in a very interesting account of these premises, and their mutations, published in 1824, tells us that the butcheroccupant, some thirty years ago, having an eye to every gainful attraction, wrote up, as the home of William Shakspere. The engraving which occupies the first page exhibits John Shakspere's houses in Henley-street under three different aspects. No. 1 (the top) is from an original drawing made by Colonel Delamotte in 1788. The houses, it will be observed, then presented one uniform front; and there were dormer windows connected with rooms in the roof. We have a plan before us, accompanying Mr. Wheler's account of these premises, which shows that they occupied a frontage of thirty-one feet. No. 2 is from an original drawing made by Mr. Pyne, after a sketch by Mr. Edridge, in 1807. We now see that the dormer windows are removed, as also the gable at the east end of the front. The house has been shorn of much of its external importance. No. 3 is from a lithograph engraving in Mr. Wheler's account, published in 1824. The premises, we now see, have been pretty equally divided. The Swan and Maidenhead half has had its windows modernized, and the continuation of the timber-frame has been obliterated by a brick casing. In 1807, we observe that the western half had been divided into two tenements ;— the fourth of the whole premises, that is the butcher's shop, the kitchen behind, and the two rooms over, being the portion commonly shown as Shakspere's House. Some years ago, upon a frontage, in continuation of the tenement at the west, three small cottages were built. The Royal Shaksperian Club of Stratfordupon-Avon have purchased the whole of this portion. of the property. In their address, dated the 2nd of |