I wish we had record of only one of his days in that retirement. I wish we could find even a two-page letter which he may have written to Ben Jonson, in London, telling how his time passed; but there is nothing--positively nothing. We do not know how, or by what exposure or neglect his last illness came upon him and carried him to his final home, only two years or so after his return to Stratford. Even that Dr. Hall, who had married his favorite daughter, and who attended him, and who published a medical book containing accounts of a thousand and more cases which he thought of consequence for the world to know about, has no word to say concerning this grandest patient that his eye ever fell upon. He died at the age of fifty-three. No descendant of his daughter Susanna is alive; no descendant of his daughter Judith is alive.[22] The great new home which he had built up in Stratford is torn down; scarce a vestige of it remains. The famous mulberry-tree he planted upon that greensward, where, in after years, Garrick and the rest held high commemorative festival, is gone, root and branch. Shakespeare--an old county guide-book tells us stolidly--is a name unknown in that region. Unknown! Every leaf of every tree whispers it; every soaring skylark makes a carol of it; and the memory of it flows out thence--as flows the Stratford river--down through all the green valley of the Avon, down through all the green valley of the Severn, and so on, out to farthest seas, whose “multitudinous waves” carry it to every shore. CHAPTER III. We were venturing upon almost sacred ground when--in our last chapter--we had somewhat to say of the so-called King James’ Bible; of how it came to bear that name; of those men who were concerned in its translation, and of certain literary qualities belonging to it, which--however excellent other and possible future Bibles may be--will be pretty sure to keep it alive for a very long time to come. Next, I spoke of that king of the dramatists who was born at Stratford. We followed him up to London; tracked him awhile there; talked of a few familiar aspects of his life and character; spared you the recital of a world of things--conjectural or eulogistic--which might be said of him; and finally saw him go back to his old home upon the Avon, to play the retired gentleman--last of all his plays--and to die.