I wandered again on the banks of the Avon on the following morning, and from a height beheld that cheerful neighborhood beneath the light of the morning sun. After this I visited the church in which were interred Shakspeare and his daughter Susanna. A young bridal couple were just coming out of church after having been married, the bride dressed in white and veiled, so that I could not see her features distinctly. The epitaph on Shakspeare’s grave, composed by himself, is universally known, with its strong concluding lines— “Blessed be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones.” Less generally known is the inscription on the tomb of his daughter Susanna, which highly praises her virtues and her uncommon wit, and which seems to regard Shakspeare as happy for having such a daughter. I thought that Susanna Shakspeare ought to have been proud of her father. I have known young girls to be proud of their fathers—the most beautiful pride which I can conceive, because it is full of humble love. And how well it became them! For the rest, it was not as a fanatical worshiper of Shakspeare that I wandered through the scene of his birth and his grave. I owe much to this great dramatist; he has done much for me, but—not in the highest degree. I know of nobler grouping, loftier characters and scenes, in especial a greater drama of life than any which he has represented, and particularly a higher degree of harmony than he has given; and as I wandered on the banks of the Avon, I seemed to perceive the approach of a new Shakspeare, the new poet of the age, to the boards of the world’s stage; the poet who shall comprehend within the range of his vision all parts of the earth, all races of men, all regions of nature—the palms of the tropics, the crystal palaces of the polar circle—and present them all in a new drama, in the large expression and the illuminating light of a vast human intelligence. Shakspeare, great as he is, is to me, nevertheless, only a Titanic greatness, an intellectual giant-nature, who stands amid inexplicable dissonance. He drowns Ophelia, and puts out the eyes of the noble Kent, and leaves them and us to our darkness. That which I long for, that which I hope for, is a poet who will rise above dissonances, a harmonious nature who will regard the drama of the world with the eye of Deity; in a word, a Shakspeare who will resemble a—Beethoven.