and turbulent place, by a malign destiny ordained for the grave of Byron, and that peaceful, lovely, majestic church and precinct, at Stratford-upon-Avon, which enshrine the dust of Shakespeare! [Illustration: _Hucknall-Torkard Church._] The sexton of the church of St. James and the parish clerk of Hucknall-Torkard was Mr. John Brown, and a man of sympathetic intelligence, kind heart, and interesting character I found him to be,--large, dark, stalwart, but gentle alike in manner and feeling, and considerate of his visitor. The pilgrim to the literary shrines of England does not always find the neighbouring inhabitants either sympathetic with his reverence or conscious of especial sanctity or interest appertaining to the relics which they possess; but honest and manly John Brown of Hucknall-Torkard understood both the hallowing charm of the place and the sentiment, not to say the profound emotion, of the traveller who now beheld for the first time the tomb of Byron. This church has been restored and altered since Byron was buried in it, in 1824, yet it retains its fundamental structure and its ancient peculiarities. The tower, a fine specimen of Norman architecture, strongly built, dark and grim, gives indication of great age. It is of a kind often met with in ancient English towns: you may see its brothers at York, Shrewsbury, Canterbury, Worcester, Warwick, and in many places sprinkled over the northern heights of London: but amid its tame surroundings in this little colliery settlement it looms with a peculiar frowning majesty, a certain bleak loneliness, both unique and impressive. The church is of the customary crucial form,--a low stone structure, peak-roofed outside, but arched within, the roof being supported by four great pillars on either side of the centre aisle, and the ceiling being fashioned of heavy timbers forming almost a true arch above the nave. There are four large windows on each side of the church, and two on each side of the chancel, which is beneath a roof somewhat lower than that of the main building. Under the pavement of the chancel and back of the altar rail,--at which it was my privilege to kneel, while gazing upon this sacred spot,--is the grave of Byron.[26] Nothing is written on the stone that covers his sepulchre except the name of BYRON, with the dates of his birth and death, in brass letters, surrounded by a wreath of leaves, in brass, the gift of the King of Greece; and never did a name seem more stately or a place more hallowed. The dust of the poet reposes between that of his mother, on his right hand, and that of his Ada,--"sole daughter of my house and heart,"--on his left. The mother died on August 1, 1811; the daughter, who had by marriage become the Countess of Lovelace, in 1852. "I buried her with my own hands," said the sexton, John Brown, when, after a little time, he rejoined me at the altar rail. "I told them exactly where he was laid, when they wanted to put that brass on the