To traverse Stratford-upon-Avon is to return upon old tracks, but no matter how often you visit that delightful place you will always see new sights in it and find new incidents. After repeated visits to Shakespeare's town the traveller begins to take more notice than perhaps at first he did of its everyday life. In former days the observer had no eyes except for the Shakespeare shrines. The addition of a new wing to the ancient, storied, home-like Red Horse, the new gardens around the Memorial theatre, the completed chime of Trinity bells,--these, and matters like to these, attract attention now. And now, too, I have rambled, in the gloaming, through scented fields to Clifford church; and strolled through many a green lane to beautiful Preston; and climbed Borden hill; and stood by the maypole on Welford common; and journeyed along the battle-haunted crest of Edgehill; and rested at venerable Compton-Wynyate;[29] and climbed the hills of Welcombe to peer into the darkening valleys of the Avon and hear the cuckoo-note echoed and re-echoed from rhododendron groves, and from the great, mysterious elms that embower this country-side for miles and miles around. This is the life of Stratford to-day,--the fertile farms, the garnished meadows, the avenues of white and coral hawthorn, masses of milky snow-ball, honeysuckle and syringa loading the soft air with fragrance, chestnuts dropping blooms of pink and white, and laburnums swinging their golden censers in the breeze. [Illustration: _Trinity Church--Stratford-upon-Avon._]