Horace Walpole's stately mansion of Strawberry Hill is not far off. The poet Thomson long resided at Richmond, in a house now used as an hospital, and there he died. Edmund Kean and the once famous Mrs. Yates rest beneath Richmond church, and there also are the ashes of Thomson. As I drove through the sweetly sylvan Park of Richmond, in the late afternoon of a breezy summer day, and heard the whispering of the great elms, and saw the gentle, trustful deer couched at ease in the golden glades, I heard all the while, in the still chambers of thought, the tender lament of Collins--which is now a prophecy fulfilled: "Remembrance oft shall haunt the shore, When Thames in summer wreaths is drest; And oft suspend the dashing oar, To bid his gentle spirit rest." Illustration: "Queen Elizabeth's Cradle." CHAPTER VII WARWICK AND KENILWORTH All the way from London to Warwick it rained; not heavily, but with a gentle fall. The gray clouds hung low over the landscape and softly darkened it; so that meadows of scarlet and emerald, the shining foliage of elms, gray turret, nestled cottage and limpid river were as mysterious and evanescent as pictures seen in dreams. At Warwick the rain had fallen and ceased, and the walk from the station to the inn was on a road--or on a footpath by the roadside--still hard and damp with the water it had absorbed. A fresh wind blew from the fields, sweet with the rain and fragrant with the odour of leaves and flowers. The streets of the ancient town--entered through an old Norman arch--were deserted and silent. It was Sunday when I first came to the country of Shakespeare; and over all the region there brooded a sacred stillness peculiar to the time and harmonious beyond utterance with the sanctity of the place. As I strive, after many days, to call back and to fix in words the impressions of that sublime experience, the same awe falls upon me now that fell upon me then. Nothing else upon earth--no natural scene, no relic of the past, no pageantry of the present--can vie with the shrine of Shakespeare, in power to impress, to humble, and to exalt the devout spirit that has been nurtured at the fountain of his transcendent genius.