A fortunate way to approach Stratford-on-Avon is by Warwick and Kenilworth. Those places are not on a direct line of travel; but the scenes and associations that they successively present are such as assume a symmetrical order, increase in interest, and grow to a delightful culmination. Objects that Shakespeare himself must have seen are still visible there; and little by little, in contact with these, the pilgrim through this haunted region is mentally saturated with that atmosphere of serenity and romance in which the youth of Shakespeare was passed, and by which his works and his memory are embalmed. No one should come abruptly upon the poet's home. The mind needs to be prepared for the impression that awaits it; and in this gradual approach it finds preparation, both suitable and delicious. The luxuriance of the country, its fertile fields, its brilliant foliage, its myriads of wild-flowers, its pomp of colour and of physical vigour and bloom, do not fail to announce, to every mind, howsoever heedless, that this is a fit place for the birth and nurture of a great man. But this is not all. As you stroll in the quaint streets of Warwick, as you drive to Kenilworth, as you muse in that poetic ruin, as you pause in the old graveyard in the valley below, as you meditate over the crumbling fragments of the ancient abbey, at every step of the way you are haunted by a vague sense of an impending grandeur; you are aware of a presence that fills and sanctifies the scene. The emotion that is thus inspired is very glorious; never to be elsewhere felt; and never to be forgotten. Illustration: "Warwick Castle."