It was in 1597, twelve years after he went to London, that the poet began to buy property in Stratford, and it was about eight years after his first purchase that he finally settled there, at New Place. [J. O. Halliwell-Phillips says that it was in 1609: There is a record alleging that as late as that year Shakespeare still retained a residence in Clink Street, Southwark.] This mansion was altered by Sir Hugh Clopton, who owned it toward the middle of the eighteenth century, and it was destroyed by the Rev. Francis Gastrell, in 1759. The grounds, which have been reclaimed,--chiefly through the zeal of J. O. Halliwell-Phillips,--are laid out according to the model they are supposed to have presented when Shakespeare owned them. His lawn, his orchard, and his garden are indicated; and a scion of his mulberry is growing on the spot where that famous tree once flourished. You can see a part of the foundation of the old house. It was made of brick and timber, it seems to have had gables, and no doubt it was fashioned with the beautiful curves and broken lines of the Tudor architecture. They show, upon the lawn, a stone of considerable size, that surmounted its door. The site--still a central and commodious one--is on the corner of Chapel Street and Chapel Lane; and on the opposite corner stands now, as it has stood for eight hundred years, the chapel of the Holy Cross, with square, dark tower, fretted parapet, pointed casements, and Norman porch--one of the most romantic and picturesque little churches in England. It was easy, when musing on that storied spot, to fancy Shakespeare, in the gloaming of a summer day, strolling on the lawn, beneath his elms, and listening to the soft and solemn music of the chapel organ; or to think of him as stepping forth from his study, in the late and lonesome hours of the night, and pausing to "count the clock," or note the "exhalations whizzing in the air."