It has already survived serious perils and vicissitudes. By Shakespeare's will it was bequeathed to his sister Joan--Mrs. William Hart--to be held by her, under the yearly rent of twelvepence, during her life, and at her death to revert to his daughter Susanna and her descendants. His sister Joan appears to have been living there at the time of his decease, in 1616. She is known to have been living there in 1639--twenty-three years later,--and doubtless she resided there till her death, in 1646. The estate then passed to Susanna--Mrs. John Hall,--from whom in 1649 it descended to her grandchild, Lady Barnard, who left it to her kinsmen, Thomas and George Hart, grandsons of Joan. In this line of descent it continued--subject to many of those infringements which are incidental to poverty--till 1806, when William Shakespeare Hart, the seventh in collateral kinship from the poet, sold it to Thomas Court, from whose family it was at last purchased for the British nation. Meantime the property, which originally consisted of two tenements and a considerable tract of adjacent land, had, little by little, been curtailed of its fair proportions by the sale of its gardens and orchards. The two tenements--two in one, that is--had been subdivided. A part of the building became an inn--at first called "The Maidenhead," afterward "The Swan," and finally "The Swan and Maidenhead." Another part became a butcher's shop. The old dormer-windows and the pent-house disappeared. A new brick casing was foisted upon the tavern end of the structure. In front of the butcher's shop appeared a sign announcing "William Shakespeare was born in this house: N.B.--A Horse and Taxed Cart to Let." Still later appeared another legend, vouching that "the immortal Shakespeare was born in this house." From 1793 till 1820 Thomas and Mary Hornby, connections by marriage with the Harts, lived in the Shakespeare cottage--now at length become the resort of literary pilgrims,--and Mary Hornby, who set up to be a poet and wrote tragedy, comedy, and philosophy, took delight in exhibiting its rooms to visitors. During the reign of that eccentric custodian the low ceilings and whitewashed walls of its several chambers became covered with autographs, scrawled thereon by many enthusiasts, including some of the most famous persons in Europe. In 1820 Mary Hornby was requested to leave the premises. She did not wish to go. She could not endure the thought of a successor. "After me, the deluge!" She was obliged to abdicate; but she conveyed away all the furniture and relics alleged to be connected with Shakespeare's family, and she hastily whitewashed the cottage walls. Only a small part of the wall of the upper room, the chamber in which "nature's darling" first saw the light, escaped that act of spiteful sacrilege. On the space behind its door may still be read many names, with dates affixed, ranging back from 1820 to 1729. Among them is that of Dora Jordan, the beautiful and fascinating