actress, who wrote it there June 2, 1809. Much of Mary Hornby's whitewash, which chanced to be unsized, was afterward removed, so that her work of obliteration proved only in part successful. Other names have been added to this singular, chaotic scroll of worship. Byron, Scott,¹ Rogers, Thackeray, Kean, Tennyson, and Dickens are among the votaries there and thus recorded. ¹ Sir Walter Scott visited Shakespeare's birthplace in August, 1821, and at that time scratched his name on the window-pane. He had previously, in 1815, visited Kenilworth. He was in Stratford again in 1828, and on April 8 he went to Shakespeare's grave, and subsequently drove to Charlecote. The visit of Lord Byron has been incorrectly assigned to the year 1816. It occurred on August 28, possibly in 1812. The successors of Mary Hornby guarded their charge with pious care. The precious value of the old Shakespeare cottage grew more and more evident to the English people. Washington Irving made his pilgrimage to Stratford and recounted it in his beautiful _Sketch-Book. _Yet it was not till P. T. Barnum, from the United States, arrived with a proposition to buy the Shakespeare house and convey it to America that the literary enthusiasm of Great Britain was made to take a practical shape, and this venerated and inestimable relic became, in 1847, a national possession. In 1856 John Shakespeare, of Worthington Field, near Ashby-de-la-Zouche, gave a large sum of money to restore it; and within the next two years, under the superintendence of Edward Gibbs and William Holtom of Stratford, it was isolated by the demolition of the cottages at its sides and in the rear, repaired wherever decay was visible, and set in perfect order.