The builders of this house must have done their work thoroughly well, for even after all these years of rough usage and of slow but incessant decline the great timbers remain solid, the plastered walls are firm, the huge chimney-stack is as permanent as a rock, and the ancient flooring only betrays by the channelled aspect of its boards, and the high polish on the heads of the nails which fasten them down, that it belongs to a period of remote antiquity. The cottage stands close upon the margin of the street, according to ancient custom of building throughout Stratford; and, entering through a little porch, the pilgrim stands at once in that low-ceiled, flag-stoned room, with its wide fire-place, so familiar in prints of the chimney-corner of Shakespeare's youthful days. Within the fire-place, on either side, is a seat fashioned in the brick-work; and here, as it is pleasant to imagine, the boy-poet often sat, on winter nights, gazing dreamily into the flames, and building castles in that fairyland of fancy which was his celestial inheritance. You presently pass from this room by a narrow, well-worn staircase to the chamber above, which is shown as the place of the poet's birth. An antiquated chair, of the sixteenth century, stands in the right-hand corner. At the left is a small fire-place. Around the walls are visible the great beams which are the framework of the building--beams of seasoned oak that will last forever. Opposite to the door of entrance is a threefold casement (the original window) full of narrow panes of glass scrawled all over with names that their worshipful owners have written with diamonds. The ceiling is so low that you can easily touch it with uplifted hand. A portion of it is held in place by a network of little iron laths. This room, and indeed the whole structure, is as polished and orderly as any waxen, royal hall in the Louvre, and it impresses observation much like old lace that has been treasured up, in lavender or jasmine. These walls, which no one is now permitted to mar, were naturally the favourite scroll of the Shakespeare votaries of long ago. Every inch of the plaster bears marks of the pencil of reverence. Hundreds of names are written there--some of them famous but most of them obscure, and all destined to perish where they stand. On the chimney-piece at the right of the fireplace, which is named The Actor's Pillar, many actors have inscribed their signatures. Edmund Kean wrote his name there--with what soulful veneration and spiritual sympathy it is awful even to try to imagine. Sir Walter Scott's name is scratched with a diamond on the window--"W. Scott." That of Thackeray appears on the ceiling, and upon the beam across the centre is that of Helen Faucit. The name of Eliza Vestris is written near the fireplace. Mark Lemon and Charles Dickens are together on the opposite wall. Byron wrote his name there, but it has disappeared. The list would include, among others, Elliston, Buckstone, G. V.