rosemary, pansies, fennel, columbines, rue, daisies, and violets, which make the imperishable garland on Ophelia's grave, and which are the fragrance of her solemn and lovely memory. Thousands of times the wonder must have been expressed that while the world knows so much about Shakespeare's mind it should know so little about his life. The date of his birth, even, is established by an inference. The register of Stratford church shows that he was baptised there in 1564, on April 26. It was customary to baptise infants on the third day after their birth. It is presumed that the custom was followed in this instance, and hence it is deduced that Shakespeare was born on April 23--a date which, making allowance for the difference between the old and new styles of reckoning time, corresponds to our third of May. Equally by an inference it is established that the boy was educated in the free grammar-school. The school was there; and any boy of the town, who was seven years old and able to read, could get admission to it. Shakespeare's father, an alderman of Stratford (elected chief alderman, October 10, 1571), and then a man of worldly substance, though afterward he became poor, would surely have wished that his children should grow up in knowledge. To the ancient school-house, accordingly, and the adjacent chapel of the guild--which are still extant, at the south-east corner of Chapel Lane and Church Street--the pilgrim confidently traces the footsteps of the poet. Those buildings are of singular, picturesque quaintness. The chapel dates back to about the middle of the thirteenth century. It was a Roman Catholic institution, founded in 1296, under the patronage of the Bishop of Worcester, and committed to the pious custody of the guild of Stratford. A hospital was connected with it in those days, and Robert de Stratford was its first master. New privileges and confirmation were granted to the guild by Henry the Sixth, in 1403 and 1429. The grammar-school, established on an endowment of lands and tenements by Thomas Jolyffe, was set up in association with it in 1482. Toward the end of the reign of Henry the Seventh the whole of the chapel, excepting the chancel, was torn down and rebuilt under the munificent direction of Sir Hugh Clopton, Lord Mayor of London and Stratford's chief citizen and benefactor. Under Henry the Eighth, when came the stormy times of the Reformation, the priests were driven out, the guild was dissolved, and the chapel was despoiled. Edward the Sixth, however, granted a new charter to this ancient institution, and with especial precautions reinstated the school. The chapel itself was occasionally used as a schoolroom when Shakespeare was a boy, and until as late as the year 1595; and in case the lad did go thither (in 1571) as a pupil, he must have been from childhood familiar with the series of grotesque paintings upon its walls, presenting, in a pictorial panorama,