the history of the Holy Cross, from its origin as a tree at the beginning of the world to its exaltation at Jerusalem. Those paintings were brought to light in 1804 in the course of a renovation of the chapel which then occurred, when the walls were relieved of thick coatings of whitewash, laid on them long before, in Puritan times, either to spoil or to hide from the spoiler. They are not visible now, but they were copied and have been engraved. The drawings of them, by Fisher, are in the collection of Shakespearean Rarities made by J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps. This chapel and its contents constitute one of the few remaining spectacles at Stratford that bring us face to face with Shakespeare. During the last seven years of his life he dwelt almost continually in his house of New Place, on the corner immediately opposite to this church. The configuration of the excavated foundations of that house indicates what would now be called a deep bay-window in its southern front. There, probably, was Shakespeare's study; and through that casement, many and many a time, in storm and in sunshine, by night and by day, he must have looked out upon the grim, square tower, the embattled stone wall, and the four tall Gothic windows of that mysterious temple. The moment your gaze falls upon it, the low-breathed, horror-stricken words of Lady Macbeth murmur in your memory:-- "The raven himself is hoarse That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements." New Place, Shakespeare's home at the time of his death and the house in which he died, stood on the north-east corner of Chapel Street and Chapel Lane. Nothing now remains of it but a portion of its foundations--long buried in the earth, but found and exhumed in comparatively recent days. Its gardens have been redeemed, through the zealous and devoted exertions of J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps and have been restored to what is thought to have been almost their condition when Shakespeare owned them. The crumbling fragments of the foundation are covered with screens of wood and wire. A mulberry-tree, a scion of the famous mulberry that Shakespeare is known to have planted, is growing on the lawn. There is no authentic picture in existence that shows New Place as it was when Shakespeare left it, but there is a sketch of it as it appeared in 1740. The house was made of brick and timber, and was built by Sir Hugh Clopton nearly a century before it became by purchase the property of the poet. Shakespeare bought it in 1597, and in it he passed, intermittently, a considerable part of the last nineteen years of his life. It had borne the name of New Place before it came into his possession. The Clopton family parted with it in 1563, and it was subsequently owned by families of Bott and Underhill. At Shakespeare's death it was inherited by his eldest daughter, Susanna, wife of Dr. John Hall. In 1643, Mrs. Hall, then seven years a widow, being still its