Northward, at a little distance from the Church of the Holy Trinity, stands, on the west bank of the Avon, the building that will always be famous as the Shakespeare Memorial. The idea of the Memorial was suggested in 1864, incidentally to the ceremonies which then commemorated the three-hundredth anniversary of the poet's birth. Ten years later the site for this structure was presented to the town by Charles Edward Flower, one of its most honoured inhabitants. Contributions of money were then asked, and were given. Americans as well as Englishmen contributed. On April 23, 1877, the first stone of the Memorial was laid. On April 23, 1880, the building was dedicated. The fabric comprises a theatre, a library, and a picture-gallery. In the theatre the plays of Shakespeare are annually represented, in a manner as nearly perfect as possible. In the library and picture-gallery are to be assembled all the books upon Shakespeare that have been published, and all the choice paintings that can be obtained to illustrate his life and his works. As the years pass this will naturally become a principal depository of Shakespearean objects. A dramatic college may grow up, in association with the Shakespeare theatre. The gardens that surround the Memorial will augment their loveliness in added expanse of foliage and in greater wealth of floral luxuriance. The mellow tinge of age will soften the bright tints of the red brick that mainly composes the building. On its cone-shaped turrets ivy will clamber and moss will nestle. When a few generations have passed, the old town of Stratford will have adopted this now youthful stranger into the race of her venerated antiquities. The same air of poetic mystery that rests now upon his cottage and his grave will diffuse itself around his Memorial; and a remote posterity, looking back to the men and the ideas of to-day, will remember with grateful pride that English-speaking people of the nineteenth century, although they could confer no honour upon the great name of Shakespeare, yet honoured themselves in consecrating this votive temple to his memory. Illustration: "Gable Window" CHAPTER XIII UP TO LONDON 1882