That he was a good husband we may infer from the long epitaph of his wife in Charlecote Church, which, after stating that she died in 1595, at the age of 63, goes on thus: "all the time of her life a true and faithful servant of her good God; never detected of any crime or vice; in religion most sound; in love to her husband most faithful and true; in friendship most constant; to what in trust was committed to her most secret; in wisdom excelling; in governing of her house and bringing up of youth in the fear of God that did converse with her, most rare and singular; a great maintainer of hospitality; greatly esteemed of her betters, misliked of none unless of the envious. When all is spoken that can be said, a woman so furnished and garnished with virtue as not to be bettered, and hardly to be equalled by any. As she lived most virtuously, so she died most godly. Set down by him that best did know what hath been written to be true, _Thomas Lucy_." The author of this beautiful tribute may have been a severe magistrate, but he could not have been a Robert Shallow either in his official capacity or as a man. STRATFORD-ON-AVON. Stratford lies on a gentle slope declining to the Avon, whose banks are here shaded by venerable willows, which the poet may have had in mind when he painted the scene of poor Ophelia's death:-- "There is a willow grows aslant a brook, That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream." The description could have been written only by one who had observed the reflection of the white underside of the willow-leaves in the water over which they hung. And I cannot help believing that Shakespeare was mindful of the Avon when in far-away London he wrote that singularly musical simile of the river in one of his earliest plays, _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_, so aptly does it give the characteristics of the Warwickshire stream: "The current that with gentle murmur glides, Thou know'st, being stopp'd, impatiently doth rage; But when his fair course is not hindered, He makes sweet music with the enamell'd stones, Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge He overtaketh in his pilgrimage; And so by many winding nooks he strays, With willing sport, to the wild ocean. Then let me go, and hinder not my course: I'll be as patient as a gentle stream, And make a pastime of each weary step, Till the last step have brought me to my love; And there I'll rest, as, after much turmoil, A blessed soul doth in Elysium." The river cannot now be materially different from what it was three hundred years ago, but the town has changed a good deal. I fear that we might not have enjoyed a visit to it in that olden time as we do in these latter days.