Mr. J. R. Wise, in his _Shakespeare, His Birthplace and its Neighbourhood_, says: "Take up what play you will, and you will find glimpses of the scenery round Stratford. His maidens ever sing of 'blue-veined violets,' and 'daisies pied,' and 'pansies that are for thoughts,' and 'ladies'-smocks all silver-white,' that still stud the meadows of the Avon.... I do not think it is any exaggeration to say that nowhere are meadows so full of beauty as those round Stratford. I have seen them by the riverside in early spring burnished with gold; and then later, a little before hay-harvest, chased with orchises, and blue and white milkwort, and yellow rattle-grass, and tall moon-daisies: and I know nowhere woodlands so sweet as those round Stratford, filled with the soft green light made by the budding leaves, and paved with the golden ore of primroses, and their banks veined with violets. All this, and the tenderness that such beauty gives, you find in the pages of Shakespeare; and it is not too much to say that he painted them because they were ever associated in his mind with all that he held precious and dear, both of the earliest and the latest scenes of his life." THE EARLY HISTORY OF STRATFORD. Stratford is a very ancient town. Its name shows that it was situated at a _ford_ on the Roman _street_, or highway, from London to Birmingham; but whether it was an inhabited place during the Roman occupation is uncertain. The earliest known reference to the town is in a charter dated A.D. 691, according to which Egwin, the Bishop of Worcester, obtained from Ethelred, King of Mercia, "the monastery of Stratford," with lands of about three thousand acres, in exchange for a religious house built by the bishop at Fladbury. It is not improbable that Stratford owes its foundation to this monastic settlement. Tradition says that the monastery stood where the church now is; and, as elsewhere in England, the first houses of the town were probably erected for its servants and dependants. These dwellings were doubtless near the river, in the street that has been known for centuries as "Old Town."