Yet, as long as one stone shall stand upon another, will the little plain Church of Charlecote be linked with a glorious memory of the past; the lofty trees that grow around it conceal it effectually from sight; not so the Hall, which, standing on a gentle elevation above the Avon, is seen from all points of the adjacent scenery. It adjoins the pretty village of Wellsbourne; near to which, on the road between Warwick and Stratford, commences a double avenue of finely-grown elm-trees, which reaches, for more than half a mile from the public road, to the house;--from Warwick it is distant six miles, and from Stratford five. The Avon winds immediately around the mansion, [Illustration] through the Park; close to the entrance-gate it is crossed by a pretty bridge, which heightens the striking effect of the landscape. The whole neighbourhood, indeed, between Wellsbourne and Stratford, is full of beauty; the land seems passing rich; while, here and there, distant glances are caught of the Avon, or it accompanies the wayfarer along the road; there are few more delightful walks in England--and none so pregnant with “happy and glorious” associations. Amid these dells and by these hill-sides, was Shakspere taught of Nature. “Here, as with honey gathered from the rock, She fed the little prattler, and with songs Oft sooth’d his wondering ears; with deep delight On her soft lap he sat and caught the sounds.” Every step to the pilgrim seems “hallowed ground;” he crosses the bridge, built by Sir Hugh Clopton during the reign of the 7th Harry, and is at once “at home” with Shakspere, who must have trodden upon these stones daily when a boy, and passed them often during his occasional visits to his birth-place, or when--“good easy man”--he retired hither from busy life, to die like the deer where he was roused. The very mystery in which his whole career seems inextricably involved, gives the fancy greater freedom: there is no check upon imagination as we tread the streets of the Avon’s old town of Stratford, muse in the small chamber where he was born, think in the school-house where he was taught, or ponder in the church where his bones have lain for two centuries and a half, “unmoved.” Yet the often-quoted passage from Steevens is almost as correct to-day as it was when he wrote it--notwithstanding every “hole and corner” in England has been ransacked in the hope to find something that concerns him--“all that is known with any degree of certainty concerning Shakspere is--that he was born at Stratford-upon-Avon--married, and had children there--went to London, where he commenced actor, and wrote poems and plays--returned to Stratford, made his will, died, and was buried.”