SUNLIGHT falls upon the paper with this transcendant name; the

atmosphere sparkles with a fresher, more radiant lustre ; and we are denizens at will of an enchanted land peopled with undying habitants, gifted,-immortally, with eloquence of wisdom which a seraph might stoop to hear; wit and humour to shake the dullest earth-clod with convulsive merriment; pathos to melt with sympathy the flintiest of human hearts. Undying, did I say? Not only are they exempt from the slightest taint of mortality, but, like Swedenborg's fabled angels, they become positively younger, brighter,-of more buoyant, vigorous life as the years flit past them. And that divine eloquence of wisdom is as inexhaustible as it is luminous and sublime, constantly yielding unguessed-of gems of thought to the reverent and attentive listener; that wit and humour never ceasing in its bounding, joyous play, to reach and sound new chords of mirth; that pathos to draw forth unsuspected fountain tears from the parched and barren depths of the most world-withered soul. But the reader requires not to be reminded of these trite truths, being, doubtless, herself or himself one of the hourly-increasing multitudes who throng that spirit-realm, not of the Anglo-Saxon race alone, millions of whom are dwellers by the settingsun, but of the great Germanic and Scandinavian nations; ay, and of late the modern Gauls muster here by tens of thousands. This immeasurable effluence has been no doubt in some degree increased by the riddance at last, with much difficulty effected, of the showmen who infested the place, some of them wearing right-reverend and doctorial wigs and gowns, who were perpetually bawling out some absurd

impertinence or other as to what should or should not be admired,-who sought after and who avoided. Expostulation or argument was thrown away upon these gentlemen; and they were only at last driven off, or silenced, by the inextinguishable peals of involuntary laughter which latterly arose whenever they ventured to open their lips. Our German relatives, who are tremendous laughers when they once begin, were of great service in this matter. But here comes honest Dogberry with the watch, whose duty it is to apprehend all " vagrom men :" you and I had therefore better retire for awhile; and see, it is only closing the magic volume in my hand, and we are forthwith upon the dull, common earth again!

The earth whereon Shakspere passed his brief mundane existence, and left such slight impress of his merely mortal footsteps, that, according to some of his historiographers, all that is positively known of William Shakspere is, that he was born at Stratford-upon-Avon, went to London in early manhood, wrote plays, greatly prospered there, and finally returned to die, a wealthy man, in his native place. This is, no doubt, an incorrect statement, at present, but not likely long to remain so, if the perverse ingenuity of enthusiastic biographers be permitted unchallenged to argue and refine away every fact which does not precisely chime with their own notions of what Shakspere's youth and Shakspere's parentage should have been, and to substitute their own fancies for less picturesque realities. One important circumstance is, at all events, beyond dispute: The parish register proves that William Shakspere, son of John Shakspere- Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakspere,' was baptised on the 26th of April, 1564, though whether, according to traditionary belief, the child was then precisely three days old, having been born-in Henley-street, it is said,—on the 23rd of the said month, remains a vexed and insoluble question. John Shakspere, it is moreover indisputable, married Mary Arden-and here we begin to ascend to quite respectable, almost dignified ancestry;-which Mary Arden was the daughter of Robert Arden, of Wellingcote, who was the son of a groom of the chamber to Henry VII.-which groom of the chamber was nephew of Sir John Arden, groom of the body to the same monarch; so that by his mother's side," writes Mr. De Quincey, in the Encyclopædia Britannica, "Shakspere was an authentic gentleman,”a circumstance which, it should seem, redounds greatly to the honour of the author of Hamlet. Plebeian critics have, however, not only presumed to ignore this pedigree, but to assert that the mother of Shakspere could not read,-a manifest slander, the very name, Mary Arden, being, as Mr. Charles Knight remarks, in the graceful volume which he calls a Biography of Shakspere, redolent of poetry; the supposition, therefore, that its possessor was unable to read, becoming a transparent, self-evident absurdity. John Shakspere is a less manageable individuality than his wife. Ancient gossips of Stratford, questioned not very long after William Shakspere's death, reported that the father of the poet had been engaged in the business of a butcher, of a wool-dealer, and of a glover. They, however, it seems, did not know what they were talking about ;-the butcher-imputation especially has been savagely spurned at, and, so to speak, kicked out of

the controversy, and with it poor Dr. Farmer, whose inference from the magnificent passage in Hamlet,

"Our indiscretions sometimes serve us well

When our deep plots do fail; and this should teach us
There's a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will,”—

that the poet when writing it must have been thinking of the time when he used to shape his father's skewers, brought from its countenance of the offensive tradition a storm of abusive ridicule about the learned commentator's ears which the sublime silliness of the criticism of itself would never have excited.

That John Shakspere dealt in wool and gloves was for a long time reluctantly acquiesced in, but it having been ascertained that he became possessed of a small quantity of land in right of his wife, the newer and more acceptable belief is, that John Shakspere was in fact what we should now call "a gentleman farmer," cultivating his own land,clipping, and of course selling, his own wool,--and, it may be, disposing of a sheep's carcase— -wholesale-now and then. At any rate, it is certain that in the year 1568, his son being then in his fourth year, John Shakspere must have been in tolerably prosperous circumstances, as he was then elected chief bailiff of Stratford. Unfortunately, the municipal archives from which this gratifying fact has been extracted furnish others of a less agreeable character. One of the rolls is subscribed by seventeen persons, ten aldermen and seven burgesses, seven of whom only were able to write their names,-the rest, amongst whom is John Shakspere, having affixed their marks to the document ! This at the first blush would appear decisive as to the worthy bailiff's skill in caligraphy; but it is not so-very far from it, indeed, as the mark, which has some resemblance to a pair of compasses, might have been a symbolic sign, intended to give additional weight and emphasis to his crucial signature! It is besides urged, that the notion of John Shakspere being unable to write, and Mary Shakspere to read, must be discarded, inasmuch as the author of the article "Shakspere" in the Penny Cyclopædia, emphatically remarks that "a great deal of what would else appear miraculous" in the poet's writings, excites a reasonable admiration only" when one finds that the author was a wellnurtured child of gentle blood;" the meaning of which I presume to be that, supposing Shakspere's father and mother possessed themselves, and gave their son a decent education, and that moreover he, the son, was descended on the maternal side from the grooms of the body and bedchamber previously mentioned, the Macbeth, Hamlet, Leah, cease to appear miraculous, and excite a reasonable admiration only. Other incidents in connection with John Shakspere gleam out of the musty legal records of the town. He had-it is but faintly questionedbecome embarrassed in his affairs, and in 1586 a process of debt against John Shakspere was returned by the sheriff, endorsed Nulla Bonâ ; that is, he had been able to find nothing whereon to levy execution. But this John Shakspere, it is roundly affirmed, must have been a shoemaker of that name residing at Stratford, who it appears had previously