ginning of January till the
beginning of May. She says she cannot let me have them longer than that,
but I shall endeavor for at least a month's extension, for it will be so
very wretched to turn out and have to hunt for new lodgings, for a term
of six weeks.

My success at Leeds was very good, considering the small size of the
theatre.... I am not exempt from a feeling about "illustrious
localities," but the world seems to me to be so absolutely Shakespeare's
domain and dwelling-place, that I do not vividly associate him with the
idea of those four walls, between which he first saw the light of an
English day. If the house he dwelt in in the maturity of his age, and to
which he retired to spend the evening of his life, still existed, I
should feel considerable emotion in being where his hours and days were
spent when his mind had reached its zenith.

A baby is the least intelligent form of a rational human being, and as
it mercifully pleased God to remove His wonderfully endowed child before
the approach of age had diminished his transcendent gifts, I do not care
to contemplate him in that condition in which I cannot recognize
him--that is, with an undeveloped and dormant intelligence.

We know nothing of his childhood, nothing of the gradual growth and
unfolding of his genius; his acknowledged works date from the season of
its ripe perfection.

You know I do not regret the dimness that covers the common details of
his life: his humanity was allied to that of its kind by infirmities and
sins, but I am glad that these links between him and _me_ have
disappeared, and that those alone remain by which he will be bound, as
long as this world lasts, to the love and reverence of his
fellow-beings. Shakespeare's childhood, boyhood, the season of his moral
and intellectual growth, would be of the deepest interest could one know
it: but Shakespeare's mere birthplace and babyhood is not much to me;
though I quite agree that it should be respectfully preserved, and
allowed to be visited by all who find satisfaction in such pilgrimage.

He could not have been different from other babies you know; nor,
indeed, need be,--for a _baby_--_any_ baby--is a more wonderful thing
even than Shakespeare.

I have told you how curiously affected I was while standing by his
grave, in the church at Stratford-upon-Avon: how I was suddenly overcome
with sleep (my invariable refuge under great emotion or excitement), and
how I prayed to be all