s of kindness from different
residents in Stratford; in the expression of them, they appreciated and
entered into our desire for privacy with a delicacy which touched us
sensibly.

We had little time to look about us to see Stratford in the sunshine. So
we went over to a place on the banks of the Avon, where, it was said, we
could gain a very perfect view of the church. The remembrance of this
spot is to me like a very pleasant dream. The day was bright, the air
was soft and still, as we walked up and down the alleys of a beautiful
garden that extended quite to the church; the rooks were dreamily
cawing, and wheeling in dark, airy circles round the old buttresses and
spire. A funeral train had come into the graveyard, and the passing bell
was tolling. A thousand undefined emotions struggled in my mind.

That loving heart, that active fancy, that subtile, elastic power of
appreciating and expressing all phases, all passions of humanity, are
they breathed out on the wind? are they spent like the lightning? are
they exhaled like the breath of flowers? or are they still living, still
active? and if so, where and how? Is it reserved for us, in that
"undiscovered country" which he spoke of, ever to meet the great souls
whose breath has kindled our souls?

I think we forget the consequences of our own belief in immortality, and
look on the ranks of prostrate dead as a mower on fields of prostrate
flowers, forgetting that activity is an essential of souls, and that
every soul which has passed away from this world must ever since have
been actively developing those habits of mind and modes of feeling which
it began here.

The haughty, cruel, selfish Elizabeth, and all the great men of her
court, are still living and acting somewhere; but where? For my part I
am often reminded, when dwelling on departed genius, of Luther's
ejaculation for his favorite classic poet: "I hope God will have mercy
on such."

We speak of the glory of God as exhibited in natural landscape making;
what is it, compared with the glory of God as shown in the making of
souls, especially those souls which seem to be endowed with a creative
power like his own?

There seems, strictly speaking, to be only two classes of souls--the
creative and the receptive. Now, these creators seem to me to have a
beauty and a worth about them entirely independent of their moral
character. That ethereal power which shows itself in Greek sculpture and
Gothic architecture