rts for personal reasons, there are of
course hundreds. Every man has his own peculiar prejudices in this
respect. To some London is the most sacred spot on earth. And who shall
deny that with all her faults London is not a vastly interesting place?
Is not every street hallowed by its associations with some great name or
some great event in English history? Which of us can stand amid the
Gothic tracery and the crumbling cloisters of Westminster, or under the
shadow of the old grey towers of Whitehall, without recalling
heart-stirring scenes and "paths of glory that lead but to the grave"?
Who can stand unmoved on any of the famous bridges that span the silent
river? Dr. Johnson, who acted up to Pope's well-known motto,

"The proper study of mankind is man,"

thought Fleet Street the most interesting place on the face of the
earth; and perhaps he was right. Let us hear what he has to say about
this halo of old association: "To abstract the mind from all local
emotion would be impossible if it were endeavoured; and would be foolish
if it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses;
whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the
present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me and
from my friends be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent
and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery,
or virtue."

This, then, is the difference between the plains of Africa and the hills
and valleys of England. The one is at present a vast inhospitable chaos,
the other a land in which there is scarcely an acre that has not been
dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. Such are the signs by which we
are to distinguish Cosmos from Chaos.

How far into the Cotswold Hills the halo of Stratford-on-Avon's glory
may be said to extend it is not easy to determine. Let us allow at all
events that the _reflection_ from the arc reaches across the whole
extent of the wolds as far as Dursley. For here on the western edge of
the Cotswolds it is probable that Shakespeare spent that portion of his
life which has always been involved in obscurity--the interval between
his removal from Warwickshire and his arrival in London.

On a fine autumnal evening in the year 1592 a horseman, mounted on a
little ambling nag, neared the Cotswold village of Bibury. Both man and
steed showed unmistakable signs of weariness. The horse especially,
though of that