ish that they at
least had been allowed to rest. Those who were parties to them have been
more than two centuries in their graves,--

"Secure from worldly chances and mishaps.
_There_ lurks no treason, _there_ no envy swells,
_There_ grow no damned grudges; _there_ no storms,
No noise, but silence and eternal sleep."

Why awaken the slumbering echoes of their living strife?

[Footnote A: _Commenced actor, commenced author, commenced tinker,
commenced tailor, commenced candlestick-maker:_--Elegant phraseology,
though we venture to think, hardly idiomatic or logical, which came into
vogue in England in the early part of the last century, and which,
as it is never uttered here by cultivated people, it may be proper to
remark, is there used by the best writers. Akin to it is another mode of
expression as commonly met with in English books and periodicals, e.g.,
"immediately he arrived at London he went upon the stage," meaning, as
soon as he arrived, etc., or, when he arrived at London, he immediately
went upon the stage. As far as our observation extends, Lord Macaulay,
alone of all Great-Britons, has neglected to add the latter lucid
construction to the graces of his style.]

Yet these very law-papers, in the reduplicated folds of which dead
quarrels lie embalmed in hideous and grotesque semblance of their living
shapes, their lifeblood dried that lent them all their little dignity,
their action and their glow, and exhaling only a faint, sickening
odor of the venom that has kept them from crumbling into
forgetfulness,--these law-papers are now held by some to have special
interest Shakespeare-ward, as having to do with a profession for which
he made preparatory studies, even if he did not enter upon its practice.
Yes, in spite of our alleged ignorance of Shakespeare's life, and
especially of the utter darkness which has been thought to rest upon the
years which intervened between his marriage in Stratford and his joining
the Lord Chamberlain's company of players in London, the question is,
now, whether the next historical novel may not begin in this wise:--

CHAPTER I.

THE FUGITIVE.

At the close of a lovely summer's day, two horsemen might have been seen
slowly pacing through the main street of Stratford-on-Avon. Attracting
no little attention from the group of loiterers around the market-cross,
they passed the White-Lion Inn, and, turning into Henley Street, soon
drew their bridles before a goodly co