ers of the whole New
World.

Of poets and of men of letters I say nought. They are the heritage,
neither of us, nor you, but of the human race. The mere man of letters
may well sleep in the very centre of that busy civilisation from which he
drew his inspiration: but not the poet--not, at least, the poet of these
days. He goes not to the town, but nature, for his inspirations, and to
nature when he dies he should return. Such men--artificial, and
town-bred--however brilliant, or even grand at times--as Davenant,
Dryden, Cowley, Congreve, Prior, Gay--sleep fitly in our care here. Yet
even Pope--though one of such in style and heart--preferred the parish
church of the then rural Twickenham, and Gray the lonely graveyard of
Stoke Pogis. Ben Jonson has a right to lie with us. He was a townsman
to the very heart, and a court-poet too. But Chaucer, Spenser,
Drayton--such are, to my mind, out of place. Chaucer lies here, because
he lived hard by. Spenser through bitter need and woe. But I should
have rather buried Chaucer in some trim garden, Spenser beneath the
forest aisles, and Drayton by some silver stream--each man's dust resting
where his heart was set. Happier, it seems to me, are those who like
Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Southey, Scott and Burns, lie far away, in
scenes they knew and loved; fulfilling Burke's wise choice: 'After all I
had sooner sleep in the southern corner of a country churchyard than in
the tomb of all the Capulets.'

Yes--these worthies, one and all, are a token that the Great Abbey, and
all its memories of 800 years, does not belong to us alone, nor even to
the British Empire alone and all its Colonies, but to America likewise!
That when an American enters beneath that mighty shade, he treads on
common and ancestral ground, as sacred to him as it is to us; the symbol
of common descent, common development, common speech, common creed,
common laws, common literature, common national interests, and I trust,
of a common respect and affection, such as the wise can only feel toward
the wise, and the strong toward the strong.

Is all this sentiment? Remember what I said just now: by well-used
sentiment, and well-used sorrow, great nations live.

LECTURE II.
THE STAGE AS IT WAS ONCE.

What the Stage is now, I presume, all know. I am not myself a playgoer,
but I am informed that, in Europe at least, it is not in a state to
arouse any deep interest or respect in any cultivated or