The Sun.
London, England, 1847-09-17 00:00:00

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LONDON, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1847.

The little tenement at Stratford•upon-Avon, which
until very recently has been occupied by a butcher,
and which tradition declares to have been the birth-
place of WILLIAM SHARSPERE, is no longer to re-
main the prize of a mere hucksterer of curiosities.
Thanks to the enthusiasm and activity of the com•
mittees of London and Stratford-upon-Avon, it was
purchased yesterday at the Auction Mart of Mr.
ROBINS, for the sum of three thousand pounds: it is
now the property of the nation Those who recog-
nise in this only a momentary extravagance, arising
out of a romantic reverence for the fame of a dra-
matist, are incapable of appreciating what is holiest
and noblest in the nature of our common huma-
nity, and are incompetent to discern even a
single ray of a glory that pervades and illumines
the whole globe. Is there wanting a testimony
that this mark of homage—a mark of' homage
more splendid than was ever before paid to the
memory of mortal—was by no means premature, by
no means conventional, by no means the effusion of a
merely casual or intermittent excitement ? The fact
is attested by a thousand circumstances—by the con-
course of a vast multitude of pilgrims to the place of
his nativity—by that supreme and affecting admira-
tion which has conducted the illustrious of distant
lands to the cottage and the shrine—by the autograph,
of the immortal and obscure, the kings, the princes,
the nobles, the historians, the artists, the poets, the
warriors, the citizens, the brave and the beautiful, the
student and the worldling, the merchant and
the philosopher, written when they went to un-
cover the head and bow down the spirit in the
humble room where his eyes first opened to a
world destined to resound for evermore with hip
fame, and to be dazzled by hi, surpassing genius.
Could the souls of the great departed re-
visit the scenes of their bodily existence, then must
SHAYSPERE have exulted in the knowledge of how
he had gone forth with ignominy from his native
village, and how he had lived to raise that village to
a dignity beyond that of the most gigantic marts of
commerce—a celebrity that should survive while the
ruins of Persepolis decayed beneath the touch of
Time, and the walls of Carthage crumbled in thti
dust of Africa. Could the eternal spirits of the dead
obtain a consciousness of the estimation of posterity,
then must SnAKSPERE have rejoiced at the millions whe
have, year after year, month after month, day after day,
pressed onwards in their pilgrimage to the spot in
which he was born and died, to gaze upon the dila-
pidated house which had been his cradle, and
look with awe upon the epitaph which
protected his bones with a blessing and
malediction. And how immeasurably would such
a sense of exultation be enhanced now that a whole
nation has pronounced its reverence for his memory
by claiming for itself the dwelling which is saidt
have sheltered his infancy, and preserving from
dese-
cration or destruction the earth which had been hal-
lo wed by his footprints.

We cannot persuade ourselves that even the most
ignorant economists can regard these three thousand
pounds of the national moneys as frivolously ex-
pended. We cannot think that there is a man in
existence so blind to the influences of genius as not
to recognise the moral advantages resulting
from such an employment of the public
contributions. The most unimaginative must behold in
this proceeding a brilliant token of the advancement
of civilization in these realms, and a lesson calculated
to inspire the uneducated mechanic with aspirations
beyond those which have, in bygone centuries, been
prevalent throughout the humbler classes of society.
Every one whose heart thrills at the name of SHAM-
SPERE—and there are, and have been, and will be
millions be grateful to those individuals who
courted for themselves the re3ponsibility of securing
to the nation the lowly tenement associated, by suet'
reverent traditions, with his earthly career, in the little
street called Henley-street, in the little village called
Stratford-upon-Avon. They have conferred upon the
empire a boon which has been preserved by three
housand pounds, but which could not be created