The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-05-23

scene between the hustle of the street and the solemn repose and stiffness of the church.
 The oaken doors stood open, but a locked iron grating bore the legend. Wm. Butcher, Parish Clerk, No. : Trinity street." Trinity street proved just across the churchyard to the south, and Wm. Butcher came and let me iu. The church dates from about I46S, and save for some little decoration about the chancel is practically unchanged since that pleasant April morning in IS64, when honest John Shakespeare's mite of baby was christened William at the cracked old font which they still show in the vestry,
 Here again was the contrast between home and sanctuary, between hearth. stone and altar. The extremes of narrow wreschedness and of lofty beauty. l don't know who built the church, or who built the birthplace house, but l know the money could have been better di- vided between the two.
 loitered al the entrance and listened to the clerk while he expatiated upon the carvings of the ceiling; 1 examined the gorgeous tombs of the Cloptons in the transept, and fingered among the old oak pews in the nave; and not till the last, when the place had grown upon me, did turn my steps toward the chancel rail A row of sombstones forms the second of the altar steps, so placed that the heads are toward you as you look over the pro- tecting barrier. "Anne, wife of William Shakespeare" lies at the left, and other members of the family farther over to the right. But the simplest and only nameless stone of them all is that where all interest centres. The rules forbade it, but in the absence of tho honest clerk l crossed the line and mounted to where 1 could look back and read the inscriptions on the stones, and as traced the quaint lines so often quoted, and which for 2oo years have kept the ashes beneath it un- disturbed, confess to trace of emotion -an undefined and unde6nable thrill oi reverence and fascination. Here all things end:
 And nothing can we call our own but death And that small model of the barren earth
 Which serves as paste and cover to our bones."
 The monument to Shakespeare hangs upon the wall just over the end of the altar step nearest his tomb, and is known to have been placed there some seven years after his death by his daughter, Mrs. Hall. It consists of a marble bust of the poet in an arched granite niche, with an inscription below, polished pill. lars at the sides, and allegorical figures and emblems at the top, The bust shows the head and upper part of the body, and the arms resting upon a cushion in front, and, though clearly out of proportion, and clumsy in its treatment, is yet re- ceived as about the only existing portrait of Shakespeare with any claim to authen- ticity. The best authorities agree that the head is probably from mask taken after death, and local Shakespearean, with whom had the opportunity to con- verse, has stoutly maintained in the pub lie prints that the sculptor must have had the entire head to work from, and that it was undoubtedly removed, embalmed and sent to London for the purpose un- der the sup psrvision of the poets son-in- law, Dr. Hall, the practice of the time as it is claimed, favoring this theory. Why cast of the whole head might not have answered just as well the author of this cheerful suggestion does not explain. Be this as it maythe contraction of the up- per lip, and consequent opening of the mouth, and the bloated and unbalanced condition of the lower paR of the face plainly stamp it as head in which de- composition had commenced. The ar tist was probably not acquainted with the features in life, and unequal to the task of ide alization. The bust is made still more horrible by being painted, after the taste of the Elizabethan period, in the colors of life and anything more ghastly and distressing to look upon it is difficult to conceive.
 One hardly thinks of Moses as essen tially an infant," and yet he is starred ia that role, supported by Isaac as the lover signing like furnace" and Joshua as the soldier full of strange paths and bearded like the pard," and full biblical cast, in the American stained glass win dow that decorates the chancel, and de- picts the seven ages of man. The idea is at least as far fetched as the window.
 A little way up Southern Lane upon the bank of the river you come to the Shakespeare memorial building and theater. Though happy in its site, and not without some claims to architectural taste in its conception, the finished effect is cheap and disappointing. As public building of the corporation of Stra,ford it might be well enough, but it becomes wholly inadequate to it's purpose when viewed as tribute of the English speak ing race to the central figure of its litera- ture. Hone has seen the Albert memo rial, and the marble tomb of Napoleon beneath the gilded dome of the Invalides, the poverty of this poor pile of red and yellow brick must be doubly apparent. Not marble nor the gilded monuments Ofprinces shall outlive this powerful rhyme"
 The library and picture gallery here are exclusively Shakespearean in their character and are not uninteresting in a modest way, but the whole tn ing seemed to me to bear an irreverent djsproportion to the name if nTofexses in roin memorafe