The age-herald., 1899-08-06

mended roads and been built into the corn shed and the cottage had not some seventy years ago a man of middle age. with lofty brow and keen grey eye, slightly lame, but active, entered it's gatehouse and pass ed many silent hours within it's walls.
 That man was 'sWalter Scott"
 Then was the ruined place henceforward to be sanetifed. The torch of genius again lighted up the spacious pile; visions of sor row and suffering. of woman's weakness and mans treaebery all were to be forever after associated with recolections of an- cient splendour.
 Seotts novel of "Kenilworth'' has peo- pied the ruins once more with the figures of the gay and the sorrowful. and the old Norman keeper and dungeons. Mortimer's tower and the Roman kitchens are for gotten in the lively interest taken in Sweet Amy Roberts Bower" and Queen Elizabeth's own apartments. You remem.. Der that in the year of 1575 the Virgin Queen travelled hitherward to visit her court favorite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester a Knight of the Garter" and a member of privy council
 The earl spent thousands in preparing the place for the queen and built a stately bridge across an arm of the lake so that Engiand's virgin queen might enter the castle by "a path hitherto untrodden.''
 It is said that ''during nineteen days of lively pastimes, plays, masques and pa geants, the great clock, the whole time. stood at the hour of dining. and the con- sumption of food and liquor enor- nous Four hundred attendants it took to wait upon this lordly crowd But poor Amy Roberts, the wife of Dudley, was a prisoner and was forcibly abducted and conveyed to Cumnor place near Oxford. where she met a violent death At Ken ilworth the imagination is called upon to fill out and repeope the old ruins. but at War wick only a short distance away the sis ter castle of Warwick = ,-i~est men- ument of ancient and chivalrous splen- dour," yet remains uninjured by time.
 Warwick castle. the most perfect of all the old feudal fortresses, gives one com plete idea off the magnitude, strength and magnificence of English baronial castles The visitor is conducted through the state apartments of the castle where are seen numberless portraits by the old masters of inestimable value. In the beautifully kept grounds one is left to wander at his own sweet will. and at the northeast end of the park, past the exquisitely kept gardens. in a house specially designed for 1t is exhibit cd the famous "Warwick Vase which was found deep under the sea near Hadrian's Villa at Tiroli and presented by the Brit ish minister to the Earl of Warwick. Two thousand years old it now stands as beau- tiful testimony to the grace and artistic 1maS1D2t1On or the SfulplDTS p1 ID'' tHtltiil time. short, swift and most delightful drive along the famous old Coventry road brings one to "Stratford-on-Avon. the shrine where Americans love to kneei Grant Allen, In his books of travel. mas much to say that disturbs the pet imagl- nngs and illusions of the traveller. With honest, blunt remarks he shakes ones ideals and fantasies, but In his volume re- gardng Stratford I quite agree with him and his opinions. I shall never recover from the shock I experienced upon my hrst visit to Stratford. How the lover or Shakespeare unconsciously wears mental images of the great poets birthplace iso- lated and clustered ever by gardens ful of the flowers that he wrote about and loved so dearly. Anne Hathaway's cot tage too. we dream of as remote from the village and secluded as such loVe-shrine should be. What shock then to one $ poetical sensibilties. to find in Stratford, one of the busiest little cities in the king dom, and Shakespeare's home crowded and encroached upon by bustling trades people. And so it was that [ preferred my fan cfu illusions and regretted my visit to Stratford. Holy Trinity church, where he is buried alone presents to the eye such scene one may have imagined. Ae wander first along the banks of the silver Avon and read the inscriptions on the an- cent tombstones which lean this way ana that in sweet and orderly confusion. h. side the church the dim light. broken py the richly stained windows streams across the dusky chancel filling the still air with opal haze Not a word is spoken as we kneel and read the we'll known words above the poets last resting place.
 "Good Frend For Jesus Sake Forbeare,
 To Digg The Dust Enclosed Heare! Now only a handful of dust. perhaps. re- mains where once all that was mortal of the great poet was laid. Still shadowy fig- ures seem to watch above and guard the sacred shrine. With awe and reverence we realize that great writers, at any rate, never die.
 nrTa is not dead whose glorious mind
 Lifts thine on high.
 To live in hearts we leave behind
 Is not to die."