I had now visited the usual objects of a pilgrim’s devotion, but I had a desire to see the old family seat of the Lucy’s at Charlecot, and to ramble through the park where Shakespeare, in company with some of the roisterers of Stratford, committed his youthful offense of deer-stealing.  The old mansion of Charlecot and its surrounding park still remain in the possession of the Lucy family, and are peculiarly interesting from being connected with this whimsical but eventful circumstance in the scanty history of the bard.  As the house stood at little more than three miles’ distance from Stratford, I resolved to pay it a pedestrian visit, that I might stroll leisurely through some of those scenes from which Shakespeare must have derived his earliest ideas of rural imagery.

My route for a part of the way lay in sight of the Avon, which made a variety of the most fanciful doublings and windings through a wide and fertile valley; sometimes glittering from among willows, which fringed its borders; sometimes disappearing among groves, or beneath green banks; and sometimes rambling out into full view, and making an azure sweep around a slope of meadow land.  This beautiful bosom of country is called the Vale of the Red Horse.  A distant line of undulating blue hills seems to be its boundary, while all the soft intervening landscape lies in a manner enchained in the silver links of the Avon.

After pursuing the road for about three miles, I turned off into a foot-path, which led along the borders of fields and under hedgerows to a private gate of the park; there was a stile, however, for the benefit of the pedestrian; there being a public right of way through the grounds.  I delight in these hospitable estates, in which everyone has a kind of property—­at least as far as the foot-path is concerned.  I now found myself among noble avenues of oaks and elms, whose vast size bespoke the growth of centuries.  The wind sounded solemnly among their branches, and the rooks cawed from their hereditary nests in the tree tops.  The eye ranged through a long lessening vista, with nothing to interrupt the view but a distant statue, and a vagrant deer stalking like a shadow across the opening.

I had now come in sight of the house.  It is a large building of brick, with stone quoins, and is in the Gothic style of Queen Elizabeth’s day, having been built in the first year of her reign.  The exterior remains very nearly in its original state, and may be considered a fair specimen of the residence of a wealthy country gentleman of those days.  A great gateway opens from the park into a kind of courtyard in front of the house, ornamented with a grass-plot, shrubs, and flower-beds.  The gateway is in imitation of the ancient barbican; being a kind of outpost and flanked by towers; tho evidently for mere ornament, instead of defense.  The front of the house is completely in the old style; with stone shafted casements, a great bow-window of heavy stone work, and a portal with armorial bearings over it, carved in stone.  At each corner of the building is an octagon tower, surmounted by a gilt ball and weathercock.