in the Bible:  namely, in the second Book of Samuel and in the Psalms.  When New Place was in the possession of Sir Hough Clopton, who was proud of its interesting association with the history of our great poet, not only were Garrick and Macklin most hospitably entertained under the Mulberry tree, but all strangers on a proper application were admitted to a sight of it.  But when Sir Hough Clopton was succeeded by the Reverend Francis Gastrell, that gentleman, to save himself the trouble of showing the tree to visitors, had “the gothic barbarity” to cut down and root up that interesting—­indeed sacred memorial—­of the Pride of the British Isles.  The people of Stratford were so enraged at this sacrilege that they broke Mr. Gastrell’s windows.  That prosaic personage at last found the place too hot for him, and took his departure from a town whose inhabitants “doated on his very absence;” but before he went he completed the fall sum of his sins against good taste and good feeling by pulling to the ground the house in which Shakespeare had lived and died.  This was done, it is said, out of sheer spite to the towns-people, with some of whom Mr. Gastrell had had a dispute about the rate at which the house was taxed.  His change of residence was no great relief to him, for the whole British public felt sorely aggrieved, and wherever he went he was peppered with all sorts of squibs and satires.  He “slid into verse,” and “hitched in a rhyme.”

    Sacred to ridicule his whole life long,
    And the sad burden of a merry song.

Thomas Sharp, a watchmaker, got possession of the fragments of Shakespeare’s Mulberry tree, and worked them into all sorts of elegant ornaments and toys, and disposed of them at great prices.  The corporation of Stratford presented Garrick with the freedom of the town in a box made of the wood of this famous tree, and the compliment seems to have suggested to him his public festival or pageant in honor of the poet.  This Jubilee, which was got up with great zeal, and at great expense and trouble, was attended by vast throngs of the admirers of Shakespeare from all parts of the kingdom.  It was repeated on the stage and became so popular as a theatrical exhibition that it was represented night after night for more than half a season to crowded audiences.

Upon the subject of gardens, let us hear what has been said by the self-styled “melancholy Cowley.”  When in the smoky city pent, amidst the busy hum of men, he sighed unceasingly for some green retreat.  As he paced the crowded thorough-fares of London, he thought of the velvet turf and the pure air of the country.  His imagination carried him into secluded groves or to the bank of a murmuring river, or into some trim and quiet garden.  “I never,” he says, “had any other desire so strong and so like to covetousness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate