In the morning we took leave of our hotel.  In leaving we were much touched with the simple kindliness of the people of the house.  The landlady and her daughters came to bid us farewell, with much feeling; and the former begged my acceptance of a bead purse, knit by one of her daughters, she said, during the winter evenings while they were reading Uncle Tom.  In this town one finds the simple-hearted, kindly English people corresponding to the same class which we see in our retired New England towns.  We received many marks of kindness from different residents in Stratford; in the expression of them, they appreciated and entered into our desire for privacy with a delicacy which touched us sensibly.

We had little time to look about us to see Stratford in the sunshine.  So we went over to a place on the banks of the Avon, where, it was said, we could gain a very perfect view of the church.  The remembrance of this spot is to me like a very pleasant dream.  The day was bright, the air was soft and still, as we walked up and down the alleys of a beautiful garden that extended quite to the church; the rooks were dreamily cawing, and wheeling in dark, airy circles round the old buttresses and spire.  A funeral train had come into the graveyard, and the passing bell was tolling.  A thousand undefined emotions struggled in my mind.

That loving heart, that active fancy, that subtile, elastic power of appreciating and expressing all phases, all passions of humanity, are they breathed out on the wind? are they spent like the lightning? are they exhaled like the breath of flowers? or are they still living, still active? and if so, where and how?  Is it reserved for us, in that “undiscovered country” which he spoke of, ever to meet the great souls whose breath has kindled our souls?

I think we forget the consequences of our own belief in immortality, and look on the ranks of prostrate dead as a mower on fields of prostrate flowers, forgetting that activity is an essential of souls, and that every soul which has passed away from this world must ever since have been actively developing those habits of mind and modes of feeling which it began here.

The haughty, cruel, selfish Elizabeth, and all the great men of her court, are still living and acting somewhere; but where?  For my part I am often reminded, when dwelling on departed genius, of Luther’s ejaculation for his favorite classic poet:  “I hope God will have mercy on such.”

We speak of the glory of God as exhibited in natural landscape making; what is it, compared with the glory of God as shown in the making of souls, especially those souls which seem to be endowed with a creative power like his own?