courtesies, finer sentiments, completer innocence and happiness, more wit and wisdom, than I am like to do here even, though I search for them from shepherd’s cot to king’s palace.  Just to think how those people lived!  Carelessly as the blossoming trees, happily as the singing birds, time measured only by the patter of the acorn on the fruitful soil!  A world without debtor or creditor, passing rich, yet with never a doit in its purse, with no sordid care, no regard for appearances; nothing to occupy the young but love-making, nothing to occupy the old but perusing the “sermons in stones” and the musical wisdom which dwells in “running brooks”!  But Arden forest draws its sustenance from a poet’s brain:  the light that sleeps on its leafy pillows is “the light that never was on sea or shore.”  We but please and tantalise ourselves with beautiful dreams.

The children of the brain become to us actual existences, more actual, indeed, than the people who impinge upon us in the street, or who live next door.  We are more intimate with Shakspeare’s men and women than we are with our contemporaries, and they are, on the whole, better company.  They are more beautiful in form and feature, and they express themselves in a way that the most gifted strive after in vain.  What if Shakspeare’s people could walk out of the play-books and settle down upon some spot of earth and conduct life there?  There would be found humanity’s whitest wheat, the world’s unalloyed gold.  The very winds could not visit the place roughly.  No king’s court could present you such an array.  Where else could we find a philosopher like Hamlet? a friend like Antonio? a witty fellow like Mercutio? where else Imogen’s piquant’s face?  Portia’s gravity and womanly sweetness?  Rosalind’s true heart and silvery laughter?  Cordelia’s beauty of holiness?  These would form the centre of the court, but the purlieus, how many-coloured!  Malvolio would walk mincingly in the sunshine there; Autolycus would filch purses.  Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Sir Toby Belch would be eternal boon companions.  And as Falstaff sets out homeward from the tavern, the portly knight leading the revellers like a three-decker a line of frigates, they are encountered by Dogberry, who summons them to stand and answer to the watch as they are honest men.  If Mr. Dickens’s characters were gathered together, they would constitute a town populous enough to send a representative to Parliament.  Let us enter.  The style of architecture is unparalleled.  There is an individuality about the buildings.  In some obscure way they remind one of human faces.  There are houses sly-looking, houses wicked-looking, houses pompous-looking.  Heaven bless us! what a rakish pump! what a self-important town-hall! what a hard-hearted prison!  The dead walls are covered with advertisements of Mr. Sleary’s circus.  Newman Noggs comes shambling along.  Mr. and the Misses Pecksniff come sailing down the sunny side of the street.  Miss Mercy’s