188 POWER OF GENIUS.
of that fame, after the lapse of centuries, to give the chief impulse to some five or six thousand persons, dwelling on the spot where he first drew breath. There are the Shakspeare relics, the Shakspeare statue, the Shakspeare Theatre, the Shakspeare Hotel, the Shaks peare bust, the Shakspeare tomb ; everybody tells you of them, everybody is ready to rise, and run, and show them to the stranger. The ancient house and chamber where he was born, are humble even to meanness. Yet walls, and ceilings, and casketed albums are written over, and re-written, with the names of pil grim visitants from various climes, princes, nobles, poets, philosophers, and sages.
��What nurtured Shakspeare mid these village shades, Making a poor deer-stalking lad, a king In the broad realm of mind ?
I questioned much
Whatever met my view, the holly-hedge, The cottage-rose, the roof where he was born, And the pleached avenue of limes, that led To the old church. And pausing there, I marked The mossy efflorescence on the stones, Which, kindling in the sunbeam, taught me how Its little seeds were fed by mouldering life, And how another race of tiny roots, The fathers of the future, should compel From hardest-hearted rocks a nutriment, Until the fern-plant and the ivy sere
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