This book, a companion to Shakespeare's England, relates to the gray days of an American wanderer in the British islands, and to the gold of thought and fancy that can be found there. In Shakespeare's England an attempt was made to depict, in an unconventional manner, those lovely scenes that are intertwined with the name and the memory of Shakespeare, and also to reflect the spirit of that English scenery in general which, to an imaginative mind, must always be venerable with historic antiquity and tenderly hallowed with poetic and romantic association. The present book continues the same treatment of kindred themes, referring not only to the land of Shakespeare, but to the land of Burns and Scott.

After so much had been done, and superbly done, by Washington Irving and by other authors, to celebrate the beauties of our ancestral home, it was perhaps an act of presumption on the part of the present writer to touch those subjects. He can only plead, in extenuation of his boldness, an irresistible impulse of reverence and affection for them. His presentment of them can give no offence, and perhaps it may be found sufficiently sympathetic and diversified to awaken and sustain at least a momentary interest in the minds of those readers who love to muse and dream over the relics of a storied past. If by happy fortune it should do more than that,—if it should help to impress his countrymen, so many of whom annually travel in Great Britain, with the superlative importance of adorning the physical aspect and of refining the material civilisation of America by a reproduction within its borders of whatever is valuable in the long experience and whatever is noble and beautiful in the domestic and religious spirit of the British islands,—his labour will not have been in vain. The supreme need of this age in America is a practical conviction that progress does not consist in material prosperity but in spiritual advancement. Utility has long been exclusively worshipped. The welfare of the future lies in the worship of beauty. To that worship these pages are devoted, with all that it implies of sympathy with the higher instincts and faith in the divine destiny of the human race.

Many of the sketches here assembled were originally printed in the New York Tribune, with which journal their author has been continuously associated, as dramatic reviewer and as an editorial contributor, since August, 1865. They have been revised for publication in this form. Part of the paper on Sir Walter Scott first appeared in Harper's Weekly, for which periodical the author has occasionally written. The paper on the Wordsworth country was contributed to the New York Mirror. The alluring field of Scottish antiquity and romance, which the author has ventured but slightly to touch, may perhaps be explored hereafter, for treasures of contemplation that earlier seekers have left ungathered. [This implied promise has since been fulfilled, in Brown Heath and Blue Bells, 1895.]

The fact is recorded that an important recent book, 1890, called Shakespeare's True Life, written by James Walter, incorporates into its text, without credit, several passages of original description and reflection taken from the present writer's sketches of the Shakespeare country, published in Shakespeare's England, and also quotes, as his work, an elaborate narrative of a nocturnal visit to Anne Hathaway's cottage, which he never wrote and never claimed to have written. This statement is made as a safeguard against future injustice.

W. W.

1892.

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CONTENTS
	PAGE
Preface to Illustrated Edition	9
Preface to First Edition	11
CHAPTER I
Classic Shrines of England	25
CHAPTER II
Haunted Glens and Houses	36
CHAPTER III
Old York	53
CHAPTER IV
The Haunts of Moore	66
CHAPTER V
The Beautiful City of Bath	84
CHAPTER VI
The Land of Wordsworth	94
CHAPTER VII
Shakespeare Relics at Worcester	112
CHAPTER VIII
Byron and Hucknall-Torkard Church	122
CHAPTER IX
Historic Nooks of Warwickshire	141
CHAPTER X
Shakespeare's Town	150
CHAPTER XI
Up and Down the Avon	172
CHAPTER XII
Rambles in Arden	181
CHAPTER XIII
The Stratford Fountain	188
CHAPTER XIV
Bosworth Field	198
CHAPTER XV
The Home of Dr. Johnson	209
CHAPTER XVI
From London to Edinburgh	223
CHAPTER XVII
Into the Highlands	230
CHAPTER XVIII
Highland Beauties	238
CHAPTER XIX
The Heart of Scotland	248
CHAPTER XX
Sir Walter Scott	265
CHAPTER XXI
Elegiac Memorials in Edinburgh	287
CHAPTER XXII
Scottish Pictures	297
CHAPTER XXIII
Imperial Ruins	305
CHAPTER XXIV
The Land of Marmion	314

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