all who have sought thus to leave their cards in homage of the illustrious memory. Their whole surface, and even the small windows, have been written and re-written over by the pilgrims to this shrine from different countries. Here are names from the extremest ends of the Anglo-Saxon world from Newfoundland and New Zealand, and all the English-speaking countries between. The Americans have contributed a large contingent to these records of the pencil. There is something very interesting and touching, even, in the homage they bring to his name. He was the last great English poet who sung to the unbroken family of the English race. They were then all gathered around England's hearthstone, unconscious of the mighty expansion which the near future was to develop. The population of the whole island hardly equalled that of the State of New York to-day. Just below the point of diffluence, about a quarter of a century before England put forth the first rivulet from the river of her being and history to fill the fountain of a new national existence in the Western World. Shakespeare was at his culm111ation as a poet. We Americans meet him first when we trace back our history to its origin. He of all the old masters stands in the very doorway of "Our Old Home" to welcome us with the radiant smile of his genius. We were Americans and Milton was an Englishman when he began to
