I Endeavoured To Merit His Confidence By Telling Him In My Turn Of My Journey On Foot Through England; And By Relating To Him A Few Of The Most Remarkable Of My Adventures.

He frankly told me he thought it was venturing a great deal, yet he applauded the design of my journey, and did not severely censure my plan.

On my asking him why Englishmen, who were so remarkable for acting up to their own notions and ideas, did not, now and then, merely to see life in every point of view, travel on foot. "Oh," said he, "we are too rich, too lazy, and too proud."

And most true it is, that the poorest Englishman one sees, is prouder and better pleased to expose himself to the danger of having his neck broken on the outside of a stage, than to walk any considerable distance, though he might walk ever so much at his ease. I own I was frightened and distressed when I saw the women, where we occasionally stopped, get down from the top of the coach. One of them was actually once in much danger of a terrible fall from the roof, because, just as she was going to alight, the horses all at once unexpectedly went on. From Oxford to Birmingham is sixty- two miles; but all that was to be seen between the two places was entirely lost to me, for I was again mewed up in a post-coach, and driven along with such velocity from one place to another, that I seemed to myself as doing nothing less than travelling.

My companion, however, made me amends in some measure for this loss. He seemed to be an exceedingly good-tempered and intelligent man; and I felt in this short time a prepossession in his favour one does not easily form for an ordinary person. This, I flattered myself, was also the case with him, and it would mortify me not a little to think he had quite forgotten me, as I am sure I shall never forget him.

Just as we had been sometime eagerly conversing about Shakespeare, we arrived, without either of us having thought of it, at Stratford- upon-Avon, Shakespeare's birthplace, where our coach stopped, that being the end of one stage. We were still two-and-twenty miles from Birmingham, and ninety-four from London. I need not tell you what our feelings were, on thus setting our feet on classic ground.

It was here that perhaps the greatest genius nature ever produced was born. Here he first lisped his native tongue; here first conceived the embryos of those compositions which were afterwards to charm a listening world; and on these plains the young Hercules first played. And here, too, in this lowly hut, with a few friends, he happily spent the decline of his life, after having retired from the great theatre of that busy world whose manners he had so faithfully portrayed.

The river Avon is here pretty broad, and a row of neat though humble cottages, only one storey high, with shingled roofs, are ranged all along its banks.

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