of you; and I now thank you for putting me in mind of my duty.'

Then the Royal Visitor, who had so shown her condescension to, and love of, Leafy Warwickshire, the Heart of her England, entered the princely gates of Warwick Castle, and at night-time, when the dark clouds had fallen upon the place of royal sojourn, the illuminations and fireworks gave forth their glowing splendours, with scarcely less glory than those which Queen Elizabeth had just left behind her—inside and outside the regal Towers of Kenilworth Castle.

THE LADY GODIVA ROMANCE. Such is the physical conformation, and some of the history and romance of Leafy Warwickshire 'The Heart of England.' If more were necessary to emphasise the fact that Shakespeare's country is the home of romance as certainly as it is the home of history and literature, it can be found in that telling tale and act of sacrifice and charity told and performed at Coventry more than eight hundred years ago.

Whether the storied ride of the saintly Lady Godiva naked through the irregular

streets of famed Coventry is merely a myth, an invention of the chroniclers of old, or a story without any foundation in fact, does not much matter now. The romantic glamour of centuries has endued it with a personal reality. All women, and most men, accept it as gospel, and for my part, I deem it too loving and pretty an incident to bury in the vortex of rejected fables. The leading points of the romance are these.

Earl Leofric, in 1043 the fifth Earl of Mercia, was a great protector and benefactor to the ancient city of 'Coventrie,' which place derived its name from three Saxon Nunneries which existed there ten centuries ago. He was the happy possessor of divers estates in the Midland shires, and had a palatial seat at 'Conventry,' as the city was then called. He was also blessed with a most beautiful and charitable Countess for his wife, to wit, Godiva, daughter of Thorold, Sheriff of Lincolnshire, founder of the famous Abbey of Spalding. Now, although Earl Leofric gave largess to the ecclesiastical foundations of Worcester, Coventry, Evesham, and other places, yet there was a certain

grimness about him in levying a harsh tax upon the good folk of Coventry.

Under this tax they seemed to have groaned, and the Lady Godiva, renowned for goodness and charity, melted with sympathy for their woes. She sought her Lord in their behalf. He grimly repulsed her, and forbade her to again intrude upon the matter. But Godiva was a woman, and a beautiful one withal; and the more Leofric scolded, the more she importuned him. At last he lost his temper, and said, as a final settlement, that he would repeal the impost, if, as Dugdale has it, 'she would ride on horseback naked from one end of the town to the other in sight of all the people.'

Out of love for Godiva, however, and to allow her to perform their tax-removing sacrifice with the least pain to her modesty, all the inhabitants with great delicacy withdrew from the streets and windows while she passed gracefully by. One man, however, a tailor, could not resist the temptation to look, and total blindness was the reward of his presumption. Thus did Peeping Tom become a byword, and the name of Godiva a benedic

tion, for all years to come. In token of the Lady's charitable ordeal, a stainedglass window containing the figures of the Earl and his Countess, was placed in Holy Trinity Church, Coventry, during the reign of Richard the Second. The Earl holds a Charter in his right hand, with the words:

'I, Luriche, for love of Thee,
Doe make Coventre Tol-free,'

written thereon.

This, then, is the touching and romantic story of Lady Godiva's lonely ride through the ancient streets of Coventry, the City of the Three Tall Spires, and the punishment meted out to the inquisitive tailor. Without this touch of glamour Warwickshire would still be the Heart of Romance; but with it, combined with all the other historic and literary circumstances which are peculiar to its soil, it is the Heart of England which acts like a magnet and draws all the world of sight-seeing pilgrims into its centre.

II

THE FOREST OF ARDEN

ROSALIND. Well, this is the forest of Arden.
TOUCHSTONE. Aye, now am I in Arden.

As You Like It (Act II. Scene iv.)

WHEN once in Warwickshire, the Heart of England, the steps of the pilgrims, coming in great multitudes from all parts of the world, and especially from the spacious Western Land where the StarSpangled ensign floats over a people and a nation free as the chartered wind, seem instinctively to take their way to those charmed spots, far from the madding crowd, where Shakespeare himself wandered in the days of his mortal life; and, regarded from a picturesque point of view, without any poetic consideration at all, though it is perfectly certain that here the sightseer is walking in the very footsteps of Shakespeare, there is no more delightful a visiting ground in all England than the sered and wasting remnants of the once great Forest of Arden in Warwickshire.