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Stratford-on-Avon, and alighting in front of Shakespeare's house. We entered it as a place of pilgrimage. I had seen the house and its memorials, the room where Shakespeare was born, the inscrip- tions of Dickens and of Byron some forty years back, in 1871, while I was yet a student in London. I saw nothing new except that an oil-painting of Shakespeare had been added; and that the birthplace of the great dramatist now possessed a Shakespeare Theatre, which did not exist forty years before. At the house itself we were welcomed by the Mayor in his robes of office, and one of our delegates made a reply. All this did not take more than ten minutes, and the function was performed in the little garden attached to the house.
How mindful the English people are of the memories of their great dead! In his own lifetime Shakespeare was not the towering and immortal figure that he now is—and even a prophet is not always honoured among his own people—, yet how scrupulously and reverentially the memorials of Shakespeare were preserved by his contemporaries. How different is all this in India! We worship our gods of clay and stone in the firm faith that the Divine Spirit dwells therein; but the living gods who move about us and amongst us, doing, daring, dying for the country, are nowhere in our estima- tion. We persecute them when necessary for our own ends, and we invoke the holy name of religion and love of country to conceal our spite. The great Ram Mohun Roy was outcasted by our ances- tors; and it was only when death had obliterated personal jealousies and bitterness, and when we could view the Raja and his work in the cool, colourless atmosphere of reason and solid achievement, that we realized his worth and hastened to raise a memorial in his honour, in the place of his birth. A nation that does not know how to honour its heroes does not deserve to have them and will not have them.
From Shakespeare's birthplace we hurried on to Oxford in the dim and disappearing twilight. The country around, nature and men, were preparing for the welcome rest of the night. We too felt tired, despite the varied enjoyments of the day; and as I entered my room in the hotel, I felt that I had done a good day's work and had earned my rest. Our programme for the following day was cut and dried. It had all been arranged beforehand. I never saw an abler or more effective organizer than Sir Harry Brittain, who was looking after us and was our guide, philosopher and friend. Cease- less in his work by day and night, no one could perceive on his