London to John O Groat's. 101 



It is rising every year to new generations that never 

 saw its rays before. "When he laid down his pen, at 

 the end of his last drama, the whole English-speaking 

 race in both hemispheres did not number twice the pre- 

 sent population of London. Xow, .seventy-five millions, 

 peopling mighty continents, speak the tongue he raised 

 to be the grandest of all earth's speeches ; and those 

 who people the antipodes claim to offer the best homage 

 to his genius. Thus it will go on to the end of time. 

 As the language he clothed with such power and might 

 shall spread itself over the earth, and be spoken, too, 

 by races born to another tongue, his life-rays will per- 

 meate the minds of countless myriads, and the more 

 widely they diverge and the farther they reach, the 

 brighter and warmer will be the glow and the flow of 

 that disk of light that embosoms and illumines his birth- 

 place in England. 



What is true of Straiford-upon-Avon, is equally true 

 of Abbotsford, of the birth-place of Milton, Burns, 

 Bunyan, Baxter, and other great mind*, which have 

 shone each like a sun or star in its sphere. Xow what 

 one word, recognised as legitimate in scientific termin- 

 ology, would describe fully one of these disks of light 

 cast by a human life upon a certain space of earth, not 

 as a fugitive flash, but as a permanent illumination ? 

 Photograph would not do it, because its meaning is 



