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—Godwin’s Essay on Sepulchres.

We do great injustice to the College of Mandarins, if we think that body at the present time ignorant of the marvels of Shakespeare. No: Canton has produced its commentator, and, by means of his explanatory genius, it is hoped that in a few years the whole Celestial Empire will, in the fulness of its knowledge, bow to the majesty of the poet. At this moment we have before us a radiant evidence of the admission of the great teacher into the Sacred City: believe it, astounded reader, Shakespeare has gone farther than Nieuhoff. England, however—that England who has shown herself such an idolatress of her darling son—who has encircled the house in which he first drew breath with a golden rail—who has secured it from possible destruction at the hands of the bigot, by making it the property of the State—that England who, when the tree planted by the bard was felled by the axe, wept as she turned the timber into ’bacco-stoppers^[4]—that England who, even at the present time, only a little more than two centuries after his death, has already begun to think of the propriety of erecting, at some future day, a national monument to her poet—that England cannot, after the many and affecting instances of her deep and maternal love towards her most illustrious child, refuse to aid in the dissemination of Shakespearanity in any corner of the world, but at the present interesting crisis, more particularly in the empire of China.