American Ideas for English Readers

The memorial fountain presented to Stratford-on-Avon by Mr. George W. Childs, of Philadelphia, was inaugurated Monday, October 17, 1887. Mr. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL sent the following letter:

I should more deeply regret my inability to be present at the interesting ceremonial of the 17th were it not that my countrymen will be more fitly and adequately represented there by their accomplished Minister, Mr. Phelps. The occasion is certainly a most interesting one. The monument which you accept to-day in behalf of your townsmen commemorates at once the most marvellous of Englishmen and the jubilee year of the august lady whose name is honored wherever the language is spoken, of which he was the greatest master. No symbol could more aptly serve this double purpose than a fountain, for surely no poet ever poured forth so broad a river of speech as he, whether he was the author of the "Novum Organum" also or not. Nor could the purity of her character and example be better typified than by the current that shall flow forever from the sources opened here to-day. It was Washington Irving who first embodied in his delightful English the emotion which Stratford-on-Avon awakes in the heart of the pilgrim, and especially of the American pilgrim, who visits it. I am glad to think that this memorial should be the gift of an American and thus serve to recall the kindred blood of two great nations, joint heirs of the same noble language and of the genius that has given it a cosmopolitan significance.