Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ALFRED TENNYSON In the beginning of May 1890 I spent two days at Farringford. In the short walk to the house, from where the Freshwater coach was left, I felt—quite as much as upon my earliest visit to Stratford-on-Avon, or when I first went to Grasmere and walked thence to Rydal—that I was approaching one of the shrines of England. It recalled days in Edinburgh, thirty-five years before, when, by the young student of Philosophy Sir William Hamilton was considered an intellectual demigod, and conversation with him deemed one of the highest honours possible. In the avenue leading to the house, spreading trees just opening into leaf, with spring flowers around and beneath—yellow cowslips, and blue forget-me-nots—and the song of birds in the branches overhead, seemed a fitting prelude to all that followed. Shortly after I was seated in the ante-room, the poet's son appeared; and, as his father was engaged, he said, ' Come, and see my mother.' We went into the drawing-room, where the old lady was reclining on a couch. Immediately the lines beginning ' Such age, how beautiful' came into mind. At the first sight of Lady Tennyson her graciousness,and the radiant though fragile beauty of old age, were alike conspicuous. Both her eye and her voice had an inexpressible charm. She inquired with much interest for the widow of one of my colleagues at the University,1 who used formerly to live in the island, close to Farringford, and whose family were friends as well as near neighbours. Tennyson soon entered, and at once proposed that we should go out of doors. After a short stroll on the lawn under the cedars, we went into what he himself has called his ' careless-ordered garden,' walked round it, and then sat down in the small summer-house. It is a quaint rectangular garden, sloping ...