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 with a small, thick-grassed park before it, a grove behind, and beyond all, the steep shoulder of the chalk downs, a gap in which, at Freshwater, showed the dark-blue horizon of the Channel. Leaving my luggage at one of the two little inns, I walked to the house, with lines from 'Maud' chiming in my mind. 'The dry-tongued laurel' shone glossily in the sun, the cedar 'sighed for Lebanon' on the lawn, and 'the liquid azure bloom of a crescent of sea' glimmered afar.

"I had not been two minutes in the drawing-room before Tennyson walked in. So unlike are the published portraits of him that I was almost in doubt as to his identity. The engraved head suggests a moderate stature, but he is tall and broad-shouldered as a son of Anak, with hair, beard, and eyes of southern darkness. Something in the lofty brow and aquiline nose suggests Dante, but such a deep, mellow chest-voice never could have come from Italian lungs.

"He proposed a walk, as the day was wonderfully