"Know'st thou," he said, "thy gift of old?" And in the hand he lifted up The Pontiff marvelled to behold Once more his mother's silver cup. "Thy prayers and alms have risen, and bloom He spake and vanished. Gregory fell Their eyes of flesh had seen the Lord. The old-time legend is not vain; On gray Vicenza's frescoed wall. I. THERE is a place called Somersby in Lincolnshire, where an old white reetory stands on the slope of a hill, and the winding lanes are shadowed by tall ashes and elm-trees, and where two brooks meet at the bottom of the glebe field. It is a place far away from us in silence and in distance, lying upon the "ridgèd wolds." They bound the horizon of the rectory garden, whence they are to be seen flow ing to meet the sky. I have never known Somersby, but I have often heard it described, and the pastoral country all about, and the quiet scattered homes. One can picture the rectory to one's self with something of a monastic sweetness and quiet; an ancient Norman cross is standing in the church-yard, and perhaps there is still a sound in the air of the bleating of flocks. It all comes before one as one reads the sketch of Tennyson's native place in the Homes and Haunts of the British Poets: the village not far from the fens, "in a pretty pastoral district of softly sloping hills and large ash-trees.... The little glen in the neighborhood called by the old monkish name of Holywell." Mr. Tennyson sometimes speaks of this glen, which he remembers white with snow-drops in the season; and who will not recall the exquisite invocation: face of our Poet Laureate the features of this child, one of many deep-eyed sons and daughters born in the quiet rectory among the elm-trees. Alfred Tennyson was born on the 6th of August, 1809. He has heard many and many a voice calling to him since the time when he listened to the wind as he played alone in his father's garden, or joined the other children at their games and jousts. They were a noble little clan of poets and of knights, coming of a knightly race, with castles to defend, with mimic tournaments to fight. Somersby was so far away from the world, so behindhand in its echoes (which must have come there softened through all manner of green and tranquil things, and as it were hushed into pastoral silence), that though the early part of the century was stirring with the clang of legions, few of its rumors seem to have reached the children. They never heard at the time of the battle of Waterloo. They grew up together playing their own games, living their own life; and where is such life to be found as that of a happy, eager family of boys and girls before Doubt, the steps of Time, the shocks of Chance, the blows of Death, have come to shake their creed? These handsome children had beyond most children that wondrous toy at their command which some people call imagination. The boys played great games like "Come from the woods that belt the gray hill-side, Arthur's knights; they were champions To purl o'er matted cress and ribbed sand, Pour round mine ears the livelong bleat The wind that goes blowing where it listeth, once, in the early beginning of this century, came sweeping through the garden of this old Lincolnshire rectory, and, as the wind blew, a sturdy child of five years old with shining locks stood opening his arms upon the blast and letting himself be blown along, and as he travelled on he made his first line of poetry and said, "I hear a voice that's speaking in the wind," and he tossed his arms, and the gust whirled on, sweeping into the great abyss of winds. One might perhaps still trace in the noble familiar VOL. LXVIII-No. 403.-2 The and warriors defending a stone heap, or again they would set up opposing camps with a king in the midst of each. king was a willow wand stuck into the ground, with an outer circle of immortals to defend him of firmer, stiffer sticks. Then each party would come with stones, hurling at each other's king, and trying to overthrow him. Perhaps as the day wore on they became romancers, leaving the jousts deserted. When dinner-time came, and they all sat round the table, each in turn put a chapter of his history underneath the potato bowl-long endless histories, chapter after chapter diffuse, absorbing, unending, as are the stories of real life of which each sunrise opens on a new part; some of these romances were in letters, like Clarissa Harlowe. Alfred used to tell a story which lasted for months, and which was called "The Old Horse.' the eldest, Frederick, who was educated at Eton, is known as the author of a very imaginative volume of poems. Charles was the second son, and Alfred, whose name is more widely known, was the third. He and Charles were sent for a few years to the Grammar School at Louth, where the Laureate still remembers walking adorned with blue ribbons in a procession for the proclamation of the coronation of George the Fourth. The old wives said at the time that the boys made the prettiest part of the show. Alfred's first verses, so I once heard him | fred was one of twelve children, of whom say, were written upon a slate which his brother Charles put into his hand one Sunday at Louth, when all the elders of the party were going into church, and the child was left alone. Charles gave him a subject-the flowers in the garden-and when he came back from church little Alfred brought the slate to his brother all covered with written lines of blank verse. They were made on the models of Thomson's Seasons, the only poetry he had ever read. One can picture it all to one's self, the flowers in the garden, the verses, the little poet with waiting eyes, and the young brother scanning the lines. "Yes, you can write," said Charles, and he gave Alfred back the slate. Charles Tennyson-Charles Turner he was afterward called, for he took the name with a property which he inherited -was little Alfred's special friend and brother. In his own most sweet degree, Charles Tennyson too was a true poet. Who that has ever read his sonnets will cease to love them? His brother loves and quotes them with affection. Coleridge loved them; James Spedding, wise critic, life-long friend, read them with unaltered delight from his youth to his much-honored age. In an introductory essay to a volume of the collected sonnets, |