274 EVERSLEY GARDENS 



those symposiums, when the talk ranged up 

 and down the universe, from the beetle that 

 crawled in the grass to the last bill before 

 Parliament, from man's ways and works to 

 things Divine. 



Strangely diversified were the visitors who 

 found their way to the Rectory in those days. 

 One Sunday, I seem to see a tired compositor 

 from a great London printing-house, who had 

 come down to talk over the grievances of his 

 fellow-workmen. Another Sunday, that Royal 

 personage whom my father loved with such 

 devoted loyalty, sitting on his fine brown 

 charger at the door, before riding back to 

 the camp of his gallant loth Hussars in 

 Bramshill Park. Yet again, gentle Queen 

 Emma of the Sandwich Islands, coming to stay 

 with the man whose books she and her hus- 

 band had read in their far-off Pacific kingdom, 

 and to see what English boys' cricket was like 

 at Wellington College. Or Alfred Tennyson 

 as he then was smoking pipes in the study, 

 when he came to see whether the beautiful old 

 Brick House Farm, close to the Mount, would 

 be a fit place to settle in when he won his lovely 



