3 i6 MY LIKE 



in meantime we had seen Lady Tennyson and her son and 

 daughter-in-law, and been shown round the grounds. After 

 luncheon we four men retired to the study, with its three great 

 windows looking south-east over the grand expanse of the 



finely wooded Weald of Kent. Here Tennyson lit his pipe, 

 1 we sat round the fire and soon got on the subject of spir- 

 itualism, which was evidently what he had wished to talk to me 

 about. I told him some of my experiences, and replied to some 

 of his difficulties — the usual difficulties of those who, though 

 inclined to believe, have seen nothing, and find the phenomena 

 as described so different from what they think they ought to 

 be. He was evidently greatly impressed by the evidence, and 

 wished to see something. I gave him the names of one or two 

 mediums whom I believed to be quite trustworthy, but whether 

 he ever had any sittings with them I did not hear. 



Then we talked a little about the tropics and of the 

 scenery of the Eastern islands ; and, taking down a volume 

 he read, in his fine, deep, chanting voice, his description of 

 Enoch Arden's island: 



" The mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns 

 And winding glades high up like ways to heaven, 

 The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes, 

 The lightning flash of insect or of bird, 

 The lustre of the long convolvuluses 

 That coiled around the stately stems, and ran 

 Ev'n to the limit of the land, the glows 

 And glories of the broad belt of the world — 

 All these he saw; but what he fain had seen 

 He could not see, the kindly human face, 

 Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard 

 The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean fowl, 

 The league-long roller thundering on the beach, 

 The moving whisper of huge trees that branch'd 

 And blossom'd to the zenith, or the sweep 

 Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave, 

 As down the shore he ranged, or all day long 

 Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge, 

 A shipwreck'd sailor waiting for a sail : 

 No sail from day to day, but every day 

 The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts 

 Among the palms and ferns and precipices; 



