But it was not for Freshwater, old or new; not for its church, which has some very fine bits, and an epitaph celebrating "the most virtuous Mrs. Anne Toppe, in her widowhood, by a memorable providence, preserved out of the flames of the Irish rebellion;" not for the really superb character of the coast-cliffs, just here mined into caverns only accessible from the sea, with huge detached masses of chalk, one hollowed into a grand arch, through which the waters rush with magnificent music; not for "the Needles," the extreme western points of the middle range of downs, isolated masses of rock that are very fine seen from seaward, entering "the Race" between the Isle of Wight and Dorset; not for Alum Bay, whose gay sands we have all seen fantastically arranged in landscapes under glass, and whose cliffs have their vertical strata in brilliant stripes of deep, purplish-red, blue, yellow, gray that is almost white, and jet black, and contrast delightfully with the snowy sides of "the Needles;"--not for any or all the sublimity of sea and shore, did I make the pilgrimage to this out-of-the-way island corner. I went, as most lovers of our English tongue in its strength and poetry will go, because here for years was Tennyson's home--the home wherein most of his poems have been written--Farringford, Where, far from noise of smoke and town, I watch the twilight falling brown All round a careless-ordered garden, Close to the ridge of a noble down. You'll have no scandal while you dine, But honest talk and wholesome wine, And only hear the magpie gossip Garrulous, under a roof of pine. For groves of pine on either hand. To break the blasts of winter, stand, And farther on, the hoary Channel Tumbles a breaker on chalk and sand. The house is by no means beautiful, but it is in the midst of such a network of peacefulest leafy lanes, the near-by surroundings are so grand, the "groves of pine" and the "careless-ordered garden" look so utterly fitted to be haunted by a poet's step and musings, the whole place must be so associated, so saturated with his reveries and fancies, so peopled with his creations, that it seems impossible any other spot _could_ be home to him; and one feels a great pang of sadness that the only true master of Farringford should have felt himself driven to leave it, and to set up his household gods where he would be comparatively unknown and unhunted.