Farringford, of course, is enclosed by hedges and trees, literally surrounded by them. The house itself is still further protected from the gaze of the outer world by an inner circle of trees and shrubbery. The estate is bisected by the lovely lane which has been described in every account ever written of Tennyson, and photographed a thousand times. It, in turn, has a hedgerow on each side and is over-arched by elms. It is really an approach to the farm which is attached to the home acres, and through it, for walking purposes, the public has a right-of-way. At the crest of the rising ground is a little green door, set in the high-banked hedge which guards the home lawns, and by this green door the poet would pass to the down along another lane which runs at right angles to the one associated with his {120} name and immediately opposite the green door. A few feet beyond this, a rustic bridge overhead spans Tennyson's Lane, and by this bridge the poet could cross into a woodland without having to enter the Lane, where his privacy might be disturbed, and so walk to Maiden's Croft, where a little green summerhouse stands under the trees and where he often wrote and meditated. From this summerhouse he had the best view of the beautiful and noble down. From the windows of Farringford there are exquisite views of seascape and landscape, with lush fields in the foreground,--a view, on sunny days, of quite un-English colour. In the distance St. Catherine's Point and above it the white crown of the Landslip, and above that the dark shape of St. Boniface Down, lifting its head eight hundred feet toward the clouds; in the middle distance a tumble of green hills, and to the right the sea dappled with shafts of light and colour ever changing,--mauves and blues and greens, splashed with browns and reds, shifting and playing there under the sun. It might be Italian sea and Italian landscape. And Tennyson called it his "bit of Italy." You can see it just as he saw it, if you pause at an iron gate on your left, near the top of the rise in the Lane, and you will have in the foreground a group of Italian-like trees beyond which Stag Rock and Arched Rock stand with their feet in the tiny bay. It is of all bits of English land and water one of the most memorable for form and colour,--this little Italy. And it drew Tennyson to Farringford and held him there. {121} Tennyson was not seen much in the village, but he often walked to the bay. Here is my first glimpse of him: a tall man looking like a cloaked brigand; his head was swallowed by a great hat, soft and black, and he was pointing with a stick. "Making yourself at home here, aren't you?" he was understood to say in something between a rumble and growl.