"It was just six weeks before his twenty-sixth birthday. He was tall, slight, and, in spite of his blindness, graceful. He seemed to me young-looking even for his twenty-six years. He had a noble and beautiful forehead. His brown eyes were perfect in shape, and even in color, save for a dimness like a white mist that obscured the pupil, but which you perceived only when you were quite near to him. His hair and beard were dark brown, with warm glints of chestnut; and the color came and went in his cheeks as in those of a sensitive girl. His face was singularly refined, but his lips were full and pleasure-loving, and suggested dumbly how cruel must be the limitations of blindness to a nature hungry for love and for beauty. I had been greatly interested, before seeing him, in his poems, and to meet him was a memorable delight. "He and the sister, who was his inseparable companion, soon became my close friends, and with them both this friendship lasted till the end." The poetry of Swinburne had for her a fascination from the first, and she was attracted also by the personality of the poet. Writing an article upon a new volume of his, she submitted the copy to him before publishing it in the _Athenæum_. His acknowledgment was as follows: _Mr. Swinburne to Mrs. Moulton_ DECEMBER 19, 1877. DEAR MADAME: I am sincerely obliged for the kindness and courtesy to which I am indebted for the sight of the MS. herewith returned. Of course my only feeling of hesitation as to the terms in which I ought to acknowledge and answer the application which accompanied it arises merely from a sense of delicacy in seeming to accept, if not thereby to endorse, an estimate altogether too flattering to the self-esteem of its object. But even at the risk of vanity or self-complacency, I will simply express my gratitude for your too favourable opinion, and my grateful sense of the delicacy and thoughtfulness which has permitted me a sight of the yet unprinted pages which convey it. Yours sincerely, ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. Leaving London in August, 1876, Mrs. Moulton went with Kate Field to visit Lawrence Hutton and his mother, who had a house for the summer in Scotland. In September, in company with Dr. Westland Marston, his son and daughter, and Miss Hardy, she made a visit to Étretat. The place and the company made a combination altogether delightful. An entry in her diary for this time, of which the date is merely "Midnight of September 1," records her enthusiasm.