’Mid groans of care and deep despair And manhood’s bitter tear, That gentle boy, all hope and joy, Betrayed no signs of fear. A mariner, who strove in vain To nerve his troubled soul, Thought of his wife and babes with pain, Nor could his fears control— Approached the boy and with a loud And rough defiant tone, ‘Tell me, and art thou then endowed With courage all thine own? Dar’st thou defy or doubt the sky Hath power to overwhelm?’ The gentle child looked up and smiled ‘My father’s at the helm.’ Oh, could we think as that blest child, Whilst wandering here below, We should not dread the tempest wild, The storm of human woe! The waves of misery might dash Above our little bark, And human wrath like lightning flash Then leave our life track dark! His soul all calm, no thoughts of harm The Christian overwhelm, Firm in the thought with safety fraught His Father’s at the helm.” Later in life she printed, for a limited circulation only, Historical and Biographical Catalogues of the Pictures at Longleat, Hinchingbrooke, Panshanger and Westonbirt, to which Lowell was probably right in attributing a serious value. Of all her writings it may be said that their chief charm consists in their reproduction of herself. Standing alone they would have stood strongly. They were meant for her friends, and to her friends, who were many, they conveyed a pleasure which was largely due to connection easily traceable between what was written and her who wrote. The marriage in 1884 of her niece Audrey, the only daughter of my uncle Charles, with Hallam Tennyson, increased the already keen friendship between her and our last great poet. How intimate it was and how much he valued it, may be gathered even by him who runs, from the stanzas which he sent to her with one of his latest poems. She received them in the spring of 1888 when still mourning the death of her friend Lady Marian Alford. SPRING-FLOWERS. “While you still delay to take Your leave of town, Our elm tree’s ruddy-hearted blossom-flake Is fluttering down. Be truer to your promise. There! I heard One cuckoo call. Be needle to the magnet of your word, Nor wait, till all Our vernal bloom from every vale and plain And garden pass, And all the gold from each laburnum chain Drop to the grass.