“Irving paid me a great compliment when he said that I would have made a fine actor!” In the morning, Hallam and I walked in the garden before breakfast. Farringford is an old feudal farm, and some of the trees are magnificent—ilex, pine, cedar; primrose and wild parsley everywhere, and underneath a great cedar a wilderness of trailing ivy. The garden gave me the idea that all the wild growth had been protected by a loving hand. After breakfast Hallam and I walked in the beautiful wood behind the house, where beyond the hedgerows and the little wood rose the great bare rolling Down, at the back of which is a great sheer cliff five hundred feet high. We sat in the summer-house where Tennyson had written nearly all of _Enoch Arden_. It had been lined with wood, which Alfred Tennyson himself had carved; but now the bare bricks were visible in places. The egregious relic hunters had whittled away piecemeal the carved wood. They had also smashed the windows, which Tennyson had painted with sea-plants and dragons; and had carried off the pieces! When we returned I was brought up to Tennyson’s room. He was not feeling well. He sat in a great chair with the cut play on his knee, one finger between the pages as though to mark a place. He had been studying the alterations; and as he did not look happy, I feared that there might be something not satisfactory with regard to some of the cuts. Presently he said to me suddenly: “Who is God, the Virgin?” “Who is _what_?” I asked, bewildered as to his meaning; I feared I could not have heard aright. “God, the Virgin! That is what I want to know too. Here it is!” “As he spoke he opened the play where his finger marked it. He handed it to me and there to my astonishment I read: “I do commend my soul to God, the Virgin....” When Irving had been cutting the speech he had omitted to draw his pencil through the last two words. The speech as written ran thus: “I do commend my soul to God, the Virgin, St. Denis of France, and St. Alphege of England, And all the tutelary saints of Canterbury.” In doing the scissors-work he had been guided by the pencil-marks, and so had made the error. The incident amused Tennyson very much, and put him in better spirits. We went downstairs into what in the house is called the “ballroom,” a great sunny room with the wall away from the light covered with a great painting by Lear of a tropical scene intended for _Enoch Arden_. Here we walked up and down for a long time, the old man leaning on my arm. He told me that he had often thought of making a collection of the hundred best stories. “Tell me some of them?” I asked softly. Whereupon he told me quite a number, all excellent. Such as the following: “A noble at the Court of Louis XVI. was extremely like the King, who on it being pointed out to him, sent for him and asked him: “‘Was your mother ever at Court?’ Bowing low he replied: “‘No, sire! But my father was!’” Again: