Proceeding along the narrow lane,—so narrow, indeed, that only at certain points can two vehicles pass each other, and shut in by banks of sandstone,—we reach, on the right, a well in the rock, the latter green and grey with moss, lichen and fern, the water clear as crystal. It is, indeed, a lonely, quiet spot, fit place for musing meditation, in a poet’s wanderings. Just a cottage or two to remind one that there is a population, but not obtrusive. The rectory is the second, and larger, of two houses on the right, though now occupied as a farmhouse. It is a quaint, unpretending, old-time residence, uniting manor house and rectory in one. At its eastern end is a semi-ecclesiastical addition, with pointed windows having coloured glass of no particular merit. In the ground-floor apartment in this is a carved mantlepiece, the work of the Laureate’s father. Just beyond is a brick castellated building, “The Grange,” said to have been designed by Vanbrugh. Its construction is massive, and its curious cellars and other details make it something of a “Romance in brick.” Certainly it is a fair example of that solid style of building which gave rise to his (suggested) epitaph,— Lie heavy on him, Earth; for he Laid many a heavy weight on thee. One can hardly help feeling that it must have been a reduction from some original, more ambitious, design; and those gloomy cellars may well have harboured the smuggler, or his illicit hoards, in days when not only humbler boards, but the table of parson and squire, boasted unblushingly of the “Schiedam” which had not paid duty, and was thought the better of it. This house is the reputed home of Tennyson’s “Northern Farmer,” whose dialect, however, as given by the poet, is generally considered by experts, however picturesque, to be considerably overdrawn. {255} In Somersby itself, except for its secluded beauty, there would be little to interest the visitor were it not for its association with the early years of the Tennysons. And one of the present writer’s earliest recollections is, as a small boy, driving his sisters, in a donkey cart through the village; when they were accosted by two strollers on the road, one of whom was Alfred Tennyson, then on a visit to the rectory, and not yet Laureate.