providing religious minds reverent of the past with an alternative to mere mediævalism, and gently curbing Science in the character she sometimes assumes of “a wild Pallas of the brain.” When the natural moodiness of Tennyson’s temperament is considered, the prevalent optimism of his ideas, both as regards the individual and the State, appears infinitely creditable to him. These are ideas natural to sane and reflecting Englishmen, unchallenged in quiet times, but which may be obscured or overwhelmed in seasons of great popular excitement. The intellectual force of Tennyson is perhaps chiefly shown in the art and attractiveness with which they are set forth; even much that might have appeared tame or prosaic is invested with all the charms of imagination, and commends itself to the poet equally with the statesman. Tennyson is not the greatest of poets, but appreciation of his poems is one of the surest criteria of poetical taste; he is not one of the greatest of thinkers, but agreement with his general cast of thought is an excellent proof of sanity; many singers have been more Delphic in their inspiration, but few, by maxims of temperate wisdom, have provided their native land with such a Palladium. RICHARD GARNETT. [Illustration: _From a photo by Messrs. F. Frith & Co., Reigate_ TENNYSON’S MEMORIAL, BEACON HILL, FRESHWATER] BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE [Sidenote: =Somersby Rectory, the birthplace of Alfred Tennyson= _see page 3_] Alfred Tennyson was born on Sunday, August 6th, 1809, at Somersby, a village in North Lincolnshire between Horncastle and Spilsby. His father, the Rev. Dr. George Clayton Tennyson, Rector of Somersby, married in 1805 Elizabeth Fytche, daughter of the Vicar of Louth, in the same county; and, of their twelve children, Alfred was the fourth. [Illustration: _From a portrait by G. F. Watts, R.A._ ALFRED TENNYSON Rischgitz Collection] [Sidenote: =Somersby Brook= _see page 1_] He always spoke with affectionate remembrance of his early home: of the woodbine trained round his nursery window; of the mediæval-looking dining-hall, with its pointed stained-glass casements; of the pleasant drawing-room, lined with bookshelves and furnished with yellow upholstery. The lawn in front of the house, where he composed his early poem, “A Spirit Haunts the Year’s Last Hours,” was overshadowed on one side by wych-elms, on the other by larch and sycamore trees. On the south was a path bounded by a flower-border, and beyond “a garden bower’d close” sloping gradually to the field at the bottom of which ran the Somersby Brook That loves To purl o’er matted cress and ribbed sand, Or dimple in the dark of rushy coves, Drawing into his narrow earthen urn In every elbow and turn, The filtered tribute of the rough woodland.