whom the primrose is anything else than a primrose--a star, or a sun, or a fairy's shield, or a forsaken maiden. And then lastly, there is the man who perceives rightly in spite of his feelings, and to whom the primrose is for ever nothing else than itself--a little flower apprehended in the very plain and leafy fact of it, whatever and how many soever the associations and passions may be that crowd around it." My father's imagination was of the second order, Tennyson's of the third. My father often perceived wrongly, or not at all, because he felt so strongly. Consequently, while the bold outlines of mountain scenery and the large vistas of sea and down in the Isle of Wight moved him greatly, he did not look at them with the accurate eye of an artist; and the minute beauty of flowers and trees was non-existent for him. Tennyson, on the contrary, had the most delicate and true perception of the minute as well as the great. Each man chose for his home a site which suited his taste. Weston was on a high hill with a wide view. Farringford was lower down and buried in trees. The two men used sometimes to walk together on the great Down which stretches from the Needles rocks to Freshwater Bay, on which the boundary between Tennyson's property and my father's is marked by the dyke beyond the Tennyson memorial cross. At other times they walked in the Freshwater lanes. And there was a suggestion in these different surroundings of their sympathy and of their difference. The immense expanse of scenery visible from the Beacon Down was equally inspiring to both, but the lanes and fields which were full of inspiration to Tennyson had nothing in them which appealed to W. G. Ward. If he heard a bird singing, the only suggestion it conveyed to him was of a tiresome being who kept him awake at night. Trees were only the unpleasant screens which stood in the way of the view of the Solent from his house, and which he cut down as fast as they grew up. To Tennyson, on the contrary--as we see constantly in his poetry--there was a whole world of interest in Nature created by his knowledge of botany and natural history, as well as by his exceptionally accurate and observant eye. Let me quote the words of a great critic--the late Mr. Hutton--on this characteristic of the Poet: No poet has so many and such accurate references to the vegetable world, and yet at the same time references so thoroughly poetic. He calls dark hair More black than ash-buds in the front of March; auburn hair, In gloss and hue the chestnut, when the shell Divides three-fold to show the fruit within. He is never tired of reflecting in his poetry the physiology of flowers and trees and buds. The "living smoke" of the yew is twice commemorated in his poems. He tells us how the sunflower, "shining fair," Rays round with flames her disk of seed;