Any one who has read carefully the "Idylls of the King," "Sir Galahad," "St. Agnes," among many of his poems, still more any one who has spoken with him intimately, cannot fail to realize the strong attraction which many Catholic doctrines and practices had for Tennyson, and the reverence with which he regarded the Catholic Church as standing alone among jarring sects and creeds, majestic, venerable, and invulnerable. His mind was also an essentially and intensely religious one, and I know that one of my father's attractions for him lay in the religious tone of _his_ mind. On these points, however, I will say no more. In jotting down these few remembrances of a friendship which is amongst my most precious possessions, I settled with myself to refrain entirely from any presentation of what I believed to be Tennyson's views on theology, metaphysics, or politics, no less than from any discussion of his poetic greatness. I want nothing but to sketch the _man_ as he always seemed to me, one of the noblest, truest, and most lovable of God's creatures, and one who, even without the genius that has crowned his brow with never-fading laurel, must, by weight of character and beauty of soul alone, stand a giant amid his fellow-men! We spent the Christmas holidays of 1890-91 at Freshwater with our five children; not one of them will forget the delightful intercourse with Farringford during those weeks, and the Christmas Tree arranged by Mrs. Hallam Tennyson for her little Lionel in the large room known as the ball-room.[82] Kind words and presents were showered on every one, and I think the beloved grandparents enjoyed it as much as their fourteen-months-old grandson, as they sat in the midst of their servants and cottagers (some of whom were amongst the oldest of their friends), and the guests, little and great, whom they had asked to share their Christmas festival. Our two eldest children have a more precious remembrance of that time and the following Easter, which we also spent at Freshwater, for Tennyson read aloud to them for the first and only time. To our girl he read "Old Roä" and the "Bugle Song," and to our boy the "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington." He read this in April 1891; it was the last time I heard him read, and I look upon it as a special act of kindness; he said he did not like to read to children--they did not understand, were bored--and he only yielded to my strong entreaties. If, however, he saw, as I think he did, the flushed cheeks and big tearful eyes of our fourteen-year-old schoolboy, he must have felt that he had a listener who _did_ understand and appreciate!