And it was at Halton that Mr. Hoff, a large tenant farmer, lived of whom Dr. Tennyson heard many a story from the Rector. He was quite a character, and the Lord Chancellor Brougham was brought over by Mr. Eden from Harrington to see and talk with him. I knew Mr. Hoff, and have heard the Rector describe the lively afternoon they had. Farming was one of Lord Brougham's hobbies, and he talked of farming to his heart's content, and was delighted with the old fellow's shrewdness and independence, and his racy sayings in the Lincolnshire dialect, the kind of sayings which Tennyson has preserved in his "Northern Farmer." The farmer, too, was pleased with his visitor, but he said to the Rector afterwards, "He is straänge cliver mon is Lord Brougham, and he knaws a vast, noä doubt, but he knaws nowt about ploughing." It was the same farmer who was introduced by the Rector to the leading Barrister at the Spilsby sessions, where both the Rector and Dr. Tennyson were always in request to dine with the bar, when the Judge was at Spilsby, for the charm of their presence and the brightness of their conversation. Mr. Hoff had seen "Councillor Flowers" in Court in his wig and gown, but meeting him now in plain clothes, and finding him a very small man, he said to him straight out, "Why, you're nobbut a meän-looking little mon after all." These tenant farmers, whether in the Marsh, wold, or fen, were very considerable people in days when agriculture was at its best. In the Marsh, one in particular, Marshal Heanley, was always termed the Marsh King. He it was who at the Ram-show dinner at Halton, when Ed. Stanhope, the Minister for War, had spoken of the future which was opening for the great agriculturists, and, after alluding to Lord Brougham's visit to the Shire and the sending of some farmers' sons to the Bar, had suggested the possibility of one of them arriving at the top of the tree and sitting some day on the Woolsack. The "Marsh King" got up and said, "I allus telled yer yer must graw wool; but when you've grawed it, yer mustn't sit on it, yer must sell it."