could get a line from you, since your poetry is in almost every house considered respectable, and your name a household word even out here in the far west. I will relate one anecdote in proof. A good little sewing girl had gained my esteem. I wished to make her a present, and she said, "If I had Tennyson's poems!"

I am H. H. Atkinson, son of Thomas Atkinson, bricklayer, Hagg, near Somersby, and am a bricklayer myself. You will scarcely remember my father building the Doctor's dining-room, you were very young then, about my age. My reminiscences of the Tennyson family run away back. My mother was a Tealby woman, and was in her young days dressmaker for the old Squire's lady, and my father thought so much of the Doctor who was always the Doctor par excellence. The public papers here describe you as a stout broadshouldered man, and I remember the Doctor so well that if you resemble him I think I should know you. Ah me! it only seems like yesterday, when the Doctor came down to scold the old coachman for ordering my father to build the new carriage-house on too large a plan (coachee would say to the Doctor what no one else dare), said he, " By G-d, sir, you have a twopenny coachman, I have a twopenny master." I can just now see the good Doctor smile, and walk away, and the coach-house was built. I can just now see the appletrees that bore such fine yellow apples running up from the stables to the house, the broad lawn where some boys, whom I wot of, used to astonish me by coming out with those wondrous gauze helmets and long foils, and I was afraid mischief would be done. You were not very broad-shouldered then I remember. Do you remember the Siberian crab-tree down the garden, the old Scotch firs at the house-end where the rooks used to build, and those tiny bantams that made their home

"

1874 LETTER FROM SOMERSBY MAN

over the oven, and the handsome cock who was burned to death? I remember one Good Friday we were working for the Doctor. I see him coming, and hear him saying, "Atkinson, you must leave work and go to church," and I remember he preached from "As Moses lifted up the serpent," the first time I had ever heard it as a text and that is near fifty years ago. Ah sir! perhaps no man in America knows as well as I where you first heard the wrens twitter, the blackbirds, thrushes, the robins sing. Many a speckled trout and silver eel have I caught in the brook, running through the meadow below.

And now I am here about fifteen hundred miles west of New York, asking for an autograph all the way from the Isle of Wight.

If you can spare me a line, I would like to know how many children you have, also if Mr. Fred is living, Mr. Charles (Turner now), also Miss Emily whom everybody loved, also Mr. Arthur.

I was burnt out in Chicago, and have lost a fine boy since then from consumption, my only boy. I live in a house and garden of my own here between two groves; we can grow fine peaches here, also all kinds of melons, etc. etc. without extra care. Have I tired you? Well, my heart grows soft and young again in looking over the long past, tho' I have sail'd the seas over, I've crossed the wide ocean.

If this goes into your waste basket, please excuse the

scrawl and

Believe me, sir, yours truly, H. H. ATKINSON.

At this time my father often felt oppressed by the compliments and curiosity of undiscerning critics, and would say: "I hate the blare and

What business has the

blaze of so-called fame. public to want to know all about Byron's wildnesses? He has given them fine work, and they ought to be satisfied. It is all for the sake of babble. As for the excuse, 'Tôt ou tard tout se sait,' nothing can be falser as far as this world is concerned. The surface of the tout may be, but the tout never is, correctly known. If one knew all, one would pardon all,' is much more likely to be the truth. The worth of a biography depends on whether it is done by one who wholly loves the man whose life he writes, yet loves him with a discriminating love. Few of these gossiping biographies are the man, more often the writer." He wrote out these lines then.

Fame. (Unpublished)

Well, as to Fame, who strides the earth
With that long horn she loves to blow,
I know a little of her worth,

And I will tell you what I know-
This London once was middle sea,
These hills were plains within the past,
They will be plains again, and we,
Poor devils, babble "we shall last.'

For some, descending from the sacred peak
Of hoar high-templed Faith, have leagued again
Their lot with ours to rove the world about;
And some are wilder comrades, sworn to seek
If any golden harbour be for men

In seas of Death and sunless gulfs of Doubt.

My faith is large in Time

And that which shapes it to some perfect end.

THE Metaphysical Society was founded, in 1869, by my father, Mr. Pritchard, and Mr. Knowles, the idea being first mooted by Mr. Knowles. The latter writes to me: "The Metaphysical Society owed its existence to your father, for it was entirely through his adhesion to the plan for it that this remarkable club was set on foot. At first it was intended that no distinct and avowed opponents of Christianity should be invited, though Anglicans of all shades, Roman Catholics, Unitarians, and Nonconformists should be eligible. But it was soon felt that if any real

discussion of Christian evidences was to take place, the opposition ought to be fully and fairly represented. This extension of the plan commended itself especially to Dean Stanley, whom I consulted early about it, and it was when talking over it at the Deanery one day, with him and Lady Augusta, that she suggested the name of 'Metaphysical Society' as being better than 'Theological Society' in the altered circumstances of its composition." The object of the Society therefore was, that those who were ranged on the side of faith should meet those who were ranged on the side of unfaith, and freely interchange their views. Darwin's theory of evolution was prominent in men's minds, and my father for one thought that, although evolution in a modified form was partially true, some of Darwin's disciples had drawn unwarrantable inferences from the theory, and had arrogated to themselves too much. His friends and himself were grieved at the scorn that the theological and the agnostic parties showed toward each other, and considered that meeting on a friendly footing would do much toward the ventilation of new doctrines, and the clearing up of misunderstandings, as well as toward the cultivation of charity in controversy, and mutual esteem.1

I give the earliest members of the Society in order of the names signed in the minute-book :

1 Towards the end of his life he rejoiced that the churches were standing shoulder to shoulder in works of charity and education.