" When
I first saw Henry Irving made up as Shylock, my thoughts flew back to
the garden-party at Little Holland House, and Disraeli. I know I must
have admired him greatly, for the only other time I ever saw him he was
walking in Piccadilly, and I crossed the road, just to get a good look
at him. I even went the length of bumping into him on purpose. It was a
_very little_ bump! My elbow just touched his, and I trembled. He took
off his hat, muttered, "I beg your pardon," and passed on, not
recognizing me, of course; but I had had my look into his eyes. They
were very quiet eyes, and didn't open wide.

I love Disraeli's novels--like his tie, brighter in color than any one
else's. It was "Venetia" which first made me see the real Lord Byron,
the real Lady Byron, too. In "Tancred" I recall a description of a
family of strolling players which seems to me more like the real thing
than anything else of the kind in fiction. It is strange that Dizzy's
novels should be neglected. Can any one with a pictorial sense fail to
be delighted by their pageantry? Disraeli was a heaven-born artist, who,
like so many of his race, on the stage, in music, and elsewhere, seems
to have had an unerring instinct for the things which the Gentile only
acquires by labor and training. The world he shows us in his novels is
big and swelling, but only to a hasty judgment is it hollow.

Tennyson was more to me than a magic-lantern shape, flitting across the
blank of my young experience, never to return. The first time I saw him
he was sitting at the table in his library, and Mrs. Tennyson, her very
slender hands hidden by thick gloves, was standing on a step-ladder
handing him down some heavy books. She was very frail, and looked like a
faint tea-rose. After that one time I only remember her lying on a sofa.

In the evenings I went walking with Tennyson over the fields, and he
would point out to me the differences in the flight of different birds,
and tell me to watch their solid phalanxes turning against the sunset,
the compact wedge suddenly narrowing sharply into a thin line. He taught
me to recognize the barks of trees and to call wild flowers by their
names. He picked me the first bit of pimpernel I ever noticed. Always I
was quite at ease with him. He was so wonderfully simple.

A hat that I wore at Freshwater suddenly comes to my remembrance. It was
a brown straw mushroom with a dull red feather round it. It was tied
under my chin, and I sti