the end of the 1842 poems,
beginning with the well-known tines, 'Of old sat Freedom on the
heights', 'Love thou thy land', and 'You ask me why though ill at ease'.
Here we listen to the voice of English Liberalism uttered in very
different tones from those of Byron and Shelley, expressing the mind of
one who recoiled from French Revolutions and had little sympathy with
their aims of universal equality. In this he represented very truly that
Victorian movement which was guided by Cobden and Mill, by Peel and
Gladstone, which conferred such practical benefits upon the England of
their day; but it is hardly the temper that we expect of an ardent poet,
at any rate in the days of his youth. The burning passion of Carlyle,
Ruskin, or William Morris, however tempered by other feelings, called
forth a heartier response in the breast of the toiling multitudes.

It may be that the claim of Tennyson to popular sovereignty will, in the
end, rest chiefly on the pleasure which he gave to many thousands of his
fellow-countrymen, a pleasure to be renewed and found again in English
scenes, and in thoughts which coloured grey lives and warmed cold
hearts, which shed the ray of faith on those who could accept no creeds
and who yet yearned for some hope of an after-life to cheer their
declining days. That he gave this pleasure is certain--to men and women
of all classes from Samuel Bamford,[29] the Durham weaver, who saved his
pence to buy the precious volumes of the 'thirties, to Queen Victoria on
her throne, who in the reading of _In Memoriam_ found one of her chief
consolations in the hour of widowhood.

[Note 29: See _Memoir_, by Hallam, Lord Tennyson, vol. i, p. 283
(Macmillan).]

It was given to Tennyson to live a long life, and to know more joy than
sorrow--to be gladdened by the homage of two hemispheres, to lament the
loss of his old friends who went before him (Spedding in 1881,
FitzGerald in 1883, Robert Browning in 1889), to write his most famous
lyric 'Crossing the Bar' at the age of 80, and to be soothed and
strengthened to the end by the presence of his wife. For some weeks in
the autumn of 1892 he lay in growing weakness at Aldworth taking
farewell of the sights and sounds that he had loved so long. To him now
it had come to hear with dying ears 'the earliest pipe of half-awakened
birds' and to see with dying eyes 'the casement slowly grow a glimmering
square'. Early on October 5 he had an access of energy, and called to