the case—one cannot always be in the admiring or heroic mood, there is surely a virtue in scenery that simply smiles at you and lulls you to rest. Here is a charming and healthful holiday ground untrodden, and I can only selfishly say that I trust it may long remain so. The beauty of the Wolds awaits its discoverer and interpreter. Tennyson's descriptions of Lincolnshire, unlike those of Scott, are too vague to be popular. He is never individual; you cannot even trace his Locksley Hall, nor his Moated Grange. In the Life of Lord Tennyson his son writes, "The localities of my father's subject-poems are wholly imaginary." Tennyson also remarked to Professor Knight, "There are some curious creatures who go about fishing for the people and searching for the places which they fancy must have given rise to my poems. They don't understand or believe that I have any imagination of my own to create the people or places." For this reason, however much the public may admire Tennyson's poetry, his poems have failed to make it enthusiastic over Lincolnshire, or to bring the tripper into the land. The tourist desires to inspect actual places and spots, he would like to see the real Locksley Hall, the Moated Grange, and so forth—and they are not to be found, for they are poets' dreams!
The first hamlet we came to was curiously called Ashby Puerorum, as we afterwards discovered, on account of its having been assigned to the maintenance of the choir boys belonging to Lincoln Cathedral. The little old church stands lonely on
