been shadowed by the shapes of dread which haunt our valley of
tribulation: a mind almost infinitely greater than ours has been our
fellow-sufferer. He has emerged from the darkness of the shadow of
death into the light, whither, as it seems to us, we can scarcely
hope to come. It is the sympathy and the example, I think, not the
speculations, mystical or scientific, which make In Memoriam, in more
than name, a book of consolation: even in hours of the sharpest
distress, when its technical beauties and wonderful pictures seem
shadowy and unreal, like the yellow sunshine and the woods of that
autumn day when a man learned that his friend was dead. No, it was
not the speculations and arguments that consoled or encouraged us.
We did not listen to Tennyson as to Mr Frederic Harrison's glorified
Anglican clergyman. We could not murmur, like the Queen of the May -


"That good man, the Laureate, has told tis words of peace."


What we valued was the poet's companionship. There was a young
reader to whom All along the Valley came as a new poem in a time of
recent sorrow.


"The two-and-thirty years were a mist that rolls away,"


said the singer of In Memoriam, and in that hour it seemed as if none
could endure for two-and-thirty years the companionship of loss. But
the years have gone by, and have left