became a clergyman, was my uncle Charles. He had
been ordained in 1835, and appointed to the curacy of
Tealby, the village adjoining Bayons Manor. On May
24th, 1836, he married Louisa Sellwood, my mother's
youngest sister.

My mother as a bridesmaid was taken into church
by my father. They had rarely been in each other's
company since their first meeting in 1830, when the
Sellwoods had driven over one spring day from Horn-
castle, to call at Somersby Rectory. Arthur Hallam
was then staying with the Tennysons; and asked Emily
Sellwood to walk with him in the Fairy Wood. At
a turn of the path they came upon my father, who, at
sight of the slender, beautiful girl of seventeen in her
simple gray dress, moving "like a light across those
woodland ways," suddenly said to her: "Are you a
Dryad or an Oread wandering here?" Now, as a
bridesmaid, she seemed to him even lovelier:

"O happy bridesmaid, make a happy bride!"
And all at once a pleasant truth I learn'd,
For, while the tender service made thee weep,
I loved thee for the tear thou couldst not hide,
And prest thy hand, and knew the press return'd.

My uncle Arthur says: "It was then I first saw your
mother, and she read to me Milton 'Comus,' which I
had not known before and which I have loved ever
since."

My uncle Charles and his bride left for their honey-
moon on the Rhine, a tour which was alluded to in
"In Memoriam," section XCVIII.:

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