28 SEPTEMBER 1901, Page 16

[To TEE EDITOR Or THE "SPECTATOR.") Sin,—May I make another

suggestion as to what may pCP.. sibly have been in Tennyson's mind wlsen he wrote the first lines of the elegy beginning— ":My love has talked with rocks and trees;

He finds on misty mountain ground His own vast shadow glory-crown'd" ?

The chalk downs, both in the Isle of Wight and in Sussex, were well known to him, and any one who has walked theta on a sunny day may have been struck by the "vastness" of his own shadow thrown on the northern slope. The " halo" generally there too—but only visible to oneself—for it is seldom there is no mist or haze from the low land lying on the hillside and in the hollows. Gilbert White speaks of the South Downs as "mountains," and they have a grandeur of their own that merits the name to those who know them well.