Very early he became a close personal friend of Queen Victoria, and many of his lines ministered to her personal consolation.  For fifty years Tennyson’s life was one steady, triumphal march.  He acquired wealth, such as no other English poet before him had ever gained; his name was known in every corner of the earth where white men journeyed, and at home he was beloved and honored.  He died October Sixth, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-two, aged eighty-three, and for him the Nation mourned, and with deep sincerity the Queen spoke of his demise as a poignant, personal sorrow.

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It was at Cambridge he met Arthur Hallam—­Arthur Hallam, immortal and remembered alone for being the comrade and friend of Tennyson.

Alfred took his friend Arthur to his home in Lincolnshire one vacation, and we know how Arthur became enamored of Tennyson’s sister Emily, and they were betrothed.  Together, Tennyson and Hallam made a trip through France and the Pyrenees.

Carlyle and Milburn, the blind preacher, once sat smoking in the little arbor back of the house in Cheyne Row.  They had been talking of Tennyson, and after a long silence Carlyle knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and with a grunt said:  “Ha!  Death is a great blessing—­the joyousest blessing of all!  Without death there would ha’ been no ‘In Memoriam,’ no Hallam, and like enough no Tennyson!” It is futile to figure what would have occurred had this or that not happened, since every act of life is a sequence.  But that Carlyle and many others believed that the death of Hallam was the making of Tennyson, there is no doubt.  Possibly his soul needed just this particular amount of bruising in order to make it burst into undying song—­who knows!  When Charles Kingsley was asked for the secret of his exquisite sympathy and fine imagination, he paused a space, and then answered—­“I had a friend.”  The desire for friendship is strong in every human heart.  We crave the companionship of those who can understand.  The nostalgia of life presses, we sigh for “home,” and long for the presence of one who sympathizes with our aspirations, comprehends our hopes and is able to partake of our joys.  A thought is not our own until we impart it to another, and the confessional seems a crying need of every human soul.

One can bear grief, but it takes two to be glad.

We reach the Divine through some one, and by dividing our joy with this one we double it, and come in touch with the Universal.  The sky is never so blue, the birds never sing so blithely, our acquaintances are never so gracious, as when we are filled with love for some one.

Being in harmony with one we are in harmony with all.

The lover idealizes and clothes the beloved with virtues that exist only in his imagination.  The beloved is consciously or unconsciously aware of this, and endeavors to fulfil the high ideal; and in the contemplation of the transcendent qualities that his mind has created, the lover is raised to heights otherwise unattainable.