Alexandria Gazette

TENNYSON THE POET. --A correspondent of the St. Louis Democrat has had the rare good fortune to find Tennyson, and the man who is now the talk of the hour, the painter Holman Hunt, together. We give the extract, with the dinner at the inn, so peculiarly an English custom, and in which the reader of the Life of Dickens will find the novelist also delighted.

"Mr. Tennyson has a very striking appearance No matter where you might meet him you would know that he was an extraordinary man. A little above the average height, stooping slightly at the shoulders, an utter absence of anything like fashion in his dress, and what would generally be called an unkempt appearance, he was past the meridian of life and his hair and beard, which he wore full, were turning iron gray. After, to us, a very pleasant ramble over the island and the adjacent points of interest. we walked up the glen to the village, the name of which I forget, at the little inn of which he was staying. On the road we met a gentleman who I found was Mr. Tennyson's companion, Holman Hunt, the painter. They very kindly invited me to dine with them before I resumed my ten mile walk back to Camelford, an invitation which I very gladly accepted, and spent a few hours in their company never to be forgotten. Englishmen never hurry themselves over their dinner. It is an important part of the day's business, and rarely ever begun until all other business is finished. Over the bottles of old port the hostess furnished us with. Mr. Hunt told us some interesting incidents of his long residence in the Holy Land. You can scarcely imagine two men more opposite both in character and appearance than these two. Perhaps that is the secret of their close friendship. The painter is a fine specimen of the Englishman physically, and seemed full of animal life and spirits. The poet laureate talked but little, and smoked his pipe incessantly, sometimes asking me a question about my country and its customs."