F. T. Palgrave on a tour of the West Country with Tennyson in late summer 1867: 'Our way lay right across Dartmoor, desolate and eerie even under the brightest sun, to Princetown: a village gloomy in itself [...] The inn, rough and small but clean, was in accord with the surroundings. One bedroom with two huge four-posters was allotted us: and Tennyson lay in his with a candle, reading hard the book which on this trip he had taken for his novel-companion, and at every disengaged moment whilst rambling over the Moor. This chanced to be one of Miss Yonge's deservedly popular tales, wherein a leading element is the deferred Church Confirmation of a grown-up person. On Tennyson read, till I heard him cry with satisfaction, "I see land! Mr ** is just going to be confirmed, after which, darkness and slumber.'