lovelier on farther knowing. Mr. Browning gave me a pomegranate bud from Casa Guidi Windows, to press in my memorial book. . . . The finest light gleams from Mrs. Browning's arched eyes-for she has those arched eyes so unusual, with an intellectual, spiritual radiance in them. They are sapphire, with dark lashes, shining from out a bower of curling, very dark, but, I think, not black hair. It is sad to see such deep pain furrowed into her face-such pain that the great happiness of her life cannot smooth it away. In moments of rest from speaking her countenance reminds one of those mountain sides, ploughed deep with spent water-torrents, there are traces in it of so much grief, so much suffering. The angelic spirit, triumphing at moments, restores the even surface. How has anything so delicate braved the storms? Her soul is mighty, and a great love has kept her on earth a season longer. She is a seraph in her flaming worship of heart, while a calm, cherubic knowledge sits enthroned on her large brow. How she remains visible to us, with so little admixture of earth, is a mystery ; but fortunate are the eyes that see her, and the ears that hear ber."

On the 2nd July the Brownings left Florence for France, intending to spend the remainder of the summer in Normandy, and, pathetically exclaims Mrs. Hawthorne, "there seems to be nobody in Florence now for us!"

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CHAPTER IX.

BEFORE CONGRESS.

FOR some months the records of Mrs. Browning's story are nought but blank pages. Burning, heartburning questions, however, were coming to the fore, thrilling her delicate frame and agitating her weary heart with volcanic themes. Instead of the quietude and repose her invalided constitution needed, she gave herself up with her usual ardency to the aspirations of her Italian friends and neighbours. "To her," says Mr. Story, "Italy was from the first a living fire.' Her joy and enthusiasm at the Italian uprising in 1848 was fervently sung in the early portion of Casa Guidi Windows; the second part expresses her sorrow and dejection at the abortive results of that revolution. Still she hoped on, watching events from her Florentine home, with a firm trust that the days of fulfilment would arrive. She was angered with her native land, or rather with its leaders, that they turned their back upon the trials and struggles of her adopted country, and scorned them for what she deemed their insular view of the world.

Her hopes, however, were largely if not entirely

gratified. "It is a matter of great thankfulness," says Mr. Story, "that God permitted Mrs. Browning to witness the second Italian revolution. No patriot Italian gave greater sympathy to the aspirations of 1859 than Mrs. Browning. . . . Great was the moral courage of this frail woman, to publish the Poems Before Congress at a time when England was most suspicious of Napoleon. Greater was her conviction, when she abased England and exalted France for the cold neutrality of the one and the generous aid of the other in this War of Italian Independence. Bravely did she bear up against the angry criticisms excited by such anti-English sentiment."

During the uprising of the Italians in 1859, when, aided by the French, they were successful in driving their oppressors back from so large a portion of Italian soil, Mrs. Browning's pen and brain both worked hard for the cause she had so strong at heart. Her poems and her life at this period are part of Italian history. Above all did she exalt and glory in the ideal Emperor her imagination had portrayed. The hero she had already believed the Third Napoleon to be was now fully confirmed. Had he not sworn to free Italy from sea to sea, and was he not aiding her people to accomplish this great object by defeating and driving out the hated Tedeschi? With full faith in her Emperor she wrote her passionate lines on "Napoleon the Third in Italy."

July came, and with it the sudden and maddening Treaty of Peace. Mrs. Browning could not but mourn with Italy at the overthrow of hopes which had ap peared so close on their realisation yet were so rudely crashed. In the first pangs of her grief, when stunned, if not crushed by the course of events, she addressed

to her son those bitter lines "A Tale of Villafranca," beginning :

My little son, my Florentine,

Sit down beside my knee,
And I will tell you why the sign
Of joy which flushed our Italy
Has faded since but yesternight,
And why your Florence of delight
Is mourning as you see.

Mr. Story avers that the news of the Imperial Treaty of Villafranca, following so fast upon the victories of Solferino and San Martino, almost killed Mrs. Browning. "That it hastened her into the grave," he says, "is beyond a doubt, as she never fully shook off the severe attack of illness occasioned by this check upon her life-hopes."

Notwithstanding, however, his failure to fulfil his promise to Italy; notwithstanding the annexation of Nice and Savoy, Mrs. Browning would not give up her faith in Napoleon the Third; as Savage Landor said of it, "If that woman put her faith in a man as good as Jesus, and he should become as wicked as Pontius Pilate, she would not change it." In language somewhat more to the purpose, Professor Dowden points out, in explanation of Mrs. Browning's belief of one whose political deeds were often so diametrically opposed to her own principles, "She saw a great work being worked out around her, and instinctively she believed that in the workers also there must be something great and god-like. Still," he proceeds, "the keenness of Mrs. Browning's Imperialism dated from the time of the Italian War. It is difficult to convey an idea to strangers of the intenseness of all her feelings about Italy. Hers was no

dilettante artistic love, but a deep personal attachment for the land of her home and her affections. All who had written or spoken or worked in behalf of Italy were as welcome to her as friends of long standing; while for those who had exerted their powers against Italy, as open enemies or false friends, she felt as personal an enmity as it was possible for that gentle nature to feel against any living being. One who knew her towards the end of her life has told me that her last words to him, at their parting, were to thank him, with thanks that were little merited, because he had done something for the cause of Italy. Higher thanks, however undeserved, she knew none to give.

"This being so, it would have been strange had she not shared the common Italian feeling about the Emperor of the French. In this world men, after all, look

to the facts, not to motives, and you cannot escape the broad fact that, in the hour of Italy's need (before, mind you, not after the victory) it was the Emperor Napoleon alone who came forward to rescue Italy, who overthrew the tyranny of Austria, and who, willingly or unwillingly, thereby created the Italian kingdom. . . . This is the one simple fact which the Italians have not forgotten and cannot forget; and of this fact Mrs. Browning's mind took hold with all the ardour of her love for Italy, and all the intensity of her poet's feelings."

Sick at heart and bodily ill, Mrs. Browning spent a weary, suffering summer. In July she removed with her husband to Siena, and spent the autumn there. Both in Siena and in Florence, whither they returned for a few days' rest before proceeding to Rome for the winter, the Brownings were much interested in the troubles and eccentricities of Walter Savage Landor.