The Love Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning & Robert Browning. Robert Browning

cornice, “where now is the empty shrine”; but his son believes that there never was any bust in this niche, the bust being simply the poet’s creation. The statue of the Grand Duke is remarkable enough to inspire any story; and the Florentine noble may well take pride in the manner that “John of Douay” has presented him, if he still “contrives” to see it, and still “laughs in his tomb” at the perpetual pilgrimage that is made to the scene of the legend, as well as to the royal Villa Petraja, also immortalized in Browning’s poem.

      June came, the closing books of “Aurora Leigh” had been written, and under the roof of her dear friend and cousin, Kenyon, who had begged the Brownings to accept the loan of his house in Devonshire Place, the last pages were transcribed, and the dedication made to the generous friend who was the appointed good angel of their lives. They were saddened by Kenyon’s illness, which imprisoned him for that summer on the Isle of Wight, and after seeing “Aurora Leigh” through the press, they passed a little time with him at Cowes, and also visited Mrs. Browning’s sister Henrietta (Mrs. Surtees Cook), before setting out for Italy. No one in London missed them more than Dante Gabriel Rossetti. “With them has gone one of my delights,” he said; “an evening resort where I never felt unhappy.”

      Equestrian Statue of Ferdinando de’ medici,

       by Giovanni da Bologna.

       in the piazza dell’ annunziata, florence.

      “There’s a palace in Florence the world knows well, And a statue watches it from the square.”

      The Ring and the Book.

      The success of “Aurora Leigh” was immediate, a second edition being called for within a fortnight, and edition after edition followed. This work, of which, twelve years before, she had a dim foreshadowing, as of a novel in verse, has the twofold interest of a great dramatic poem and of a philosophic commentary on art and life. To estimate it only as a social treatise is to recognize but one element in its kaleidoscopic interest. Yet the narrative, it must be confessed, is fantastic and unreal. When the conception of the work first dawned upon her, she said she preferred making her story to choosing that of any legend, for the theme; but the plot is its one defect, and is only saved from being a serious defect by the richness and splendor of thought with which it is invested. The poem is to some degree a spiritual autobiography; its narrative part having no foundation in reality, but on this foundation she has recorded her highest convictions on the philosophy of life. Love, Art, Ethics, the Christianity of Christ,—all are here, in this almost inexhaustible mine of intellectual and spiritual wealth. It is a poem peculiarly calculated to kindle and inspire. What a passage is this:

      “... I can live

       At least my soul’s life, without alms from men,

       And if it be in heaven instead of earth,

       Let heaven look to it,—I am not afraid.”

      A profound occult truth is embodied in the following:

      “Whate’er our state we must have made it first;

       And though the thing displease us,—aye, perhaps,

       Displease us warrantably, never doubt

       That other states, though possible once, and then

       Rejected by the instinct of our lives,

       If then adopted had displeased us more.

       ······

       What we choose may not be good;

       But that we choose it, proves it good for us.”

      No Oriental savant could more forcibly present his doctrine of karma than has Mrs. Browning in these lines. Her recognition of the power of poetry is here expressed:

      “And plant a poet’s word even deep enough

       In any man’s breast, looking presently

       For offshoots, you have done more for the man

       Than if you dressed him in a broadcloth coat,

       And warmed his Sunday pottage at your fire.”

      Poetry was to her as serious a thing as life itself. “There has been no playing at skittles for me in either poetry, or life,” she said; “I never mistook pleasure for the final cause of poetry; nor leisure, for the hour of the poet.”

      In the success of “Aurora Leigh” she was herself surprised. Private letters from strangers filled with the warmest, even if sometimes indiscriminate, praises, rained down upon her, and she found the press “astonishing in its good will.” That her “golden-hearted Robert” was “in ecstasies about it, far more than as if it had been a book of his own,” was apparently her most precious reward. Milsand, who she had fancied would hardly like this poem, wrote a critique of it for the Revue which touched her with its “extraordinary kindness.” He asked and obtained permission to translate it into French, and in a letter to Miss Sarianna Browning she speaks of her happiness that he should thus distinguish the poem.

      Soon after their arrival in Florence came the saddest of news, that of the death of John Kenyon, their beloved friend, whose last thoughtful kindness was to endow them with a legacy insuring to them that freedom from material care which is so indispensable to the best achievements in art. During his life he had given to them one hundred pounds a year, and in his will he left them ten thousand guineas,—the largest of the many legacies that his generous will contained.

      The carnival, always gay in Florence, was exceedingly so that year, and Penini, whose ardor for a blue domino was gratified, and who thought of nothing else for the time being, seemed to communicate his raptures, so that Browning proposed taking a box at the opera ball, and entertaining some invited friends with gallantina and champagne. Suddenly the air grew very mild, and he decided that his wife might and must go; she sent out hastily to buy a mask and domino (he had already a beautiful black silk one, which she later transmuted into a black silk gown for herself), and while her endurance and amusement kept her till two o’clock in the morning, the poet and his friends remained till after four. The Italian carnival, however wild and free it may be (and is), yet never degenerates into rudeness. The inborn delicacy and gentle refinement of the people render this impossible. Yet for the time being there is perfect social equality, and at this ball the Grand Duke and Wilson’s husband, Ferdinando, were on terms of fellowship.

      In the early April of that spring the summer suddenly dawned upon lovely Florence like a transformation scene on a stage. The trees in the Cascine were all a “green mist.” Everywhere was that ethereal enchantment of the Flower City, with her gleaming towers and domes, her encircling purple hills and picturesque streets. And how, indeed, could any one who has watched the loveliness of a Florentine springtime ever escape its haunting spell? The dweller in Italy may see a thousand things to desire,—better public privileges, more facilities for comfort, but the day comes when, if he has learned to love the Italian atmosphere so intensely that all the glories of earth could not begin to compensate for it, he would give every conceivable achievement of modern art and progress for one hour among those purple hills, for one hour with the sunset splendors over the towers, and the olive-crowned heights of Fiesole and Bellosguardo; or to hear again the impassioned strains of street singers ring out in pathetic intensity in the bewildering moonlight. La Bella Firenze, lying dream-enchanted among her amethyst hills, would draw her lover from the wilds of Siberia, for even one of those etherial evenings, when the stars blaze in a splendor over San Miniato, or one rose-crowned morning, when the golden sunshine gilds the tower of the old cathedral on Fiesole.

      In that spring Mrs. Stowe visited Florence, and the Brownings liked her and rejoiced that she had moved the world for good. To Mrs. Jameson Mrs. Browning wrote that “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was a “sign of the times.” She read Victor Hugo’s “Contemplations,” finding some of the personal poems “overcoming in their pathos”; they went to tea on the terrace at Bellosguardo, in April evenings, gazing over Florence veiled in transparent blue haze in the valley