dened her bloom of youth, and gave a deeper hue of thought and feeling, especially of devotional feeling, to her poetry. I have so often been asked what could be the shadow that had passed over that young heart, that now that time has softened the first agony it seems to me right that the world should hear the story of an accident in which there was much sorrow, but no blame.

Nearly a twelvemonth had passed, and the invalid, still attended by her affectionate companions, had derived much benefit from the mild sea-breezes of Devonshire. One fine summer morning her favorite brother, together with two other fine young men, his friends, embarked on board a small sailing-vessel, for a trip of a few hours. Excellent sailors all, and familiar with the coast, they sent back the boatmen, and undertook themselves the

but

management of the little craft: Danger was not dreamt of by any one; after the catastrophe, no one could divine the cause, in a few minutes after their embarkation, and in sight of their very windows, just as they were crossing the bar, the boat went down, and all who were in her perished. Even the bodies were never found. I was told by a party who was traveling that year in Devonshire and Cornwall, that it was most affecting to see on the corner houses of every village street, on every church-door, and almost on every cliff for miles and miles along the coast, handbills, offering large rewards for linens cast ashore marked with the initials of the beloved dead; for it so chanced that all the three were of the dearest and the best; one, I believe, an only son, the other the son of a widow.

This tragedy nearly killed Elizabeth Barrett. She was utterly prostrated by the horror and the grief, and by a natural but a most unjust feeling, that she had been in some sort the cause of this great misery. It was not until the following year that she could be removed in an invalid carriage, and by journeys of twenty miles a day, to her afflicted family and her London home. The house that she occupied at Torquay had been chosen as one of the most sheltered in the place. It stood at the bottom of the cliffs, almost close to the sea; and she told me herself, that during that whole winter the sound of the waves rang in her ears like the moans of one dying. Still she clung to literature and to Greek; in all probability she would have died without that wholesome diversion to her thoughts. Her medical attendant did not always understand this. To prevent the remonstrances of hei

friendly physician, Dr. Barry, she caused a small edition of Plato to be so bound as to resemble a novel. He did not know, skillful and kind though he were, that to her such books were not an arduous and painful study, but a consolation and a delight.

Returned to London, she began the life which she continued for so many years, confined to one large and commodious but darkened chamber, admitting only her own affectionate family and a few devoted friends (I, myself, have often joyfully traveled five-and-forty miles to see her, and returned the same evening, without entering another house); reading almost every book worth reading in almost every language, and giving herself, heart and soul, to that poetry of which she seemed born to be the priestess.

Gradually her health improved. About four years ago she married Mr. Browning, and immediately accompanied him to Pisa. They then settled at Florence; and this summer I have had the exquisite pleasure of seeing her once more in London, with a lovely boy at her knee, almost as well as ever, and telling tales of Italian rambles, of losing herself in chestnut forests, and scrambling on muleback up the sources of extinct volcanoes. May Heaven continue to her such health and such happiness!

In her abundant riches it is difficult to select extracts. If I did not know her scorn of her own earlier works (for she was the most precocious of authoresses, wrote largely at ten years old, and more than well at fifteen)—if I were not aware of her fastidiousness, I should be tempted to rescue certain exquisite stanzas which I find printed at the end of her first version of the "Prometheus Bound” -for, dissatisfied with her girlish translation of the grand old Greek, she recommenced her labor, and went fairly through the drama from the first line to the last; but she has condemned the poem, and therefore I refrain.

Perhaps there is some personal preference in the selection I do make, since I first received it written in her own clear and beautiful manuscript, on the fly-leaf of another volume, which she has also withdrawn from circulation. Besides being one of the earliest, it is among the most characteristic of her smaller poems.

THE SEAMEW.

How joyously the young seamew
Lay dreaming on the waters blue,

Whereon our little bark had thrown
A forward shade, the only one,
(But shadows aye will men pursue.)

Familiar with the waves, and free
As if their own white foam were he;
His heart upon the heart of ocean
Lay learning all its mystic motion
And throbbing to the throbbing sea.

And such a brightness in his eye,
As if the ocean and the sky
Within him had lit up and nurst
A soul God gave him not at first
To comprehend their mystery.

We were not cruel, yet did sunder

His white wing from the blue waves under,
And bound it;-while his fearless eyes
Looked up to ours in calm surprise,
As deeming us some ocean wonder.

We bore our ocean bird unto
A grassy place where he might view
The flowers that curtsy to the bees,
The waving of the tall green trees,
The falling of the silver dew.

The flowers of earth were pale to him
Who had seen the rainbow fishes swim;
And when earth's dew around him lay
He thought of ocean's wingéd spray
And his eye waxed pale and dim.

The green trees round him only made
A prison, with their darksome shade:
And drooped his wing and mournéd he
For his own boundless glittering sea,-
Albeit he knew not they could fade.

Then One her gladsome face did bring,
Her gentle voice's murmuring,
In ocean's stead his heart to move,
And teach him what was human love-
He thought it a strange mournful thing.

He lay down in his grief to die,
(First looking to the sea-like sky
That hath no waves,) because, alas!
Our human touch did on him pass,
And with our touch, our agony.

Perhaps the very finest of Mrs. Browning's poems is The Lady Geraldine's Courtship," written (to meet the double exigency of completing the uniformity of the original two volumes, and of catching the vessel that was to carry the proofs to America) in the incredible space of twelve hours. That delicious ballad must have been lying unborn in her head and in her heart; but when we think of its length and of its beauty, the shortness of time in which it was put into form appears one of the most stupendous efforts of the human mind. And the writer was a delicate woman, a confirmed invalid, just dressed and supported for two or three hours from her bed to her sofa, and so back again Let me add, too, that the exertion might have been avoided by a new arrangement of the smaller poems, if Miss Barrett would only have consented to place" Pan is Dead" at the end of the first volume instead of the second. The difference does not seem much. But she had promised Mr. Kenyon that Pan is Dead" should conclude the collection; and Mr. Kenyon was out of town and could not release her word. To this delicate conscientiousness we owe one of the most charming love-stories in any language. It is too long for insertion here; and I no more dare venture an abridgment, than I should venture to break one of the crown jewels. So the Dead Pan shall take the place. It were mere pedantry to compare Schiller's Gods of Greece" to this glorious gallery of classical statues, fresh and life-like, as if just struck into beauty by the chisel of Phidias.

66

I transcribe Mrs. Browning's own modest and graceful introduction.

THE DEAD PAN.

"Excited by Schiller's 'Götter Griechenlands,' and partly founded on a well-known tradition mentioned in a treatise of Plutarch ("De Oraculorum Defectu"), according to which, at the hour of the Savior's agony, a cry of "Great Pan is Dead!" swept across the waves in the hearing of certain mariners, and the oracles ceased.

"It is in all veneration to the memory of the deathless Schiller that I oppose a doctrine still more dishonoring to poetry than to Christianity.

"As Mr. Kenyon's graceful and harmonious paraphrase of the German poem was the first occasion of my turning my thoughts

in this direction, I take advantage of the pretense to indulge my feelings (which overflow on other grounds), by inscribing my lyric to that dear friend and relative, with the earnestness of appreciating esteem as well as of affectionate gratitude.--E. B. B."