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ART. II.-LOVE AND THE BROWNINGS.

LOVE that affection or attraction felt by each sex for its opposite, which is the foundation of the family and the bulwark of the home-is a theme which concerns the happiness of mankind more closely than any other except religion. The love between man and woman which binds the sexes into domestic unity comes next in importance to that love for God which makes humanity one with deity. Home in its purest development is the best anticipation of heaven. That love is really a sacred thing, one of the prime mysteries and splendors of existence, yet at the same time peculiarly liable to mislead, and never safely to be divorced from allegiance to God, we must most firmly hold. "There is no deep love," said Henry Ward Beecher, "which has not in it an element of solemnity. It moves through the soul as if it were an inspiration of God, and carries with it something of the awe and shadow of eternity." Similarly Harriet Martineau cried out: "Must love be ever treated with profaneness as a mere illusion? or with coarseness as a mere impulse? or with fear as a mere disease? or with shame as a mere weakness? or with levity as a mere accident? whereas it is a great mystery and a great necessity lying at the foundation of human existence, morality, and happiness-mysterious, universal, inevitable as death." Only he who looks upon it in this manner is at all fitted for its proper discussion. Only they who can be classed with the choice spirits of all time are fully qualified to be instructors in this high theme.

Such were, as all will admit, Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. No safer, saner guides than they for treading the mazes of this alluring garden of love can anywhere be found. Few ever had clearer knowledge of it in their own personal experience. Few could so admirably set it forth in language where the outward form matched the inward truth and beautiful expression well wedded beautiful thought. It will be our delightful task in this article to note and quote

some of the things which these marvelously mated poets have said about love, both in their published verses and private correspondence, taking occasion also to mark what a wonderful illustration their own lives furnished of all they wrote. In the case of neither of these gifted beings was love an early visitant. Robert Browning was thirty-two and Elizabeth Barrett thirty-five at least when the first strong stirrings of this great emotion changed the current of their lives. Up to that time they had had little or nothing to do with the tender passion, meeting no one that made any special appeal to this side of their natures, and so coming, after a while, to a pretty settled opinion that this phase of existence was not one in which they were destined to share. With Miss Barrett especially this would seem to have been a most natural, if not practically inevitable, conclusion, since she had been for some twenty years a confirmed invalid, hovering quite often on the very brink of death. She had a fall from a horse when fifteen years old, injuring her spine, and when twenty-eight she ruptured a blood vessel in her lungs, which did not heal and brought her so low that life was constantly despaired of. She was imprisoned within the four walls of a darkened room, denied to all visitors, put in imminent peril by the smallest excitement, subjected to the most intense suffering, the lamp of life frequently burning so dim that a feather would be placed on her lips to prove that she was still breathing. Yet, while the world of external activities was thus entirely shut out, the world of inner realities grew constantly more clear and impressive. In spite of the extreme bodily weakness her mind was marvelously alive. She found, as so many others have done, a blessed refuge in books and in thought. She read and wrote to such good purpose that her standing in the realm of literature, especially the poetic part of it, became thoroughly assured.

A collection of her poems, published in 1884, contained, among other choice productions, one of great merit entitled "Lady Geraldine's Courtship, a Romance of the Age." And this it was which led to the author's own romance, for in a pas

sage where the lover is described as reading aloud to his lady selections from various poets, ancient and modern, the following couplet comes in:

Or from Browning some "Pomegranate” which, if cut down deep the middle,

Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.

It was a simple, natural word of appreciation for a brother artist, but it led to momentous consequences. It caught the eye of him to whom it so felicitously referred. He sent a letter of acknowledgment, dated January 10, 1845, in which he says: "I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett, since the day last week when I first read your poems. Into me has it gone, a part of me has it become, this great living poetry of yours, not a flower of it but took root and grew. do love these books with all my heart, and I love you too." She replied. He was encouraged by a mutual friend, Mr. Kenyon, to think that a call would be acceptable, and after some difficulty-for her state of health was such that she saw only her immediate family and a few others most intimatethe matter was arranged. He saw her for the first time on

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May 20, from 3 to 4:30 P. M. It was love at first sight on both sides, or, perhaps it would be still truer to say, the love awakened by the writings was abundantly confirmed by the personal presence. She felt it a duty, however, on account of her physical condition—a duty to him even more than to herself—to resist the promptings of the heart, and so when, with masculine impetuosity and masterfulness, almost immediately, on May 23, he declared his devotion in a letter, which she destroyed the only one of the whole collection not preserved -she rebuked him sternly for his "wild words," as she termed them, and bade him "forget it at once and forever," on penalty of not seeing her again. But he kept on coming and writing, nevertheless, coming once a week and writing in the intervals, and by no means "forgetting," with the result that when he told his love again, on August 30, and yet again still more firmly and explicitly on September 25, her scruples and reluctance were borne down by the sheer weight of his persist

ence and passion, and on September 27 she indicates her acceptance of his suit. He said on August 30: "I loved you from my soul at the beginning, and gave you my life, so much of it as you would take; and all that is done, not to be altered now. It was in the nature of a proceeding wholly independent of any return on your part." She said, in her note of capitulation:

You have touched me more profoundly than I thought even you could have touched me. Henceforward I am yours for everything but to do you harm. And I am yours too much in my heart even to consent to do you harm in that way. None except God and your will shall intervene between you and me. I mean that, if he should free me in a moderate time from the thralling chain of this weakness, I will then be to you whatever at that hour you shall choose.

Pity on his part, we judge, entered considerably into the matter at first. She was such a very fragile creature, and he was so robust, so exuberantly vital, that she awoke in him at once a deep desire to bring sunshine into her darkened life, and throw over her the mighty shield of his protecting care. The perfect community of feeling and thought which became revealed, as they saw more of each other, also assured them beyond a doubt that they were made for one another, and every added week and month seems to have bound them more firmly together. This appears plainly in the letters which have been so providentially preserved to us. He wrote about two hundred and seventeen in the course of the correspondence, which extended over a year and a half, and she wrote two hundred and eighty-three; so that no less than five hundred in all, some of them very extended, passed between them during this brief courtship period, though they lived in the same city all the time and saw each other twice a week. They were prevented from full freedom of intercourse both by the state of her health and also by the necessity of keeping the matter a profound secret, because of the determined opposition of her father to any marriage on her part. This man will go down in history as the extreme type of an utterly selfish parent who regards not at all the happiness or true welfare of

a child when it comes into collision with his own fancied rights and domineering will. He was really a monomaniac on this subject. He held the severest doctrine of passive filial obedience, particularly in regard to marriage. He considered his children, especially the daughters, as chattels, to be governed in all things as seemed to him good, with no rights of their own, all insubordination to be relentlessly punished. Elizabeth had implicitly submitted to the least of his wishes all her life long thus far, until nearly forty; but when it came to the giving up of her life-for she would certainly have died had she been kept much longer in that London room—and the giving up also of what was much more to her than life, her love for Mr. Browning, for no reason whatever except to gratify his insane whim and dictatorial temper, she objected, as she was, of course, completely justified in doing. She was compelled to deceive him as to the courtship, for one explosion of his rage in her presence and that explosion would have come had he suspected what was going on-would have laid her lifeless at his feet, so delicate was her organization and so slight her hold on life. And she was also driven, when the time came, to a secret marriage. For this he never forgave, held no communication with her, opened no letter from her, would not mention her name, or even see her child. In spite of her repeated attempts to propitiate him—for his unnatural treatment wore upon her he was unrelenting to the last. She had wounded his vanity, and dared to assert her rights as a human being; he would far rather have seen her dead than to have been so flouted. Poor Mr. Barrett!

Passing without further preliminary to the all-important letters, we give first a few selections from Mr. Browning's:

Nov. 22d. I never in my life kept a journal, a register of sights or events or feelings. But I have from the first recorded the date and duration of every visit to you, the number of minutes you have given me, and I put them together till they make nearly two days now, four-and-twenty-hour-long days that I have been with you. I enter your room determined to get up and go sooner, and I go away into the light street repenting that I went so soon by I do not know how many minutes; for, love, what is it all, this love for you, but an

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