A woman's soul, like man's, be wide enough To carry the whole octave (that's to prove), Or, if I fail, still, purely for myself." Locating herself at Kensington, she begins her literary career, and achieves distinction. One day she is waited on by a certain Lady Waldemar, who gives her the astounding information that her cousin Romney, whom she had not seen for three years, is on the eve of marriage "To a girl of doubtful life, undoubtful birth. Starved out in London, till her coarsegrained hands Are whiter than her morals." This Lady Waldemar is personally in love with Romney Leigh, and comes to ask the aid of Aurora in breaking off the ill-assorted marriage. Aurora, however, having conceived a disgust to her visitor (which is not surprising, seeing that her conversation is so flavoured with allusions to garlic, that even the Lady of Shallot would have recoiled from her whispers), refuses to have any participation in the matter, but resolves immediately to see thisgirl, Marian Erle, who resides in a garret somewhere in the purlieus of St Giles. After passing through the abominations of that quarter, and receiving the maledictions of thief and prostitute, the poetess discovers the object of her search, and hears her story. Marian Erle, the selected bride of Romney Leigh, was the daughter of a tramp and squatter on the Malvern Hills, and her education was essentially a hedge one. Her father drank and beat his wife, and the wife in turn beat her child. When Marian arrived at the age of puberty, her unnatural mother was about to sell her as a victim to the lusts of " a squire," when the girl, in horror, ran away, burst a blood-vessel in her flight, as found senseless on the road by a ner, and conveyed to an hosin a neighbouring town, where By Leigh was a visitor. Findshe was friendless and homered her a place in a shment in London, ted to attend the por consumptive comk under the Here Rom "Dear Marian, of one clay God made us all, And though men push and poke and paddle in't (As children play at fashioning dirt-pies), And call their fancies by the name of facts, Assuming difference, lordship, privilege, When all's plain dirt,-they come back to it at last; The first grave-digger proves it with a spade, And pats all even. Need we wait for this, You, Marian, and I, Romney? She, at that, Looked blindly in his face, as when one looks Through driving autumn-rains to find the He went on speaking. sky. Marian, I being born What men call noble, and you, issued from The noble people, though the tyrannous sword While Marian is telling her story to Aurora, Romney comes in, looks certainly a little surprised at finding his cousin there, but is by no means disconcerted. Naturally enough, influenced by a very strong passion Aurora supposes that he must be for the girl whom he is about to make his wife, and congratulates him, with what sincerity we need not inquire, on having made choice of so fair and gentle a creature. Romney, however, utterly denies the soft impeachment, in so far as it implies that his affections were any way engaged. Ordinary men contract marriages from love he is influenced by a far higher principle. He says: Must keep me deaf to music." In short, the man has not an atom of love for the girl, whom he proposes to wed entirely from motives of general philanthropy! At this Aurora is somewhat disgusted; but, wishing to show kindness to her cousin perhaps to testify her own indifference, which, however, is rather feigned than real-she suggests that the marriage should take place at her house. But Master Romney will not hear of such an arrangement, as it might weaken the effect of the grand moral lesson which he intends to convey to society : "He answered, 'But it is :-I take my wife Directly from the people, and she comes, As Austria's daughter to imperial France, Betwixt her eagles, blinking not her race, From Margaret's Court, at garret-height, to meet And wed me at St James's, nor put off Her gown of serge for that. The things we do, We do we'll wear no mask, as if we blushed.' The following sketch of the company assembled to witness the marriage ceremony is too racy and rich to be omitted here. As the union was to be typical of the impending abolition of all class distinctions, Romney determined that it should be celebrated in the presence of high and low, and issued cards accordingly. "Well, A month passed so, and then the notice came; On such a day the marriage at the church. I was not backward. Half St Giles in frieze Was bidden to meet St James in cloth of gold, And, after contract at the altar, pass Of course the people came in uncompelled, Lame, blind, and worse-sick, sorrowful, and worse, The humours of the peccant social wound And simultaneous shiver of moiré silk; While all the aisles, alive and black with heads, Crawled slowly toward the altar from the street, As bruised snakes crawl and hiss out of a hole With shuddering involutions, swaying slow From right to left, and then from left to right, In pants and pauses. What an ugly crest See faces like them in the open day: And children's;-babies, hanging like a rag Forgotten on their mother's neck,-poor mouths, Wiped clean of mother's milk by mother's blow, Before they are taught her cursing. Faces!-phew, We'll call them vices festering to despairs, Or sorrows petrifying to vices: not So there they wait that strangely assorted company-the denizens of St Giles thronging on the inhabitants of St James-both parties curious to behold the marriage which is to inaugurate the future revolution and fusion of society. Romney Leigh appears to do the honours; but time rolls on, and still the bride comes not. The fashionables stare and talk gossip; the vulgar murmur, and desire a smoke--until a rumour, to the effect that something is amiss, permeates the throng. "A murmur and a around; movement drew A naked whisper touched us. Something wrong! What's wrong? The black crowd, as an Cord, quivered in vibrations, and I saw- Which tossed a sudden horror like a sponge upon The topmost altar-stair, and tried to speak, as a man who drowns and My brothers, bear with me! I am very weak. I meant but only good. Perhaps I meant cumstance, And changed it therefore. Damage-none. There's no The ear me.—she departs,-she dis My friends, you are all dismissed. Go, eat and drink According to the programme,-and farewell!'" At this St Giles' rises in insurrection, cursing Romney as a seducer, and accusing him of having made away with the girl. There is a superb row, with threats of violence and arson, until the police enter and clear the church. Beyond an enigmatical letter of leave-taking, which gives no explanation of her avoiding the marriage ceremony, we hear nothing of Marian for a long time. Romney retires to Leigh Hall, which he has turned into a "phalanstery," by which term, we presume, is meant an Owenite community. Miss Aurora continues her devotion to the muses, and becomes more notable day by day; but a horrid suspicion crosses her that Lady Waldemar has found the weak side of her wealthy cousin. For, at a conversazione at the house of a certain Lord Howe, she learns that the fair and intriguing Waldemar is commonly considered as Romney's pet disciple-nay, that she is considered as his bride intended. In the words of Mrs Browning, which we give with out the metrical divisions, "You may find her name on all his missions and commissions, schools, asylums, hospitals. He has had her down with other ladies, whom her starry lead persuaded from other spheres, to his country-place in Shropshire, in the famed phalanstery at Leigh Hall, christianised from Fourier's own, in which he has planted out his sapling stocks of knowledge into social bursaries; and there, they say, she has tarried half a week, and milked the cows, and churned, and pressed the curd, and said my sister' to the lowest drab of all the assembled castaways. Such girls! Ay, sided with them at the washing-tub." Lady Waldemar, in a very spiteful speech, confirms this impression; and Miss Aurora, who all this time has had a secret hankering for her cousin, determines to square her balances with her publisher, and to depart for Italy. In Paris she encounters Marian, and finds her a mother. The explanation is, that Lady Waldemar had tampered with the girl; and by representing to her that her marriage with Romney would be his social ruin, induced her to take flight on the day preceding that which had been arranged for the nuptials. The place of her future destiny was Australia, but her ladyship had confided her to the charge of an unprincipled soubrette, who, whether or not by design of her mistress, took Marian over to France, conveyed her to an infamous house, and sold her, while under the influence of drugs, to violation. On awakening to a sense of her situation and wrongs, the unfortunate girl became mad, and was allowed to make her escape, underwent various adventures and vicissitudes, and finally brought into the world a male child, in whom her whole existence was wrapt up, and for whom alone she lived, when she was recognised and challenged by Aurora in the streets of Paris. The sequel may be easily imagined. Miss Leigh, convinced of Marian's innocence, insists that she, with her child, shall accompany her to Florence; and there are some letters and cross purposes, into which, for the mere sake of the story, it is not necessary to enter. In fine, Aurora, in the full belief that Lady Waldemar, to whom she has sent a most insulting letter, is now the wife of her cousin, becomes melancholy and heart-sick, and time drags wearily on, until one night, watching the stars from her terrace, she is startled by the sudden apparition of Romney by her side. Gentler than in his early youth, and far more humble, Romney first pays homage to her genius, and then confesses that his social schemes have proved an utter failure. "My vain phalanstery dissolved itself; My men and women of disordered lives, I brought in orderly to dine and sleep, Broke up those waxen masks I made them wear, With fierce contortions of the natural face; And cursed me for my tyrannous constraint to live In forcing crooked creatures The doctor woke) and found me with "the frogs" On three successive Sundays; ay, and stopped To weep a little (for he's getting old) And sent me a copy bound in scarlet silk, Poor Romney!' 'What, the pretty ones? 'Ŏtherwise the effect was small. I had my windows broken once or twice By liberal peasants, naturally incensed Who would not let men call their wives At such a vexer of Arcadian peace, their own To kick like Britons,-and made obstacles When things went smoothly as a baby drugged, Toward freedom and starvation; bringing down The wicked London tavern-thieves and And say, ceives Aurora as to his connection with Lady Waldemar, but declares that he considers himself bound, notwithstanding her misfortune, to wed Marian, and to adopt her child. Marian, who has overheard this, comes forward, and after a passionate scene of great beauty, rejects the offer. Here we cannot resist a quotation. "I have not so much life that I should love To see my darling on a good man's knees, "This child was fathered by some cursed wretch What we think never. He is ours, the child; And we would sooner vex a soul in heaven By coupling with it the dead body's thought, It left behind it in a last month's grave, Than, in my child, see other than-my child. We only, never call him fatherless Who has God and his mother. O my babe, race That's worn as bold and open as a smile, name, And has no answer? What! a happier child Than mine, my best,-who laughed so loud to-night He could not sleep for pastime? Nay, I sware By life and love, that, if I lived like some, As some love (eyes that have wept so much, I've room for no more children in my arms; For ever clean without a marriage-ring, "Come down to Romney-pay my debt!" I should be joyful with the stream of joy face I dare not, though I guess the name he loves; I'm learned with my studies of old days, come : Aurora, I could touch her with my hand, She was gone." And so Marian departs. But now comes an awful disclosure-Romney is blind. The blow struck by the poacher had destroyed the visual nerves; and for that unfortunate Lord of Leigh, the glory of the sun, moon, and stars, was but a remembrance. So Aurora, who had always loved him, even though she would not allow it to herself-and whom he had never ceased to love amidst his perverted dreams of duty-gives her whole woman's heart to the helpless; and the poem closes with the interchange of vows and aspirations. Such is the story, which no admirer of Mrs Browning's genius ought in prudence to defend. In our opinion it is fantastic, unnatural, exaggerated; and all the worse, because it professes to be a tale of our own times. No one who understands of how much value probability is to a tale, can read the foregoing sketch, or indeed peruse the poem, without a painful feeling that Mrs Browning has been perpetrating, in essentials, an extravaganza or caricature, instead of giving to the public a real lifelike picture; for who can accept, as truthful representation, Romney's proposal of marriage to an ignorant uneducated girl whom he does not love; or that scene in the church, which is absolutely of Rabelaisian conception? We must not be seduced by beauty and power of execution from entering our protest against this radical error, which appears more glaring as we which is the delineation of character. pass from the story to the next point, Aurora Leigh is not an attractive character. After making the most liberal allowance for pride, and fanaticism for art, and inflexible independence, she is incongruous and contradictory both in her sentiments and in her actions. She is not a genuine woman; one half |