school-girl correspondence or the colluvial fluency of the news- paper

"hurry-graph."

The subject of the poem is that phase of the Italian'struggle for independence and unity which was exhibited at Florence in 1848, with the ensuino.° reaction, and the final occupation of Florence by the Austrians. Collaterally it introduces the general movement, and touches on its leading features, the characters of Pio Nono and Charles Albert, the murder of Count Rossi, and the moral de- fects to which primarily were owing the failure of the attempt and the disappointment of all immediate hope for Italian nation- ality. From the windows of the Casa Guidi Mrs. Browning surveyed the popular procession to the Pitti Palace, to receive the oath of the Grand Duke Leopold to a constitution; the marching and countermarching of the civic guard, the noisy demonstrations of the enfranchised citizens, "especially the little boys " • the plant- ing of trees of liberty, and the universal reform Of cafe-signs which followed the flight of the aforesaid Duke, who grew tired of the prospect of playing constitutional king long before the reality commenced. Then follows a pause : the people find liberty does not exactly mean exemption from toil anl payment of taxes, but that along with its visionary grandeurs comes the necessity for self-sacrifice, exertion, even fighting—and then, all! then, the " ignavum peens" longs for its meadow-grass and its lazy shade, and will not plough in the heat and dust ; and so Guerazzi, "the father of the land,' is dismounted from his pedestal, and the dear paternal Duke is recalled.

"Well, how he came I will relate to you ; And if your hearts should burn, why, hearts must burn, To make the ashes which things old and new Shall be washed clean in—as thisHuke will learn.

From Casa Guidi windows, gazing, then, I saw and witness how the Duke came back.

The regular tramp of home and tread of men Did smite the silence like an anvil black And sparkless. With her wide eyes at full strain, Our Tuscan nurse exelainied, 'Alack, alack, Signora, these shall be the Austrians.' 'Nay, Hush, hush,' I answered, 'do not wake the child.' For so my two-months' baby sleeping lay In milky dreams upon the bed and smiled ; And I thought He shall sleep on, while he may, Through the world's baseness. Not being yet defiled, Why should he be disturbed by what is done?' Then, gazing, I beheld the long-drawn street Live out, from end to end, full in the sun, With Austria's thousands. Sword and bayonet, Horse, foot, artillery, cannons rolling on,

Like blind, slow storm-clouds gestant with the heat

Of undeveloped lightnings, each bestrode By a single man, dust-white from head to heel, Indifferent as the dreaaful thing he rode, Cahn as a sculptured Fate, and terrible : As some smooth river which bath overflowed, Doth slow and silent down its current wheel

A loosened forest, all the pines erect;

So, swept in mute significance of storm,

The marshalled tharisands, not an eye deflect To left or right, to catch a novel form

Of the famed city adorned by architect And carver, nor of beauties live and warm Scared at the casements, all, straightforward eyes And faces, held as steadfast as their swords, And cognizant of acts, not imageries."

• Casa (-Midi Windows; a Poem. By Elizabeth Barrett Browning. PubliabOd by Chapman and hail.

quoting. the vapid inanities empyrean of the eagle or the lower firmament where the lark be-

' primer° espada de Espana,' the matador, or killer. lull, and formed with and the slipshod slovenliness of some of the earlier poems, the flight the exquisite symmetry of a Greek statue, he moves with a grace and calm is better sustained, the power more predominant over the weakness, elegance altogether his own ; he advances to the royal box, and, lowering his the thought more uniformly clear and vigorous, and the language sword asks permission to kill the bull; the requisite leave is granted, and less often degenerates iuto the thrice-underscored emphasis of

The philosophic historian, who in after times would investigate the causes which led to this lamentable failure of rational ex- pectations, and this miserable disappointment of more exaggerated hopes, will hardly need to do more than add details to the several heads of the description which, with a colouring of indignant wrong, Mrs. Browning gives of the practical proceedings of the Florentine patriots.

" Bitter things I write, Because my soul is bitter for your sake, 0 Freedom ! 0 my Florence!"

But it is neither the vigour of the descriptions nor the indig- nant vehemence of the invective that gives to this poem its most powerful charm. That is owing to the womanly faith and trust, which, though tempered by experience and enlightened by a manly power of analyzing events and facing disagreeable truths, yet shine serene and untroubled either by the storm of adverse circum- stances or the more bitter trial of disappointment through the weakness or the crimes of those who have been loved and confided in. And with this is united an insight into the possibilities of men that rises above the actual, shaped as it is by a thousand counteracting causes, and sees with the eye of prophecy and realizes with the glow of triumph "the great hereafter in the now." Even poor wretched fatuous Pio Nono, sunk as he is be- low the level of the helot king of Prussia traitor, from sheer weakness, first to the traditions of his church and order, and next to the people whom he had seduced to the very acts of which he now makes them the scapegoats—even he is exhibited so fashioned by his antecedents and so trammelled by his circum- stances, the falsehood and the cruelty on which the Papal throne rests, that we feel towards him more pity than either contempt or indignation. Of Charles Albert Mrs. Browning's appreciation is so kindly, and her tribute to him so noble, as to force one to forget with her his bad generalship, the old Carbonari stain, and all that Italy might have gained had his genius been on a level with his aspirations.

"Genoa, where a king may fitly lie, Who bursting that heroic heart of his At lost Novara, that he could not die, Though thrice into the cannon's eyes for this He plunged his shuddering steed, and felt the sky Reel back between the fire-shocks; stripped away The ancestral ermine ere the smoke had cleared, And naked to the soul, that none might say His kingship covered what was base and bleared With treason, he went out an exile, yea, An exiled patriot. Let him be revered.

"Yea, verily, Charles Albert has died well : And if he lived not all so, as one spoke, The sin pass softly with the passing bell. For he was shriven, I think, in cannon smoke, And taking off his crown, made visible A hero's forehead. Shaking Austria's yoke, He shattered his own hand an heart. 'So best,' His last words were upon his lonely bed- ' I do not end like popes and dukes at least- ' Thank God for it.' And now that he is dead, Atimitting it is proved and manifest That he was worthy, with a diserowned head, To measure heights with patriots, let them stand Beside the man in his Oporto shroud, And each vouchsafe to take him by the hand, And kiss him on the cheek, and say aloud, 'Thou too host suffered for our native land !

My brother, thou art one of us. Be proud.'"

The subjective mode of treatment, by which the theme has been fitted to a woman's hand, and by which it acquires the unity of a work of art and at the same time dispenses with the detail of con- tinuous narrative, enables the writer to diverge at pleasure from her direct course, and, without causing any feeling of interruption, to introduce a variety of topic and allusion. Foremost ameng such discursions is a magnificent description of the treasures of the Crystal Palace, and a fervent appeal on behalf of "poor Italia baffled by mischance," to the nations on their way to the World's Fair, "0 gracious nations," ClriS the poetess,

"You all go to your Fair; and I am one Who at the roadside of humanity Beseech your alms,—a justice to be done.

So, prosper ! "

But of these episodical passages there is one so stirring in its fervid enthusiasm and righteous indignation, as to be not un- worthy of standing side by side with Milton's noblest sonnet, "Avenge, 0 Lord, thy slaughtered saints !" and which as coming from a woman's heart is a tenfold more impressive protest against a phase of philanthropy of which we have heard much of late years, and under which is very apt to lurk, unsuspected by itself, an epicurean love of ease and an immoral lust of gain. A Joan of Are might have uttered it in her loftiest moments, in the fervent prayer which strengthened her arm and nerved her heart for some heroic action of great enterprise.

"A cry is up in England, which (loth ring The hollow world through, that for ends of trade, And virtue, and God's better worshiping, We henceforth should exalt the name of Peace,

And leave those rusty wars that eat the soul,—

(Besides their clippings at our golden fleece). I too have loved peace, and from bole to bole Of immemorial, undeciduous trees, Would write, as lovers use, upon a scroll The holy name of Peace, and set it high

Where none should pluck it down. On trees, I say,—

Not upon gibbets !— I love no peace which is not fellowship, And which includes not mercy. I would have Rather, the raking of the guns across The world, and shrieks against Heaven's architrave. Rather the struggle in the slippery fosse Of dying men and horses, and the wave Blood-bubbling Enough said !—By Christ's own cross, And by the faint heart of my womanhood, Such things are better than a Peace which sits Beside the hearth in self-commended mood, And takes no thought how wind and rain by fits Are howling out of doors against the good Of the poor wanderer. What ! your peace admits Of outside anguish while it sits at home?

I loathe to take its name upon my tongue—

It is no peace. "fis treason, stiff with doom.

'Tis gagged despair, and inarticulate wrong, Annihilated Poland, stifled Rome, Dazed Naples, Hungary fainting 'neath the thong, And Austria wearing a smooth olive-leaf On her brute forehead, while her hoofs outpress The life from these Italian souls, in brief.

0 Lord of Peace, who art Lord of Righteousness, Constrain the anguished worlds from sin and grief, Pierce them with conscience, purge them with redress, And give us peace which is no counterfeit !

But who, it may be said, can be enthusiastic for a cause which has fallen by the weakness of its own adherents, the measure of whose folly can only be taken by those who know the rottenness of the power which oppresses them, and the mingled imbecility and wickedness of those who wield it ? None but a woman and a mo- ther, with her first-born smiling at her knee, could have given such an answer to the despairing and the contemptuous, as Mrs. Brown- ina. has given. She sends forth her dove over the wild waste of

waters, and here is the olive branch brought back in its mouth,

showing the new world emerging in hope and promise from the subsidence of the deluge.

" The sun strikes through the windows, up the floor :

Stand out in it, my own young Florentine, Not two years old, and let me see thee more!

It grows along thy amber curls, to shine Brighter than elsewhere. Now, look straight before, And fix thy brave blue English eyes on mine, And from thy soul, which fronts the future so, With unabash.'d and unabated gaze, Teach me to hope for what the Angels know,

When they smile clear as thou dost. Down God's ways,

With just alighted feet between the snow And snowdrops, where a little lamb may graze, Thou host no fear, my lamb, about the road, Albeit in our vain-glory we assume That, less than we have, thou hast learnt of God.

Stand out, my blue-eyed prophet!—thou' to whom

The earliest world-day light that ever flowed Through Casa Guidi windows chanced to come ! Now shake the glittering nimbus of thy hair, And be God's witness—that the elemental New springs of life are gushing everywhere,

To cleanse the water-courses' and prevent all

Concrete obstructions which infest the air —That earth's alive, and gentle or ungentle

Motions within her, signify but growth :

The ground swells greenest o'er the labouring moles. Howe'er the uneasy world is vexed and wroth,

Young children, lifted high on parent souls,

Look round them with a smile upon the mouth, And take for music every bell that tolls. Who said we should be better if like these ?

And we . . . despond we for the future, though Posterity is smiling at our knees,

Convicting us of folly ? Let us go—

We will trust God. The blank interstices Men take for ruins, He will build into With pillared marbles rare, or knit across With generous arches, till the fane's complete.

This world has no perdition, if some loss."

Well said 'Wordsworth, 'Wisdom doth live with children round her knees " ; and had he been living, even he, with all his indif- ference to contemporary poetry, would scarcely have failed to recognize this passage as a genuine inspiration, caught, where poets too seldom seek it, at their own hearths. And to those who think that women and politics should be wide as the poles asunder, we recommend it, as a proof of the feminine warmth of heart that may coexist with a vivid sympathy with the public affiiirs of nations, and of the deeper human interest those affairs themselves assume when thus viewed in relation to family life and from the centre of the natural affections. For ourselves, we are proud henceforth to rank, if not among Mrs. Browning's indiscriminate admirers, at least among those who regard her poetical career with hopeful attention, and who look to her for some work not only in- stinct with genuine feeling and sparkling with flashes of beauty, but matured by patient thought, and perfeete I by that labour with- out which the greatest genius aspires in vain to the honours of art