e action to the little
mountain town of Asolo, in Italy. Pippa is a little silk weaver, who goes
out in the morning to enjoy her one holiday of the whole year. As she
thinks of her own happiness she is vaguely wishing that she might share it,
and do some good. Then, with her childish imagination, she begins to weave
a little romance in which she shares in the happiness of the four greatest
and happiest people in Asolo. It never occurs to her that perhaps there is
more of misery than of happiness in the four great ones of whom she dreams;
and so she goes on her way singing,

The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hillside's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn:
God's in his heaven--
All's right with the world!

Fate wills it that the words and music of her little songs should come to
the ears of four different groups of people at the moment when they are
facing the greatest crises of their lives, and turn the scale from evil to
good. But Pippa knows nothing of this. She enjoys her holiday, and goes to
bed still singing, entirely ignorant of the good she has done in the world.
With one exception, it is the most perfect of all Browning's works. At best
it is not easy, nor merely entertaining reading; but it richly repays
whatever hours we spend in studying it.

_The Ring and the Book_ is Browning's masterpiece. It is an immense poem,
twice as long as _Paradise Lost_, and longer by some two thousand lines
than the _Iliad;_ and before we begin the undoubted task of reading it, we
must understand that there is no interesting story or dramatic development
to carry us along. In the beginning we have an outline of the story, such
as it is--a horrible story of Count Guido's murder of his beautiful young
wife; and Browning tells us in detail just when and how he found a book
containing the record of the crime and the trial. There the story element
ends, and the symbolism of the book begins. The title of the poem is
explained by the habit of the old Etruscan goldsmiths who, in making one of
their elaborately chased rings, would mix the pure gold with an alloy, in
order to harden it. When the ring was finished, acid was poured upon it;
and the acid ate out the alloy, leaving the beautiful design in pure gold.
Browning purposes to follow the same plan with his literary material, which
consists simply of the evidence given at the trial of Gu