nd nearly all my intense
pleasure have passed in my thoughts."

[Illustration: Mrs. Browning]

She was born at Burn Hall, Durham, on March 6th, 1809, and passed a
happy childhood and youth in her father's country house at Hope End,
Herefordshire. She was remarkably precocious, reading Homer in the
original at eight years of age. She said that in those days "the Greeks
were her demigods. She dreamed more of Agamemnon than of Moses, her
black pony." "I wrote verses very early, at eight years old and earlier.
But what is less common, the early fancy turned into a will, and
remained with me." At seventeen years of age she published the 'Essay on
Mind,' and translated the 'Prometheus' of AEschylus. Some years later the
family removed to London, and here Elizabeth, on account of her
continued delicate health, was kept in her room for months at a time.
The shock following on the death of her brother, who was drowned before
her eyes in Torquay, whither she had gone for rest, completely shattered
her physically. Now her life of seclusion in her London home began. For
years she lay upon a couch in a large, comfortably darkened room, seeing
only the immediate members of her family and a few privileged friends,
and spending her days in writing and study, "reading," Miss Mitford
says, "almost every book worth reading in almost every language." Here
Robert Browning met her. They were married in 1846, against the will of
her father. Going abroad immediately, they finally settled in Florence
at the Casa Guidi, made famous by her poem bearing the same name. Their
home became the centre of attraction to visitors in Florence, and many
of the finest minds in the literary and artistic world were among their
friends. Hawthorne, who visited them, describes Mrs. Browning as "a
pale, small person, scarcely embodied at all, at any rate only
substantial enough to put forth her slender fingers to be grasped, and
to speak with a shrill yet sweet tenuity of voice. It is wonderful to
see how small she is, how pale her cheek, how bright and dark her eyes.
There is not such another figure in the world, and her black ringlets
cluster down in her neck and make her face look whiter." She died in
Florence on the 30th of June, 1861, and the citizens of Florence placed
a tablet to her memory on the walls of Casa Guidi.

The life and personality of Elizabeth Barrett Browning seem to explain
her poetry. It is a life "without a catastrophe," except perhaps to