theme,
unless public characters were under discussion, or friends were to be
praised,--which kind office she frequently took upon herself. One never
dreamed of frivolities in Mrs. Browning's presence, and gossip felt
itself out of place. _Your_self (not _her_self) was always a pleasant
subject to her, calling out all her best sympathies in joy, and yet more
in sorrow. Books and humanity, great deeds, and, above all, politics,
which include all the grand questions of the day, were foremost in her
thoughts, and therefore oftenest on her lips. I speak not of religion,
for with her everything was religion. Her Christianity was not confined
to church and rubric: it meant _civilization_.

Association with the Brownings, even though of the slightest nature,
made one better in mind and soul. It was impossible to escape the
influence of the magnetic fluid of love and poetry that was constantly
passing between husband and wife. The unaffected devotion of one to the
other wove an additional charm around the two, and the very contrasts
in their natures made the union a more beautiful one. All remember Mrs.
Browning's pretty poem on her "Pet Name":--

"I have a name, a little name,
Uncadenced for the ear,
Unhonored by ancestral claim,
Unsanctified by prayer and psalm
The solemn font anear.

* * * * *

"My brother gave that name to me,
When we were children twain,--
When names acquired baptismally
Were hard to utter, as to see
That life had any pain."

It was this pet name of two small letters lovingly combined that dotted
Mr. Browning's spoken thoughts, as moonbeams fleck the ocean, and seemed
the pearl-bead that linked conversation together in one harmonious
whole. But what was written has now come to pass. The pet name is
engraved only in the hearts of a few.

"Though I write books, it will be read
Upon the leaves of none;
And afterward, when I am dead,
Will ne'er be graved, for sight or tread,
Across my funeral stone."

Mrs. Browning's letters are masterpieces of their kind. Easy and
conversational, they touch upon no subject without leaving an indelible
impression of the writer's originality; and the myriad matters of
universal interest with which many of them are teeming will render them
a precious legacy to the world, when the time shall have arrived for
their publication. Of late, Italy has claimed the lion's share in these
unrhymed sketches of Mrs.