ng off in his exasperating manner into the Red Cotton
Night-Cap Country, to tell us of Prince Hohenstiel Tebwangan Saviour of
Society. The pity of it is beyond expression, when so great a poet as
Browning makes himself so needlessly unintelligible, and loses the vast
influence he might exert over the minds of his generation and the minds
of posterity. But the thoughts hidden in his rugged verse are worth
delving for, and already societies are being formed in England and
America to study them. These societies will do something to popularize
him, but he can never be made what he was really capable of being, the
poet of the people. His circle of readers will always be small, but it
will be of the world's best. The thinkers will never make a vast throng
in this world, while the highways of folly will always swarm with a
great multitude which no man can number. But there is a day after
to-day, and sometime, when the thought of the world shall have risen to
a higher level, the name of Robert Browning will be oftener than now
upon the lips of men.

Personally, Browning is almost unknown to his countrymen; his name even
has never been heard by the multitude. He is never pointed out to
strangers, as are other men of letters, and never attracts any notice in
a public place. But he is well known to a select circle, where he is a
favorite, and he goes a good deal into society in London these later
years. He is a great favorite with women everywhere; and he deserves to
be, for he has always shown himself capable of sympathizing with what is
truest and best in womanhood. He has been loyal to the memory of his
wife during all his long years of solitude, and it still seems that she
holds her old place in his heart. He is now seventy-four years old,--a
fine, well-preserved man, with a light step and an easy carriage. He was
a handsome man in his prime, with a charmingly expressive face and a
good figure. His hair is now snow-white, but otherwise he is not old in
his looks. His manners are somewhat precise, and after the old school.
He is fond of admiration, and is accounted egotistical, although
reserved in general society. His talk, like his writings, is a good deal
upon out-of-the-way subjects, and is often deemed unintelligible by
those unfamiliar with his thought. To his enthusiastic admirers it seems
like inspiration. He is still busy with his pen, although his volumes of
poetry now number twenty or more. He has really created a lit