d wealth-seeking society present to us, are restored to us by her
quiet, order and beauty. When he wrote _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Red
Cotton Nightcap Country_, and _The Inn Album_, Nature had ceased to
awaken the poetic passion in him, and his poetry suffered from the loss.
Its interest lies in the narrow realm of intellectual analysis, not in
the large realm of tragic or joyous passion. He became the dissector of
corrupt bodies, not the creator of living beings.

Nevertheless, in _Fifine at the Fair_ there are several intercalated
illustrations from Nature, all of which are interesting and some
beautiful. The sunset over Sainte-Marie and the lie Noirmoutier, with
the birds who sing to the dead, and the coming of the nightwind and the
tide, is as largely wrought as the description of the mountain rill--the
"infant of mist and dew," and its voyage to the sea is minute and
delicate. There is also that magnificent description of a sunset which I
have already quoted. It is drawn to illustrate some remote point in the
argument, and is far too magnificent for the thing it illustrates. Yet
how few in this long poem, how remote from Browning's heart, are these
touches of Nature.

Again, in _The Inn Album_ there is a description of an English elm-tree,
as an image of a woman who makes marriage life seem perfect, which is
interesting because it is the third, and only the third, reference to
English scenery in the multitude of Browning's verses. The first is in
_Pauline_, the second in that poem, "Oh, to be in England," and this is
the third. The woman has never ceased to gaze

On the great elm-tree in the open, posed
Placidly full in front, smooth hole, broad branch,
And leafage, one green plenitude of May.
... bosomful
Of lights and shades, murmurs and silences,
Sun-warmth, dew-coolness, squirrel, bee, bird,
High, higher, highest, till the blue proclaims
"Leave Earth, there's nothing better till next step
Heavenward!"

This, save in one line, is not felt or expressed with any of that
passion which makes what a poet says completely right.

Browning could not stay altogether in this condition, in which,
moreover, his humour was also in abeyance; and in his next book,
_Pacchiarotto, &c._, he broke away from these morbid subjects, and, with
that recovery, recovered also some of his old love of Nature. The
prologue to that book is poetry; and Nature (though he only describes