mparable lines, spoken in her last hour on earth by Pompilia:

"O lover of my life, O soldier-saint,
No work begun shall ever pause for death!
Love will be helpful to me more and more
I' the coming course, the new path I must tread--

* * * * *

Tell him that if I seem without him now,
That's the world's insight! Oh, he understands!

* * * * *

So let him wait God's instant men call years;
Meantime hold hard by truth and his great soul,
Do out the duty!..."

In the entire range of Browning's heroines Pompilia is the most exalted
and beautiful character.

CHAPTER X

1869-1880

"I am strong in the spirit, deep-thoughted, clear-eyed;
I could walk, step for step, with an angel beside,
On the heaven-heights of truth.
Oh, the soul keeps its youth

* * * * *

"'Twixt the heavens and the earth _can_ a poet despond?
O Life, O Beyond,
Thou art strange, thou art sweet!"

IN SCOTLAND WITH THE STORYS--BROWNING'S CONVERSATION--AN AMUSING
INCIDENT--WITH MILSAND AT ST. AUBIN'S--"RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP
COUNTRY"--ROBERT BARRETT BROWNING'S GIFT FOR ART--ALFRED DOMETT
("WARING")--"BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE"--BROWNING AND TENNYSON--
"PACCHIAROTTO"--VISITS JOWETT AT OXFORD--DECLINES LORD RECTORSHIP OF
ST. ANDREWS--"LA SAISIAZ"--ITALY REVISITED--THE DREAM OF ASOLO--
"IVANOVITCH"--PRIDE IN HIS SON'S SUCCESS--"DRAMATIC IDYLLS."

In the summer of 1869 the Storys, with their daughter, came from Rome and
joined Browning with his sister and his son, for a holiday in Scotland.
They passed some time at a little inn on Loch Achnault, where Lady Marian
Alford also came, and there are still vivid reminiscences of picnic
lunches on the heather, and of readings by the poet from "The Ring and the
Book." Chapters from "Rob Roy" also contributed to the enjoyment of
evenings when the three ladies of the party--Mrs. Story, Lady Marian, and
the lovely young girl, Miss Edith Story--were glad to draw a little nearer
to the blazing fire which, even in August, is not infrequently to be
desired in Scotland. Lord Dufferin was also a friend of those days, and
for the tower he had built at Clandeboye in the memory of his mother,
Helen, Countess of Gifford, Browning wrote, soon after, his poem entitled
"Helen's Tower." Mrs. Orr speaks of this poem as little known, and not
included in