tten all his poems."--(_W.W. Story_.)

To Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne, Mr. Hillard, and Mr. Story, in particular, we
are indebted for several delightful glimpses into the home-life of the
two poets. We can see Mrs. Browning in her "ideal chamber," neither a
library nor a sitting-room, but a happy blending of both, with the
numerous old paintings in antique Florentine frames, easy-chairs and
lounges, carved bookcases crammed with books in many languages,
bric-a-brac in any quantity, but always artistic, flowers everywhere,
and herself the frailest flower of all.

Mr. Hillard speaks of the happiness of the Brownings' home and their
union as perfect: he, full of manly power, she, the type of the most
sensitive and delicate womanhood. This much-esteemed friend was
fascinated by Mrs. Browning. Again and again he alludes to her exceeding
spirituality: "She is a soul of fire enclosed in a shell of pearl:" her
frame "the transparent veil for a celestial and mortal spirit:" and
those fine words which prove that he too was of the brotherhood of the
poets, "Her tremulous voice often flutters over her words like the flame
of a dying candle over the wick."

CHAPTER VIII.

With the flower-tide of spring in 1849 came a new happiness to the two
poets: the son who was born on the 9th of March. The boy was called
Robert Wiedemann Barrett, the second name, in remembrance of Browning's
much-loved mother, having been substituted for the "Sarianna" wherewith
the child, if a girl, was to have been christened. Thereafter their "own
young Florentine" was an endless joy and pride to both: and he was
doubly loved by his father for his having brought a renewal of life to
her who bore him.

That autumn they went to the country, to the neighbourhood of
Vallombrosa, and then to the Bagni di Lucca. There they wandered content
in chestnut-forests, and gathered grapes at the vintage.

Early in the year Browning's "Poetical Works" were published in two
volumes. Some of the most beautiful of his shorter poems are to be found
therein. What a new note is struck throughout, what range of subject
there is! Among them all, are there any more treasurable than two of the
simplest, "Home Thoughts from Abroad" and "Night and Morning"?

"Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in