of the book; it gives the lie to those critics who have
glibly said that he has no way in which to reach our hearts or cause a
lump in our throats.

The very method of describing how a great man wooed a great woman, how
the two loved, married, and disagreed upon certain matters, is one that
has an essential appeal to the heart. The exquisite description of the
effect of the death of his wife on Browning is pathetic by its very
simplicity.

It is enough to say that Browning's marriage was a successful one, which
is not to say that it was entirely free from certain disagreements. The
domestic relations of great writers and poets have not always been of
the rosiest. Swift did not make an ideal marriage--at least, not on
conventional lines. Milton had a wife who utterly misunderstood that her
husband was a genius. Dickens was not blessed with matrimonial bliss.
Shelley found faith in one woman hard.

But Browning and his wife had no disagreements on their life interests.
They were both poets, though of a different calibre. What they really
did not see eye to eye upon was something which the human race is still
much divided about. This great point of difference was with regard to
spiritualism. Browning did not dislike spiritualism; he disliked
spiritualists. The difference is tremendous. Unfortunately many of the
interpreters of spiritualism have degraded it into a kind of blatant
necromancy which is in no way dignified or useful. It is entirely
opposed to proper psychic research.

Miss Barrett had been an invalid. Therefore Browning feared that
spiritualism might have a really bad effect on his wife. 'He was
sensible to put a stop to it.'

The theory, on the other hand, held by other critics of Browning than
Chesterton was that his dislike of spiritualism was fostered by a direct
disbelief in immortality, which is as absurd a statement as is possible
to make. Spiritualism and Immortality have no necessary connection
whatever, though to a certain extent Spiritualism is presumed on the
belief in a future life.

But this, as Chesterton points out, was not the reason for Browning's
position; it was entirely that Browning thought 'if he had not
interposed when she was becoming hysterical she might have ended in a
lunatic asylum.'

As Browning spent so much of his life in Italy it will be well to see
what our critic considers he thought of that country under the blue
skies jutting on to the blue seas of the Mediterranea