r the direction of Macready, by whose desire it had been written,
and who sustained the principal part.

The appearance of "Strafford" coincides so closely with at least the
conception of "Sordello" as to afford a strong proof of the variety of
the author's genius. The evidence is still stronger in "Pippa Passes,"
in which he leaps directly from his most abstract mode of conception to
his most picturesque; and, from the prolonged strain of a single inward
experience, to a quick succession of pictures, in which life is given
from a general and external point of view. The humour which found little
place in the earlier work has abundant scope here; and the descriptive
power which was so vividly apparent in all of them, here shows itself
for the first time in those touches of local colour which paint without
describing. Mr. Browning is now fully developed, on the artistic and on
the practical side of his genius.

Mr. Browning was walking alone, in a wood near Dulwich, when the image
flashed upon him of some one walking thus alone through life; one
apparently too obscure to leave a trace of his or her passage, yet
exercising a lasting though unconscious influence at every step of it;
and the image shaped itself into the little silk-winder of Asolo,
Felippa, or Pippa.

"PIPPA PASSES" represents the course of one day--Pippa's yearly holiday;
and is divided into what is virtually four acts, being the occurrences
of "Morning," "Noon," "Evening," and "Night." Pippa rises with the sun,
determined to make the best of the bright hours before her; and she
spends them in wandering through the town, singing as she goes, and all
the while thinking of its happiest men and women, and fancying herself
they. These happy ones are four, each the object of a different love.
Ottima, whose aged husband is the owner of the silk mills, has a lover
in Sebald. Phene, betrothed to the French sculptor Jules, will be led
this morning to her husband's home. Luigi (a conspiring patriot) meets
his mother at eve in the turret. The Bishop, blessed by God, will sleep
at Asolo to-night. Which love would she choose? The lover's? It gives
cause for scandal. The husband's? It may not last. The parent's? it
alone will guard us to the end of life. God's love? That is best of all.
It is Monsignore she decides to be.

Ottima and her lover have murdered her husband at his villa on the
hillside. She is the more reckless of the two, and she is striving by
the exe