nature of preaching,
or anything approaching to it, but simply by the perception and
appreciation of what Elizabeth Barrett Browning was; of the immaculate
purity of every thought that passed through her pellucid mind, and the
indefeasible nobility of her every idea, sentiment, and opinion. I
hope my reader is not so much the slave of conventional phraseology as
to imagine that I use the word "purity" in the above sentence in its
restricted and one may say technical, sense. I mean the purity of the
upper spiritual atmosphere in which she habitually dwelt; the absolute
disseverance of her moral as well as her intellectual nature from all
those lower thoughts as well as lower passions which smirch the human
soul. In mind and heart she was _white_--stainless. That is what I
mean by purity.

Her most intimate friend at Florence was a Miss Isabella Blagden, who
lived for many years at Bellosguardo, in a villa commanding a lovely
view over Florence and the valley of the Arno from the southern side,
looking across it therefore to Fiesole and its villa-and-cypress-covered
slopes. Whether the close friendship between Mrs. Browning and Isa
Blagden (we all called her Isa always) was first formed in Florence, or
had its commencement at an earlier date, I do not know. But Isa was also
the intimate and very specially highly-valued friend of my wife and
myself. And this also contributed to our common friendship. Isa was
(yes, as usual, "was," alas, though she was very much my junior) a very
bright, very warm-hearted, very clever little woman, who knew everybody,
and was, I think, more universally beloved than any other individual
among us. A little volume of her poems was published after her untimely
death. They are not such as could take by storm the careless ears of the
world, which knows nothing about her, and must, I suppose, be admitted
to be marked by that mediocrity which neither gods nor men can tolerate.
But it is impossible to read the little volume without perceiving how
choice a spirit the authoress must have been, and understanding how it
came to pass that she was especially honoured by the close and warm
attachment of Mrs. Browning. I have scores of letters signed "Isa," or
rather Sibylline leaves scrawled in the vilest handwriting on all sorts
of abnormal fragments of paper, and despatched in headlong haste,
generally concerning some little projected festivity at Bellosguardo,
and advising me of the expected presence of