ve their grievous disappointments, and one place is as
good or as bad as another to crush some of their fondest hopes.

Annually then, towards the end of April, when the judges at Burlington
House had spoken, Browning had his visits of condolence to pay. How
helpful and encouraging he would be, none of as, I am sure, could
forget. I thanked him on one occasion, telling him that I valued his
good opinion more than any other man's, and reminding him of his own
words:--

"And that's no way of holding up the soul,
Which nobler, needs men's praise perhaps, yet knows
One wise man's verdict outweighs all the fools."

The one wise man always found a word of encouragement--

"Beware of despairing thoughts," he answered. "The darkest days, wait
but till to-morrow, will have passed away."

In his ever simple, unassuming way he compared himself to me, recalling
his failures, and telling me how for many years not a poem of his was
read or could boast of a publisher willing to take it, and how now 3500
copies of the new edition of his works had been sold in a month. "To be
sure, one must live long enough," he added, and quoted Philip von
Artevelde's first speech, in which he says so many die before they've
had a chance, and--

"Then comes the man who has the luck to live,
And he's a miracle."

Unvarying kindness too he showed me when, as he put it, I "entrusted him
with a piece of business." Such a piece was my preface to the
Mendelssohn Letters. In this he made six or eight corrections,
suggestions he insisted on calling them, when he brought the paper back
himself that he might explain verbally why he had substituted a word
here and added another there. At the end he had pencilled: "Excellent.
R. B.," and I felt as proud as a peacock and as happy as a schoolboy.

When the book finally came out he was in Italy, and I sent him a copy of
it.

It was characteristic of him that his kind heart prompting him, and his
unlimited powers of expression aiding him, he would, even on the most
trivial occasions, write in the warmest and the most affectionate terms.
So he did when he answered acknowledging the receipt of the book, and
mentioning the photo of a picture which I had painted for A. P.
Rockwell, a dear friend of mine and a great fur-merchant in New York. It
showed a life-size female figure stretched on a tiger-skin and frankly
nude, but for the white Mongolian and other furs thro