to St. Kitts, where he was given
employment on his mother's sugar plantations. The breach between Robert
and his father became absolute when the boy defied local prejudice by
teaching a negro to read, and when, because of what his father
considered a sentimental objection to slavery, he finally refused to
remain in the West Indies. The young man returned to England and at
twenty-two started on an independent career as a clerk in the Bank of
England. In 1811 he married Sarah Anne Wiedemann. They settled in
Camberwell, London, where Robert, the poet, was born, May 7, 1812, and
his sister Sarianna in 1814.

Browning's father was a competent official in the Bank and a successful
business man, but his tastes were aesthetic and literary, and his
leisure time was accordingly devoted to such pursuits as the collection
of old books and manuscripts. He also read widely in both classic and
modern literatures. The first book of the _Iliad_ he knew by heart, and
all the _Odes_ of Horace, and he was accustomed to soothe his child to
sleep by humming to him snatches of Anacreon to the tune of "A Cottage
in the Wood." Mr. Browning had also considerable skill in two realms of
art, for he drew vigorous portraits and caricatures, and he had, even
according to his son's mature judgment, extraordinary force and facility
in verse-making. In character he was serene, lovable, gentle,
"tenderhearted to a fault." So instinctively chivalrous was he that
there was "no service which the ugliest, oldest, crossest woman in the
world might not have exacted of him." He was a man of great physical
vigor, dying at the age of eighty-four without ever having been ill.

Browning's mother was the daughter of William Wiedemann, a German who
had settled in Dundee and married a Scotch wife. Mrs. Browning impressed
all who knew her by her sweetness and goodness. Carlyle spoke of her as
"the true type of a Scottish gentlewoman"; her son's friend, Mr. Kenyon,
said that such as she had no need to go to heaven, because they made it
wherever they were; and her son called her "a divine woman." She had
deep religious instincts and concerned herself particularly with her
son's moral and spiritual development. The bond between them was always
very strong, and when she died in 1849 his wife wrote, "He has loved his
mother as such passionate natures can love, and I never saw a man so
bowed down in an extremity of sorrow--never."

Robert Browning's childhood was passed i