st things in
him, the moral nature being of the very noblest, as all who ever knew
him admit."

After the marriage ceremony Mrs. Browning drove with her maid to the home
of Mr. Boyd, resting there, as if making a morning call on a familiar
friend, until joined by her sisters, who took her for a little drive on
Hampstead Heath. For five days she remained in her father's house, and
during this time Browning could not bring himself to call and ask for his
wife as "Miss Barrett," so they arranged all the details of their journey
by letter. On September 19 they left for Paris, and the last one of these
immortal letters, written the evening before their departure, from Mrs.
Browning to her husband, contains these words:

"By to-morrow at this time I shall have you, only, to love me, my
beloved! You, only! As if one said, God, only! And we shall have Him
beside, I pray of Him!"

With her maid, Mrs. Browning walked out of her father's house the next
day, meeting her husband at a bookseller's around the corner of the
street, and they drove to the station, leaving for Southampton to catch
the night boat to Havre.

Never could the world have understood the ineffable love and beauty and
nobleness of the characters of both Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
had these letters been withheld from the public. Quite aside from the
deeper interest of their personal revelation,--the revelation of such
nobleness and such perfect mutual comprehension and tenderness of sympathy
as are here revealed,--the pages are full of interesting literary allusion
and comment, of wit, repartee, and of charm that defies analysis. It was a
wise and generous gift when the son of the poets, Robert Barrett
Browning, gave these wonderful letters to the reading public. The supreme
test of literature is that which contributes to the spiritual wealth of
the world. Measured by this standard, these are of the highest literary
order. No one can fail to realize how all that is noblest in manhood, all
that is holiest in womanhood, is revealed in this correspondence.

Edmund Clarence Stedman, after reading these letters, said: "It would have
been almost a crime to have permitted this wonderful, exceptional
interchange of soul and mind, between these two strong, 'excepted' beings,
to leave no trace forever."

Robert Barrett Browning, in referring to his publication of this
correspondence in a conversation with the writer of this volume, re