lusion in some portion of the details of her prophecy. To achieve
lasting reputation as a soothsayer, the prophecy must be accurate
throughout. The fact that there was an interval of three years between the
first and the second parts of this poem accounts for the discrepancy
between them. In her own words she confessed:

"I wrote a meditation and a dream,
Hearing a little child sing in the street:
I leant upon his music as a theme,
Till it gave way beneath my heart's full beat
Which tried at an exultant prophecy,
But dropped before the measure was complete--
Alas for songs and hearts! O Tuscany,
O Dante's Florence, is the type too plain?"

The flashing lightnings of a betrayed people gleam like an unsheathed
sword in another canto beginning:

"From Casa Guidi windows I looked forth,
And saw ten thousand eyes of Florentines
Flash back the triumph of the Lombard north."

These ardent lines explain how she had been misled, for who could dream at
the time that Leopoldo ("_l'Intrepido_," as a poet of Viareggio called him
in a truly Italian fervor of enthusiasm) could have proved himself a
traitor to these trusting people,--these tender-hearted, gentle,
courteous, refined Italians? All these attributes pre-eminently
characterize the people; but also Mrs. Browning's insight that "the
patriots are not instructed, and the instructed are not patriots," was too
true. The adherents of the papal power were strong and influential, and
the personal character, whatever might be said of his political
principles,--the personal character of Pio Nono was singularly winning,
and this was by no means a negligible factor in the great problem then
before Italy.

[Illustration: STATUE OF SAVONAROLA, BY E. PAZZI,

IN THE SALA DEI CINQUECENTO, PALAZZO VECCHIO.]

Mrs. Browning very wisely decided to let "Casa Guidi Windows" stand as
written, with all the inconsistency between its first and second parts,
as each reflected what she believed true at the time of writing; and it
thus presents a most interesting and suggestive commentary on Italian
politics between 1850 and 1853. Its discrepancies are such "as we are
called upon to accept at every hour by the conditions of our nature," she
herself said of it, "implying the interval between aspiration and
performance, between faith and disillusion, between hope and fact." This
discrepancy was more painful to her than it can be even to the most
critical rea