f securing American
copyright. Browning several times printed single poems thus, and for the
same reasons--that is, either for transatlantic copyright, or when the
verses were not likely to be included in any volume for a prolonged
period. These leaflets or half-sheetlets of 'Gold Hair' and 'Prospice,'
of 'Cleon' and 'The Statue and the Bust'--together with the "Two Poems
by Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning," published, for benefit of a
charity, in 1854--are among the rarest "finds" for the collector, and
are literally worth a good deal more than their weight in gold.

In the tumultuous year of 1859 all Italy was in a ferment. No patriot
among the Nationalists was more ardent in her hopes than the delicate,
too fragile, dying poetess, whose flame of life burned anew with the
great hopes that animated her for her adopted country. Well indeed did
she deserve, among the lines which the poet Tommaseo wrote and the
Florence municipality caused to be engraved in gold upon a white marble
slab, to be placed upon Casa Guidi, the words _fece del suo verso aureo
anello fra Italia e Inghilterra_--"who of her Verse made a golden link
connecting England and Italy."

The victories of Solferino and San Martino made the bitterness of the
disgraceful Treaty of Villafranca the more hard to bear. Even had we not
Mr. Story's evidence, it would be a natural conclusion that this
disastrous ending to the high hopes of the Italian patriots accelerated
Mrs. Browning's death. The withdrawal of hope is often worse in its
physical effects than any direct bodily ill.

It was a miserable summer for both husband and wife, for more private
sorrows also pressed upon them. Not even the sweet autumnal winds
blowing upon Siena wafted away the shadow that had settled upon the
invalid: nor was there medicine for her in the air of Rome, where the
winter was spent. A temporary relief, however, was afforded by the more
genial climate, and in the spring of 1860 she was able, with Browning's
help, to see her Italian patriotic poems through the press. It goes
without saying that these "Poems before Congress" had a grudging
reception from the critics, because they dared to hint that all was not
roseate-hued in England. The true patriots are those who love despite
blemishes, not those who cherish the blemishes along with the virtues.
To hint at a flaw is "not to be an Englishman."

The autumn brought a new sadness in the death of Miss Arabella
Barrett--a de