arly loved sister, the "Arabel" of so many affectionate
letters. Once more a winter in Rome proved temporally restorative. But
at last the day came when she wrote her last poem--"North and South," a
gracious welcome to Hans Christian Andersen on the occasion of his
first visit to the Eternal City.

Early in June of 1861 the Brownings were once more at Casa Guidi. But
soon after their return the invalid caught a chill. For a few days she
hovered like a tired bird--though her friends saw only the seemingly
unquenchable light in the starry eyes, and did not anticipate the
silence that was soon to be.

By the evening of the 28th day of the month she was in sore peril of
failing breath. All night her husband sat by her, holding her hand. Two
hours before dawn she realised that her last breath would ere long fall
upon his tear-wet face. Then, as a friend has told us, she passed into a
state of ecstasy: yet not so rapt therein but that she could whisper
many words of hope, even of joy. With the first light of the new day,
she leaned against her lover. Awhile she lay thus in silence, and then,
softly sighing "_It is beautiful!_" passed like the windy fragrance of
a flower.

CHAPTER IX.

It is needless to dwell upon what followed. The world has all that need
be known. To Browning himself it was the abrupt, the too deeply
pathetic, yet not wholly unhappy ending of a lovelier poem than any he
or another should ever write, the poem of their married life.

There is a rare serenity in the thought of death when it is known to be
the gate of life. This conviction Browning had, and so his grief was
rather that of one whose joy has westered earlier. The sweetest music of
his life had withdrawn: but there was still music for one to whom life
in itself was a happiness. He had his son, and was not void of other
solace: but even had it been otherwise he was of the strenuous natures
who never succumb, nor wish to die--whatever accident of mortality
overcome the will and the power.

It was in the autumn following his wife's death that he wrote the noble
poem to which allusion has already been made: "Prospice." Who does not
thrill to its close, when all of gloom or terror

"Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
Then a light, then thy breast,
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest."

There are few direct allusions to his wife in Br