yes, preternaturally dilated, poured their floods
of life into her own. Then the music broke up into words, and he knew
what hope and promise that fainting spirit was drinking in: for he heard
what the gipsy said. She was telling the young Duchess that she was one
of themselves--that she bore their mystic mark in the two veins which
met and parted on her brow--that after fiery trial she should return to
her tribe, and be shielded by their devotion for evermore. She was
telling her how good a thing is love--how strong and beautiful the
double existence of those whom love has welded together--how full of
restful memories the old age of those who have lived in and for it--how
sure and gentle their awakening into the better world.... Here the words
again lost themselves in music, and he understood no more. When the two
appeared at the castle gate, the gipsy had shrunk back into her original
character; but the Duchess remained transformed. She had become, in her
turn, a queen.

The suggestion of her gipsy origin forms a connecting link between the
real and the ideal aspects of the Duchess's flight. We might imagine her
fervid nature as being affected by the message of deliverance precisely
in the manner described: while the beautified image of her deliverer
transferred itself through some magnetic influence to the spectator's
mind from her own. He does not, however, present himself as a probable
subject for such impressions. He is a jovial, matter-of-fact person, in
spite of the vein of sentiment which runs through him; and the
imaginative part of his narrative was more probably the result of a
huntsman's breakfast which had found its way into his brain. As in the
case of Childe Roland, the poetic truth of the Duchess's romance is
incompatible with rational explanation, and independent of it. Various
dramatic details complete the story.

SATIRICAL OR HUMOROUS POEMS.

Humour is a constant characteristic of Mr. Browning's work,[90] and it
sometimes takes the form of direct and intentional satire; but his
sympathy with human beings and his hopeful view of their future destiny,
are opposed to any development of the satirical mood. The impression of
sympathy will even neutralize the satire, in poems in which the latter
is directly and conciously conveyed: as, for instance, in "Caliban upon
Setebos," and "The Bishop orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church." Of
grim or serious satire, there is, I think, only one specimen among