ed; we see no feature of face or form; only the fold of her dress
brushing against the box border, the "twinkling" of her white fingers
among the dark leaves. The typical lover of these lyrics is of a
temperament in which feminine sensitiveness and masculine tenacity are
characteristically blended; a temperament which the faintest and most
fugitive signs of love--a word, a glance, the impalpable music of a
romantic name--not only kindle and subdue, but permanently fortify and
secure. _Cristina_, _Rudel_, and the _Lost Mistress_ stand in a line of
development which culminates in _The Last Ride Together_. Cristina's
lover has but "changed eyes" with her; but no queenly scorn of hers can
undo the spiritual transformation which her glance has wrought:

"Her soul's mine; and thus, grown perfect,
I shall pass my life's remainder."

The _Lost Mistress_ is an exquisitely tender and pathetic farewell, but
not the stifled cry of a man who has received a crushing blow. Not
easily, but yet without any ruinous convulsion, he makes that transition
from love to "mere friendship" which passionate men so hardly endure.

The really tragic love-story was, for Browning, the story not of love
rejected but of love flagging, fading, or crushed out.

"Never fear, but there's provision
Of the devil's to quench knowledge
Lest on earth we walk in rapture,"

Cristina's lover had bitterly reflected. Courts, as the focuses of
social artifice and ceremonial restraint, were for him the peculiar
breeding-places of such tragedies, and in several of the most incisive
of the Lyrics and Romances he appears as the champion of the love they
menace. The hapless _Last Duchess_ suffers for the largess of her kindly
smiles. The duchess of _The Flight_ and the lady of _The Glove_
successfully revolt against pretentious substitutes for love offered in
love's name. _The Flight_ is a tale, as Mrs Browning said, "with a great
heart in it." Both the Gipsy-woman whose impassioned pleading we
overhear, and the old Huntsman who reports it, are drawn from a domain
of rough and simple humanity not very often trodden by Browning. The
genial retainer admirably mediates between the forces of the Court which
he serves and those of the wild primitive race to which his world-old
calling as a hunter makes him kin; his hearty, untutored speech and
character envelop the story like an atmosphere, and create a presumption
that heart and nature will ul