What high honor the scholar did her friend and teacher, and how nobly she could interpret the “rhythmic Greek,” let those decide who have read Mrs. Browning’s translations of “Prometheus Bound” and Bion’s “Lament for Adonis.”

Imprisoned within the four walls of her room, with books for her world and large humanity for her thought, the lamp of life burning so low at times that a feather would be placed on her lips to prove that there was still breath, Elizabeth Barrett read and wrote, and “heard the nations praising” her “far off.”  She loved

       “Art for art,
  And good for God himself, the essential Good,”

until destiny (a destiny with God in it) brought two poets face to face and heart to heart.  Mind had met mind and recognized its peer previously to that personal interview which made them one in soul; but it was not until after an acquaintance of two years that Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning were united in marriage for time and for eternity, a marriage the like of which can seldom be recorded.  What wealth of love she could give is evidenced in those exquisite sonnets purporting to be from the Portuguese, the author being too modest to christen them by their right name, Sonnets from the Heart.  None have failed to read the truth through this slight veil, and to see the woman more than the poet in such lines as these:—­

  “I yield the grave for thy sake, and exchange
  My near sweet view of heaven for earth with thee!”

We have only to turn to the concluding poem in “Men and Women,” inscribed to E.B.B., to see how reciprocal was this great love.

From their wedding-day Mrs. Browning seemed to be endowed with new life.  Her health visibly improved, and she was enabled to make excursions in England prior to her departure for the land of her adoption, Italy, where she found a second and a dearer home.  For nearly fifteen years Florence and the Brownings have been one in the thoughts of many English and Americans; and Casa Guidi, which has been immortalized by Mrs. Browning’s genius, will be as dear to the Anglo-Saxon traveller as Milton’s Florentine residence has been heretofore.  Those who now pass by Casa Guidi fancy an additional gloom has settled upon the dark face of the old palace, and grieve to think that those windows from which a spirit-face witnessed two Italian revolutions, and those large mysterious rooms where a spirit-hand translated the great Italian Cause into burning verse, and pleaded the rights of humanity in “Aurora Leigh,” are hereafter to be the passing homes of the thoughtless or the unsympathizing.