on the duty of resisting evil, and if evil assume the guise of parental authority it is none the less—­he believed—­to be resisted.  To submit to the will of another is often easy; to act on one’s own best judgment is hard; our faculties were given us to put to use; to be passively obedient is really to evade probation—­so with almost excessive emphasis Browning set forth a cardinal article of his creed; but Elizabeth Barrett was not, like him, “ever a fighter,” and, after all, London in 1845 was not bleak and grey as it had been a year previously—­“for reasons,” to adopt a reiterated word of the correspondence, “for reasons.”

On two later occasions Browning sang the same battle-hymn against the enemies of God and with a little too much vehemence—­not to say truculence—­as is the way with earnest believers.  His gentler correspondent could not tolerate the thought of duelling, and she disapproved of punishment by death.  Browning argues that for one who values the good opinion of society—­not for himself—­that good opinion is a possession which may, like other possessions, be defended at the risk of a man’s life, and as for capital punishment, is not evil to be suppressed at any price?  Is not a miscreant to be expelled out of God’s world?  The difference of opinion was the first that had arisen between the friends, and Browning’s words carried with them a certain sense of pain in the thought that they could in any thing stand apart.  Happily the theoretical fire-eater had faith superior to his own arguments;—­faith in a woman’s insight as finer than his own;—­and he is let off with a gratified rebuke for preternatural submissiveness and for arraying her in pontifical garments of authority which hang loose upon so small a figure.  The other application of his doctrine of resisting evil was even more trying to her feelings and the preacher was instant certainly out of season.  Not the least important personage in the Wimpole Street house was Miss Barrett’s devoted companion Flush.  Loyal and loving to his mistress Flushie always was; yet to his lot some canine errors fell; he eyed a visitor’s umbrella with suspicion; he resented perhaps the presence of a rival; he did not behave nicely to a poet who had not written verses in his honour; for which he was duly rebuked by his mistress—­the punishment was not capital—­and was propitiated with bags of cakes by the intruder.  When the day for their flight drew near Miss Barrett proposed somewhat timidly that her maid Wilson should accompany her to Italy, but she was gratefully confident that Flush could not be left behind.  Just at this anxious moment a dreadful thing befell; a gang of dog-stealers, presided over by the arch-fiend Taylor, bore Flushie away into the horror of some obscure and vulgar London alley.  He was a difficult dog to capture and his ransom must be in proportion to his resistance.  There was a terrible tradition of a lady who had haggled about the sum demanded and had received her dog’s