The joy of this firstborn’s birth was, however, very quickly dimmed by the news of the death, only a few days later, of Mr. Browning’s mother, to whom he was devotedly attached.  Her death was very sudden, and the shock of the reaction completely prostrated him for a long time.  The following letters from Mrs. Browning tell how he felt this loss.

To Miss Browning April i, 1849 [postmark].

I do indeed from the bottom of my heart pity you and grieve with you, my dearest Sarianna.  I may grieve with you as well as for you; for I too have lost.  Believe that, though I never saw her face; I loved that pure and tender spirit (tender to me even at this distance), and that she will be dear and sacred to me to the end of my own life.

Dearest Sarianna, I thank you for your consideration and admirable self-control in writing those letters.  I do thank and bless you.  If the news had come unbroken by such precaution to my poor darling Robert, it would have nearly killed him, I think.  As it is, he has been able to cry from the first, and I am able to tell you that though dreadfully affected, of course, for you know his passionate love for her, he is better and calmer now—­much better.  He and I dwell on the hope that you and your dear father will come to us at once.  Come—­dear, dear Sarianna—­I will at least love you as you deserve—­you and him—­if I can do no more.  If you would comfort Robert, come.

No day has passed since our marriage that he has not fondly talked of her.  I know how deep in his dear heart her memory lies.  God comfort you, my dearest Sarianna.  The blessing of blessed duties heroically fulfilled must be With you.  May the blessing of the Blessed in heaven be added to the rest!

Robert stops me.  My dear love to your father.

Your ever attached sister, BA.

To Miss Browning [April 1849.]

You will have comfort in hearing, my dearest Sarianna, that Robert is better on the whole than when I wrote last, though still very much depressed.  I wish I could get him to go somewhere or do something—­at any rate God’s comforts are falling like dew on all this affliction, and must in time make it look a green memory to you both.  Continually he thinks of you and of his father—­believe how continually and tenderly he thinks of you.  Dearest Sarianna, I feel so in the quick of my heart how you must feel, that I scarcely have courage to entreat you to go out and take the necessary air and exercise, and yet that is a duty, clear as other duties, and to be discharged like others by you, as fully, and with as little shrinking of the will.  If your health should suffer, what grief upon grief to those who grieve already!  And besides, we who have to live are not to lie down under the burden.  There will be time enough for lying down presently, very soon; and in the meanwhile there is plenty of God’s work to do with the body and with the soul, and we have to do it as cheerfully