a wine hamper, toiling up to the crests of mountains at four o’clock in the morning, riding for five miles on a donkey to what she calls “an inaccessible volcanic ground not far from the stars.”  It is perfectly incredible that any one so ill as her family believed her to be should have lived this life for twenty-four hours.  Something must be allowed for the intoxication of a new tie and a new interest in life.  But such exaltations can in their nature hardly last a month, and Mrs. Browning lived for fifteen years afterwards in infinitely better health than she had ever known before.  In the light of modern knowledge it is not very difficult or very presumptuous, of us to guess that she had been in her father’s house to some extent inoculated with hysteria, that strange affliction which some people speak of as if it meant the absence of disease, but which is in truth the most terrible of all diseases.  It must be remembered that in 1846 little or nothing was known of spine complaints such as that from which Elizabeth Barrett suffered, less still of the nervous conditions they create, and least of all of hysterical phenomena.  In our day she would have been ordered air and sunlight and activity, and all the things the mere idea of which chilled the Barretts with terror.  In our day, in short, it would have been recognised that she was in the clutch of a form of neurosis which exhibits every fact of a disease except its origin, that strange possession which makes the body itself a hypocrite.  Those who surrounded Miss Barrett knew nothing of this, and Browning knew nothing of it; and probably if he knew anything, knew less than they did.  Mrs. Orr says, probably with a great deal of truth, that of ill-health and its sensations he remained “pathetically ignorant” to his dying day.  But devoid as he was alike of expert knowledge and personal experience, without a shadow of medical authority, almost without anything that can be formally called a right to his opinion, he was, and remained, right.  He at least saw, he indeed alone saw, to the practical centre of the situation.  He did not know anything about hysteria or neurosis, or the influence of surroundings, but he knew that the atmosphere of Mr. Barrett’s house was not a fit thing for any human being, alive, dying, or dead.  His stand upon this matter has really a certain human interest, since it is an example of a thing which will from time to time occur, the interposition of the average man to the confounding of the experts.  Experts are undoubtedly right nine times out of ten, but the tenth time comes, and we find in military matters an Oliver Cromwell who will make every mistake known to strategy and yet win all his battles, and in medical matters a Robert Browning whose views have not a technical leg to stand on and are entirely correct.