over many years, is harder to bear and hope through than the massacres of September.  And that was the nightmare of vexatious triviality which was lying over all the cities of Italy that were ruled by the bureaucratic despotisms of Europe.  The history of the time is full of spiteful and almost childish struggles—­struggles about the humming of a tune or the wearing of a colour, the arrest of a journey, or the opening of a letter.  And there can be little doubt that Browning’s temperament under these conditions was not of the kind to become more indulgent, and there grew in him a hatred of the Imperial and Ducal and Papal systems of Italy, which sometimes passed the necessities of Liberalism, and sometimes even transgressed its spirit.  The life which he and his wife lived in Italy was extraordinarily full and varied, when we consider the restrictions under which one at least of them had always lain.  They met and took delight, notwithstanding their exile, in some of the most interesting people of their time—­Ruskin, Cardinal Manning, and Lord Lytton.  Browning, in a most characteristic way, enjoyed the society of all of them, arguing with one, agreeing with another, sitting up all night by the bedside of a third.

It has frequently been stated that the only difference that ever separated Mr. and Mrs. Browning was upon the question of spiritualism.  That statement must, of course, be modified and even contradicted if it means that they never differed; that Mr. Browning never thought an Act of Parliament good when Mrs. Browning thought it bad; that Mr. Browning never thought bread stale when Mrs. Browning thought it new.  Such unanimity is not only inconceivable, it is immoral; and as a matter of fact, there is abundant evidence that their marriage constituted something like that ideal marriage, an alliance between two strong and independent forces.  They differed, in truth, about a great many things, for example, about Napoleon III. whom Mrs. Browning regarded with an admiration which would have been somewhat beyond the deserts of Sir Galahad, and whom Browning with his emphatic Liberal principles could never pardon for the Coup d’Etat.  If they differed on spiritualism in a somewhat more serious way than this, the reason must be sought in qualities which were deeper and more elemental in both their characters than any mere matter of opinion.  Mrs. Orr, in her excellent Life of Browning, states that the difficulty arose from Mrs. Browning’s firm belief in psychical phenomena and Browning’s absolute refusal to believe even in their possibility.  Another writer who met them at this time says, “Browning cannot believe, and Mrs. Browning cannot help believing.”  This theory, that Browning’s aversion to the spiritualist circle arose from an absolute denial of the tenability of such a theory of life and death, has in fact often been repeated.  But it is exceedingly difficult to reconcile it with Browning’s character.  He was the last man in the world to be intellectually