of the night:  the moonlit forest—­the snow-covered ground—­the wolves approaching with a whispering tread, which seems at first but the soughing of a gentle wind—­the wedge-like, ever-widening mass, which emerges from the trees; then the flight, and the pursuit:  the latter arrested for one moment by the sacrifice of each victim; to be renewed the next, till none is left to sacrifice:  one child dragged from the mother’s arms; another shielded by her whole body, till the wolf’s teeth have fastened in her flesh; and though she betrays, in the very effort to conceal it, how little she has done to protect her children’s lives, we realize the horror of her situation, and pity even while we condemn, her.  But some words of selfish rejoicing at her own deliverance precede the fatal stroke, and in some degree challenge it.  And Mr. Browning farther preserves the spirit of the tradition, by giving to her sentence the sanction of the village priest or “pope,” into whose presence the decapitated body has been conveyed.  The secular authorities are also on the spot, and condemn the murder as contrary both to justice and to law.  But the pope declares that the act of Ivan Ivanovitch has been one of the higher justice which is above law.  He himself is an aged man—­so aged, he says, that he has passed through the clouds of human convention, and stands on the firm basis of eternal truth.  Looking down upon the world from this vantage-ground, he sees that no gift of God is equal to that of life; no privilege so high as that of reproducing its “miracle;” and that the mother who has cast away her maternal crown, and given over to destruction the creatures which she has borne, has sinned an “unexampled sin,” for which a “novel punishment” was required.  No otherwise than did Moses of old, has Ivan Ivanovitch interpreted the will—­shown himself the servant—­of God.

How Mr. Browning’s Ivan Ivanovitch himself judges the case, is evidenced by this fact, that after wiping the blood from his axe, he betakes himself to playing with his children; and that when the lord of the village has—­reluctantly—­sent a deputation to inform him that he is free, the words, “how otherwise?” are his only answer.

“TRAY” describes an instance of animal courage and devotion which a friend of Mr. Browning’s actually witnessed in Paris.  A little girl had fallen into the river.  None of the bystanders attempted to rescue her.  But a dog, bouncing over the balustrade, brought the child to land; dived again, no one could guess why; and after battling with a dangerous current, emerged with the child’s doll; then trotted away as if nothing had occurred.

This “Tray” is made to illustrate Mr. Browning’s ideal of a hero, in opposition to certain showy and conventional human types; and the little narrative contains some scathing reflections on those who talk of such a creature as merely led by instinct, or would dissect its brain alive to discover how the “soul” is secreted there.