day’s
   Most quiet need, by sun and candle light. 
   I love thee freely, as men strive for Right,
   I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. 
   I love thee with the passion put to use
   In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith. 
   I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
   With my lost saints—­I love thee with the breath,
   Smiles, tears of all my life!—­and, if God choose,
   I shall but love thee better after death.”

Mrs. Browning’s next great poem, in 1856, was Aurora Leigh, a novel in blank verse, “the most mature,” she says in the preface, “of my works, and the one into which my highest convictions upon Life and Art have entered.”  Walter Savage Landor said of it:  “In many pages there is the wild imagination of Shakespeare.  I had no idea that any one in this age was capable of such poetry.”

For fifteen years this happy wedded life, with its work of brain and hand, had been lived, and now the bond was to be severed.  In June, 1861, Mrs. Browning took a severe cold, and was ill for nearly a week.  No one thought of danger, though Mr. Browning would not leave her bedside.  On the night of June 29, toward morning she seemed to be in a sort of ecstasy.  She told her husband of her love for him, gave him her blessing, and raised herself to die in his arms.  “It is beautiful,” were her last words as she caught a glimpse of some heavenly vision.  On the evening of July 1, she was buried in the English cemetery, in the midst of sobbing friends, for who could carry out that request?—­

  “And friends, dear friends, when it shall be
   That this low breath is gone from me,
     And round my bier ye come to weep,
   Let one most loving of you all
   Say, ’Not a tear must o’er her fall,—­
     He giveth his beloved sleep!’”

The Italians, who loved her, placed on the doorway of Casa Guidi a white marble tablet, with the words:—­

“Here wrote and died E.B.  Browning, who, in the heart of a woman, united the science of a sage and the spirit of a poet, and made with her verse a golden ring binding Italy and England.

“Grateful Florence placed this memorial, 1861_.”

For twenty-five years Robert Browning and his artist-son have done their work, blessed with the memory of her whom Mr. Stedman calls “the most inspired woman, so far as known, of all who have composed in ancient or modern tongues, or flourished in any land or time.”

GEORGE ELIOT.

[Illustration:  GEORGE ELIOT—­1864.]

Going to the Exposition at New Orleans, I took for reading on the journey, the life of George Eliot, by her husband, Mr. J.W.  Cross, written with great delicacy and beauty.  An accident delayed us, so that for three days I enjoyed this insight into a wonderful life.  I copied the amazing list of books she had read, and transferred to my note-book many of her beautiful thoughts.  To-day I have been reading the book again; a clear, vivid picture of a very great woman, whose works, says the Spectator, “are the best specimens of powerful, simple English, since Shakespeare.”