for a prolonged period.  These leaflets or half-sheetlets of ‘Gold Hair’ and ‘Prospice,’ of ‘Cleon’ and ’The Statue and the Bust’—­together with the “Two Poems by Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning,” published, for benefit of a charity, in 1854—­are among the rarest “finds” for the collector, and are literally worth a good deal more than their weight in gold.

In the tumultuous year of 1859 all Italy was in a ferment.  No patriot among the Nationalists was more ardent in her hopes than the delicate, too fragile, dying poetess, whose flame of life burned anew with the great hopes that animated her for her adopted country.  Well indeed did she deserve, among the lines which the poet Tommaseo wrote and the Florence municipality caused to be engraved in gold upon a white marble slab, to be placed upon Casa Guidi, the words fece del suo verso aureo anello fra Italia e Inghilterra—­“who of her Verse made a golden link connecting England and Italy.”

The victories of Solferino and San Martino made the bitterness of the disgraceful Treaty of Villafranca the more hard to bear.  Even had we not Mr. Story’s evidence, it would be a natural conclusion that this disastrous ending to the high hopes of the Italian patriots accelerated Mrs. Browning’s death.  The withdrawal of hope is often worse in its physical effects than any direct bodily ill.

It was a miserable summer for both husband and wife, for more private sorrows also pressed upon them.  Not even the sweet autumnal winds blowing upon Siena wafted away the shadow that had settled upon the invalid:  nor was there medicine for her in the air of Rome, where the winter was spent.  A temporary relief, however, was afforded by the more genial climate, and in the spring of 1860 she was able, with Browning’s help, to see her Italian patriotic poems through the press.  It goes without saying that these “Poems before Congress” had a grudging reception from the critics, because they dared to hint that all was not roseate-hued in England.  The true patriots are those who love despite blemishes, not those who cherish the blemishes along with the virtues.  To hint at a flaw is “not to be an Englishman.”

The autumn brought a new sadness in the death of Miss Arabella Barrett—­a dearly loved sister, the “Arabel” of so many affectionate letters.  Once more a winter in Rome proved temporally restorative.  But at last the day came when she wrote her last poem—­“North and South,” a gracious welcome to Hans Christian Andersen on the occasion of his first visit to the Eternal City.

Early in June of 1861 the Brownings were once more at Casa Guidi.  But soon after their return the invalid caught a chill.  For a few days she hovered like a tired bird—­though her friends saw only the seemingly unquenchable light in the starry eyes, and did not anticipate the silence that was soon to be.