was, indeed, nothing less than spirituality, an unearthly element in all her literary work, by which it was lifted far above the ordinary levels of poetic endeavor.

The very titles of many of her poems-" The Soul Travelling," "A Child's Thought of God," "The Seraph and the Poet," "Finite and Infinite," "Heaven and Earth," "A Sabbath Morning at Sea"-reveal to the reader this specifically spiritual type of the author's mind and work, and demand on his part a corresponding cleanness and loftiness of spirit. In dedicating her poems to her beloved father she speaks of him "as a witness how, if this art of poetry had been a less earnest object to her, it must have fallen from exhausted hands before this day." It was this profound and Hebraic earnestness that stimulated and sustained her, and enabled her, short as her life was, to indelibly impress her salutary teachings on the modern English mind. So marked is this unworldly feature that in her suggestive poem "The Seraph and the Poet" she teaches us that their respective mission in heaven and earth is a common one, and should be so conceived and discharged; and thus she writes:

Sing, seraph with the glory! Heaven is high;
Earth is low;

Sing, poet with the sorrow!

The universe's inward voices cry

"Amen!" to either song of joy or woe;

Sing, seraph, poet, sing on equally!

In her sublime production "The Vision of Poets" this is the text and central teaching. This is the

meaning of her poem "The Soul's Expression," as she clearly tells us of her aims in verse:

With stammering lips and insufficient sound
I strive and struggle to deliver right
That music of my nature, day and night
With dream and thought and feeling interwound,
And only answering all the senses round

With octaves of a mystic depth and height,
Which step out grandly to the infinite

From the dark edges of the sensual ground.

It is this stepping out "to the infinite" which is always visible in Mrs. Browning's verse, this soaring ever higher above "the sensual ground." Moreover, in few poets have thought and feeling worked in richer harmony, possessing, as she did, that order of intellectuality by which truth in the abstract is softened and subdued as it passes out of the mind through the sensibilities. If, as we are told, "the highest mission of a poetess is the expression of love," then Mrs. Browning fulfilled this mission, always, however, in obedience to her mental nature and to her acknowledged office as "the priestess of modern English literature."

Here and there, as in "Aurora Leigh," the mental or didactic quality is unduly prominent, and yet her verse, as a whole, is lyric, and her lyrics, as a whole, meditative, so that one may open the pages almost at random to find examples of that special order of verse that we are studying. When at her best she was emotive and tender, and in all that she wrote she was deeply pondering over the joys

and sorrows, the weal and woe of men. Hence she has not inaptly been called "humanitarian" in her verse, ever intent on the general good. Hence "Aurora Leigh," "The Drama of Exile,' "The Seraphim," and "Paraphrases" on the pagan poets apart, we may illustrate the reflective type of her lyrics by a reference to almost any one of them. First in importance, however, would be all those lyrics included under the term sonnets, especially those that are original as distinct from the translated Sonnets from the Portuguese, as Consolation," "Past and Future," "Tears," "Futurity," "The Two Sayings." Thus, the sonnet "Cheerfulness Taught by Reason" opens:

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I think we are too ready with complaint
In this fair world of God's;

and a similar sonnet, "Exaggeration," closes:
O brother, let us leave the shame and sin
Of taking vainly, in a plaintive mood,
The holy name of Grief! holy herein,
That by the grief of One came all our good

So, the closing lines of "Adequacy:"

Maker and High Priest,

I ask thee not my joys to multiply,

Only make me worthier of the least.

So, in "Discontent" and "Insufficiency." Thus, in "The Prospect," she pleads in similar strain :

O man, my brother! hold thy sobbing breath,
And keep thy soul's large window pure from wrong,

That so, as life's appointment issueth,

Thy vision may be clear to watch along

The sunset consummation-lights of death.

If we turn from the sonnets to the miscellaneous poems, the same lyric thoughtfulness is apparent and prominent, as in "The Poet's Vow," "The Deserted Garden," "The Virgin Mary to the Child Jesus," "Cowper's Grave," "A Rhapsody of Life's Progress," with the plaintive refrain:

O Life! O Beyond!

Thou art strange, thou art sweet.

Thus, the tender lyric entitled "Victoria's Tears" closes with the impassioned stanza:

God bless thee, weeping Queen,
With blessing more divine!

And fill with happier love than earth's
That tender heart of thine!

That when the thrones of earth shall be

As low as graves brought down,
A pierced hand may give to thee
The crown which angels shout to see!
Thou wilt not weep

To wear the heavenly crown!

Special mention, also, must be made of her exultant and sublime lyric "A Vision of Poets," in which are some stanzas as fine as any in the English language, in which she pays high tribute to poets in general, and to some special names, as Homer, Pindar, Eschylus, Shakespeare, Dante, Schiller, Chaucer, Milton, Shelley, and others, and closes in triumphant strains :

Glory to God-to God! he saith-
Knowledge by suffering endureth,
And life is perfected by death.

And so on through the volume of her verse, permeated as it is by a deep and tender pathos, taking on at times the form of devout adoration suited to the sanctuary with its ordinances of Christian worship. Indeed, devoutness would best characterize the temper and purpose of Mrs. Browning's lyrics. Never has poet written less for mere literary effect or on merely literary methods. Practical in her poetic aims, even in her most imaginative verse, she was nothing if not sedate and earnest, if so be she might, to some extent at least, realize the philanthropic ideals of her heart. As she states in the opening lines of "Aurora Leigh," she had

Written much in prose and verse
For others' uses.

This utilitarian element in her verse was thus simply one of the expressions of her spiritual nature. Hence her aim in such poems as "Garibaldi," "Italy and the World," "Entering Florence," and "Casa Guidi Windows" was strictly practical -to vindicate the right and rebuke the wrong.

No two poems, perhaps, more fully embody this one combination of genuine lyric passion and meditation and practical purpose than those entitled "The Cry of the Human" and "The Cry of the Children :"

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brother,
Ere the sorrow comes with years?

Herein, it may be said, lie the greatest charm and value of Mrs. Browning's verse to the reader, and here is the essential principle of its permanence.