Who sleeps,' she said, and, having drawn this way, The thrilling, solemn, proud, pathetic voice. -'I take her as God made her, and as men She never raised her eyes, nor took a step, The thrilling, tender, proud, pathetic voice. He stepped on toward it, still with outstretched arms, 6 May God so father me, as I do him, To play his loudest gambol at my foot, To hold my finger in the public ways, Till none shall need inquire, Whose child is this,' The gesture saying so tenderly, 'My own."" She appeals to Aurora; and she too gives her verdict: "That Romney Leigh is honoured in his choice, Thanks, "Her broad wild woodland eyes shot out a light; Not change thee!- Thee I do not thank at all: When he tried in vain Of soft, serene defiance,—as she knew He could not touch her, so was tolerant He had cared to try. She stood there with her great Drowned eyes, and dripping cheeks, and strange sweet smile That lived through all, as if one held a light Across a waste of waters,-shook her head She renounces him on the grounds we have indicated; and we move on to where, after learning Romney's never-failing love and the greatness of his calamity, the floodgates of Aurora's passion are broken down: "No matter: let the truth To weights and measures, grudging you the power Betrayed the thing I saw, and wronged my own life For which I pleaded. Passioned to exalt The artist's instinct in me at the cost Of putting down the woman's,-I forgot No perfect artist is developed here From any imperfect woman. Flower from root, Which love is. Art is much, but love is more. And makes heaven. I, Aurora, fell from mine: A simple woman who believes in love, And owns the right of love because she loves, Be faithless of the kind of proffered love, I am changed since then, changed wholly,-for indeed, The joy would set me like a star, in heaven, Just one, beloved, I am in nowise changed: I loved you always, Romney. She who died Knows that; . . and Marian: I had known the same And not so honest. Ay, and, as I live I should have died so, crushing in my hand Both rose and pain,-except for this great loss, You think, perhaps, I am not changed from pride, Though shrieked for by the shipwrecked, O my Dark, ' While I go ever toward the wilderness, I would that you could see me bare to the soul!- And not for Romney: he can stand alone; A man like him is never overcome: No woman like me, counts him pitiable While saints applaud him. He mistook the world: Was fatal. Romney,—will you leave me here? I wept so? Did I drop against his breast, Or did his arms constrain me? Were my cheeks And which of our two large explosive hearts So shook me? That, I know not. There were words Embrace, that was convulsion,.. then a kiss.. As long and silent as the ecstatic night, And deep, deep, shuddering breaths, which meant beyond Whatever could be told by word or kiss." She learns how he had ever loved her, since he, "A boy still, had been told the tale Of how a fairy-bride from Italy, With smells of oleanders in her hair, Was coming through the vines to touch his hand;" and how the very strength of his devotion, and the greatness of his worship, had made him feel, too, that she must be made part of his "dedication to the human need," and "prove he kept back nothing, not his soul." And again the tide of joy rolls up, and gives a fuller voice than any other poet has ever done to the intensity of love's rapture in a woman's heart: "But oh, the night! oh, bitter-sweet! oh, sweet! Of darkness! O great mystery of love,- In some full wine-cup, over-brims the wine! Of some sublime inherited despair, A voice said, low and rapid as a sigh, Yet breaking, I felt conscious, from a smile,— Thank God, who made me blind, to make me see! Which rul'st for evermore both day and night! I flung closer to his breast, The mystic motions which in common moods Or if beneath our feet, we did not know." He accepts the limits that have been assigned him through his calamity, and bids the artist assume her true functions, nor cease from her labour on the earth; and together they turn their faces to the East, to await God's great coming day of final restoration. A noble poem, and every where throughout it the poet shows greater than her work. Indeed, given a poem of certain excellence, and the degree in which it shows defectiveness in the interpretive faculty (in which we have described Mrs. Browning as wanting) is but a measure of the higher order of personal qualities necessarily present in the poet; who by that very defectiveness is thrown back more than another on the resources of his own mind and nature. Mrs. Browning is conscientiously devoted to her art; it is no by-work to her, but the deliberately undertaken business of her life. There is no reason why she should not gain a much higher degree of artistic unity and simplicity than she now possesses. The fountains of her genius show an unfailing freshness and force; and high as Aurora Leigh stands, its author may live to look back on it as only a stepping-stone to the highest things of which she is capable. ART. II.-SECONDARY PUNISHMENTS. First, Second, and Third Reports from the Select Committee on Transportation; together with the Proceedings of the Committee, Minutes of Evidence, and Appendix. Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be printed, 27th May 1856, 20th June 1856, and 11th July 1856. Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords, appointed to inquire into the Provisions and Operation of the Act 16 and 17 Vict. cap. 99, intituled “An Act to substitute in certain cases other Punishment in lieu of Transportation;" and to report thereon to the House; together with the Minutes of Evidence, Appendix, and Index. Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be printed, 25th July 1856. Report from the Select Committee on Transportation; together with the Minutes of Evidence, Appendix, and Index. Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be printed, 3d August 1838. England and Wales: Tables showing the Number of Criminal Offenders committed for trial, or bailed for appearance at the Assizes and Sessions in each County, in the year 1855, and the Results of the Proceedings. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of her Majesty. The Colonial Policy of Lord John Russell's Administration. By Earl Grey. 2 vols. London: Bentley, 1853. The London Prisons: to which is added, a Description of the chief Provincial Prisons. By Hepworth Dixon. London: Jackson and Walford, 1850. John Howard, and the Prison World of Europe. From Original and Authentic Documents. By Hepworth Dixon. Second Edition. London: Jackson and Walford, 1850. |