Mr. Browning was a stranger to her, but called to offer thanks for the compliment contained in the last couplet, and by a mistake of the servant was shown into Miss Barrett's room, to which only her most intimate friends were admitted. The acquaintance thus begun resulted in their marriage in 1846. The bride rose from her couch to be married, but her health improved, and during the remainder of her life continued reasonably good, although she was never strong.

The Brownings resided, during almost their entire married life, at Florence. In 1839 Mrs. Browning published "Sonnets from the Portuguese," which, contrary to the apparent meaning of the title, are original poems, and not translations. "Casa Guidi Windows," as the author says, " contains the impressions of the writer upon events in Tuscany of which she was a witness. It is a simple story of personal impressions, whose only value is in the intensity with which they were received, or in proving her warm affection for a beautiful and unfortunate country. The sincerity with which they are related indicates her own good faith and freedom from partisanship."

In 1856 appeared the longest of her poems, "Aurora Leigh," which she characterized as "the most mature of my works, and the one into which my highest convictions upon life and art have entered." This novel in verse was, at least in part, written in England, whither the Brownings returned for a short time after a residence of eight years in Florence. Returning to Italy, Mrs. Browning put forth, in 1860, a little volume originally entitled "Poems before Congress," afterward published, with additions, under the title, "Napoleon III in Italy, and other Poems." She died in Florence in 1861.

"Can't you imagine," said her husband, in comparing his work with hers, “a clever sort of angel, who plots, and plans, and tries to build up something he wants to make you see as he sees it, shows you one point of view, carries you off to another, hammering into your head the thing he wants you to understand; and whilst this bother is going on, God Almighty turns you off a little star,-that's the difference between us. The true creative power is hers, not mine."

GEORGE ELIOT.

THE GREATEST NOVELIST OF THE ANALYTICAL SCHOOL.

MONG the novelists since Dickens and Thackeray no one can compare with George Eliot in native force and vigor, in ability to read, through the indications of their outward lives and actions, the underlying forces which form the character of men and women. Other writers have put before us the surface of life; George Eliot depicts for her readers the very souls of her characters. It is this ability to go deep into the inner lives of men, to see, and so to picture, the real beings who move within this outer shell we call ourselves, which gave her so strong a hold upon the public and imparted to her books a quality peculiarly their

own.

Marian Evans was of Welsh descent, but she was born at South Farm, near Griff, in Warwickshire, England, in 1819. Her father, whose portrait she has drawn in the character of Adam Bede, was a land agent, but had started in life as a carpenter. He was a man of great ability, and was entrusted with the management of the estates of several large landowners in Warwickshire. His family, therefore, occupied a social position equal that of any of the professional people of the vicinity, and the circumstances of his life gave his gifted daughter the opportunity of gaining that wonderfully intimate knowledge of widely different classes of people which is shown in her novels. Mrs. Evans died when Marian had arrived at the age of fifteen, and after the marriage of an elder sister the management of the household fell upon her. She had received a good education, and was proficient in French, German, and music. After her father retired from active work, in 1841, she studied Latin and Greek, and became absorbed in philosophy, particularly in its relation to religion. Her first literary work was the translation of Strauss' "Life of Jesus," and was followed by similar work upon Feuerbach's "Essence of Christianity," and Spinoza's "Ethics." Mr. Evans dying in 1849, his daughter was induced to spend some months with her kind friends, the Brays and the family of the Artist D'Albert, abroad. Returning, she became sub-editor of the Westminster Review, and a member of the most brilliant literary circle of the time, numbering among her intimate friends Herbert Spencer, James and Harriet Martineau, and others of equal fame.

Beside her work as sub-editor, she contributed to the Review a number of the most remarkable essays that appeared in its pages. Among these were "Carlyle's

Life of Sterling," "Margaret Fuller," "Women in France," "Evangelical Teaching," and "Worldliness and Otherworldliness."

She continued in this work until 1854, when she assumed the duties of a wife to Mr. George Henry Lewes, and of a mother to his sons. In 1857 she published a volume of short stories entitled "Scenes from Clerical Life," over the name of George Eliot, which she attached to all her later works, and which, until it became famous as that of the leading novelist of the time, effectually concealed her identity. It was at once evident to all who were in the secret that she was a true novelist, and she henceforth put all her energies into the works which will remain as classical specimens of English fiction. Her fame grew with the appearance of “Adam Bede," "The Mill on the Floss," "Silas Maruer," "Romola," "Felix Holt," and "Middlemarch"; "Daniel Deronda" did not increase her reputation, but well maintained it; "The Impressions of Theophrastus Such" has, however, been less read. After the death of Mr. Lewes she was married to Mr. John W. Cross, who had for many years been a close and faithful friend, but before the end of the year, 1880, she died. Opinion will always be divided as to which is her best book and which her finest character, but the woman who has enriched our literature with the high-souled carpenter, Adam Bede, and the pure unworldliness of Dinah Morris, who has brought us face to face with the doubts and fears, and, better, with the certainties, which filled the soul of Savonarola, may well be described as "an expression of the spirit of the age out of which she grew,' or the "exponent of the thought of the third quarter of the nineteenth century." As such she will take her place among the strongest characters and the ablest minds that have given of their best for the benefit of mankind.

FLORENCE IN 1794.

FROM "ROMOLA."

N 1493 the rumor spread, and became louder and louder, that Charles the Eighth of France was about to cross the Alps with a mighty army; and the Italian populations, accustomed, since Italy had ceased to be the heart of the Roman Empire, to look for an arbitrator from afar, began vaguely to regard his coming as a means of avenging their wrongs and redressing their grievances.

And in that rumor Savonarola had heard the assurance that his prophecy was being verified. What was it that filled the ears of the prophets of old but the distant tread of foreign armies, coming to do the work of justice? He no longer looked vaguely to the horizon for the coming storm: he

The French army

pointed to the rising cloud.
was that new deluge which was to purify the earth
from iniquity; the French king, Charles VIII,
was the instrument elected by God, as Cyrus had
been of old, and all men who desired good rather
than evil were to rejoice in his coming. For the
scourge would fall destructively on the impenitent
alone. Let any city of Italy-let Florence above
all-Florence, beloved of God, since in its ear
the warning voice had been especially sent-repent
and turn from its ways, like Nineveh of old, and
the storm-cloud would roll over it and leave only
refreshing rain-drops.

Fra Girolamo's word was powerful; yet now that the new Cyrus had already been three months

A PASSAGE AT ARMS. FROM "ADAM BEDE."