man who rejected her is somewhat in the style of an these occurrences "Amelia the elder had already learnt a more important lesson still; namely, that it is possible the heaviest sorrows may find balm, and then oblivion there." We Thus closes the history of "the young countess." The direct moral inculcated, viz. that religion is the only true balm for sorrows however deep, is very good, and in this respect we think our authoress has done better than usual; as well as in the absence of coarseness and vulgarity of description and sentiment. pass over vulgarisms of expression, such as "the two ladies scudded along the gallery," &c. and "get Amelia to her friend the baroness Caroline. The two along with you," &c. addressed by the high-bred countess great faults of the book are its preposterous expansion into three volumes, and the want of amusing matter throughout. If one were to judge of Mrs. Trollope of her as was once said of Madame de Staël, "She is by this specimen of her powers, one might say the greatest bore in the world for 30 clever woman, and the cleverest woman in the world for so great a bore." RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW.' "Sister Agnes (no longer Amelia de Rosenau) was elevated to the rank of abbess of the monastery of St. Ursula, and never was any promotion of the kind hailed Robert Browning's "Bells and Pomegranates."with more universal joy, for there was not a single individual in the convent who did not both love and honour her. "Several noble families with whom she had been acquainted before she retired from the world, made a point of waiting on her to congratulate her upon her very gratifying appointment, for she was still a young woman to be selected for so important a charge. But there was one party among these guests in whom she evidently took particular interest. The group consisted of a very tall and comely gentleman of some forty years of age, or so, a still lovely wife nearly ten years his junior, and a boy and girl, the very prettiest copies of their respective parents that nature ever indulged a handsome couple by producing. "The lady abbess of St. Ursula entered her parlour to welcome them with a smile of affectionate gladness on her lip; but she was very pale, and not all her habitual dignity (and never had the convent of St. Ursula boasted of an abbess who had more) could prevent a slight trembling of the knees as she approached them. "The first movement made to meet her was by the Count de Hermanstadt, for he it was who stepped forward the moment she appeared, and reverently bent his knee before her. "There was something in this action that seemed in every way to reconcile her to herself and restore her to composure. "The tall, thin, but ever graceful abbess of St. Ursula laid her hand upon his head as he knelt, and pronounced a fervent blessing on him. "And can this be Caroline that magnificently handsome woman, so much taller, so much larger than when we saw her last! Can that be Caroline? "The heart of the abbess told her that it was so, though her eyes would hardly have served her so faithfully, but as it was, she felt no doubt about it, and in another moment they were locked in each other's arms. The boy and girl stood blushing and apart, for their education had been too well begun to leave them ignorant that a lady abbess was rather an awful personage; but the first lesson learnt by the young Amelia de Hermanstadt, in the convent where she was subsequently educated, was that the best affections of the heart do not always become blighted there. "Pippa passes." Moxon. a To return to Robert Browning, we recognise in him a genius which soars above all the trammels of conventionalism, and which may even be said to have laid the foundation for a new school. He has none of the faults, and perhaps not all the merits, of the Elizabethan dramatists. He approximates in one respect to the French dramatic bards, namely, in unity both of conception and execution. These are qualities which English critics are least able to appreciate; they hunt for show-passages-passages independent of the context, consequently dramatic blots; and if they do not discover these, they can see little or nothing to admire. Now, in Browning's plays, not a speech, not a line, scarcely a word is introduced, which does not tend to exhibit some phase of character, which has not a direct bearing on the development of the plot, which does not contribute to the unity of the whole creation. This, almost as of course, has not been appreciated (speaking generally), and thus Robert Browning's works have been neglected and slighted by the smaller fry of critics in the literary organs of the day. But, despite this, our author has succeeded in placing a series of plays before us in his so-called Bells and Pomegranates," which will live and be honoured as long as our country's tongue endures. And now, without further preamble, we will proceed to notice the first work in this series, entitled "Pippa passes," which is couched in a peculiar form and vein, but which, nevertheless, must command the sympathies of all who have once learned to understand it. And here let us confess that a certain needless obscurity is but too characteristic of Browning's strains, and suffices in some degree to account for the slow progress he has made in popular estimation. He is not only in the habit of omitting (1) Continued from p. 63. prov'st sullen,-me, whose old year's sorrow, who, except thee, can chase before to-morrow?" Here follow allusions to the characters afterwards introduced in the four main compartments of the poem: first, the haughty Ottima, the wife of old Luca, owner of the silk-mills in which Pippa works, and her lover Sebald, whose tale of guilty passion she (Ottima) is suspected of approving; secondly, Jules, a young all relative pronouns and various other small words, as well as stage directions, for brevity's sake, but he also endeavours to concentrate both thought and passion within the narrowest possible space to express a world of meaning sometimes by a word. Again, he assumes the reader's knowledge of all recondite facts, historical, geographical, philosophical, natural and social, which may be accidentally adverted to in his dramas, and he further does appear (there is no deny-student of sculpture and Phene his betrothed, who is ing it,) to take some slight pleasure in perplexing the said reader's brains. Now these are very serious defects, which make the first perusal of one of Browning's works rather a study than an ordinary reading; and though they justify not the dullness of the critic who should have broken through such barriers, they do account for the absence of just appreciation on the part of the general public. But, allons! à l'ouvrage! Let us discharge our duty with the utmost possible celerity. Pippa passes," then, is a dramatic poem, the scene of which is laid at the Italian village of Azolo, in the Trevisan, and the time of which occupies little more than twelve hours, from sunrise to sunset. It is the first day of the new year, and yet more a summer's than a winter's day in that warm clime. Pippa, a young girl who works in the silk-mills of Azolo, and who looks on this as the great holiday of the whole long year, springs out of bed in the morning in her poor little chamber, and bursts into the following soliloquy, in the exuberance of delight. [The italics are ours.] Faster and more fast O'er night's brim day boils at last; Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim, Day! If I waste a wavelet of thee, How touchingly innocent, graceful and naïve is this exordium, and how bounding and natural is its rhythm, and how striking its imagery! How poetical and yet how dramatic and suggestive of character the whole speech! And yet, there is a peculiarity in its style which may not commend itself at first sight. But we must not pause for comment. We continue, expressing our author's pregnant poetry in yet briefer but plainer prose. Thus sweetly does the pretty Pippa proceed. "Treat me not, day," she says, as those who have all other days beside thee -I have but thee. It is Pippa thou misusest if thou to become his bride that day; thirdly, the gentle Luigi and his mother, so happy in their mutual tenderness; and finally, Monsignor, the lord of the manor and a cardinal, who has come to Azolo to say masses that night for the soul of his brother, the late proprietor. All these great people, says Pippa, will not suffer, should this day prove unkind; but it is my only day, and therefore my day only. And now her attention is called off (all this time she is supposed to be attiring herself), first, to a golden sunbeam caught in her ewer, then to a little flower which stands on her window-sill, and which she addresses lovingly, in her heart's gladness: : "Laugh through my pane then! solicit the bee! Gibe him, be sure, and, in midst of thy glee, Worship me!" "Worship whom else ?" she continues, " for am not I this day whate'er I please?- Who shall I seem to-day? Morn, noon, eve, night-how must I spend my day? In the morning," she continues, (we give the meaning only, not the words of our author,) "I will be Ottima; and the fine house and gardens shall be mine, and Sebald shall steal, as he is wont, to flatter, whilst old Luca sleeps; and I-I shall give abundant cause for prate, to the talkers in our little town below." The innocence with which all this is said, the kindness of heart, the sweet simplicity of character developed in every word, these are very charming. Beautiful is the trusting confidence which leads her to think, after all, there is more harm fancied than done, and which finds utterance in that simple line of condemnation "How we talk in the little town below!" But to proceed. At noon, Pippa will be the bride of the young artist, Jules; the pale bride, with her snow-white cheek and black tresses, whom she herself saw arrive the night before. "A bride to look at and scarce touch!" she says "For are not such Used to be tended, flower-like every feature, As if one's breath would fray the lily of a creature?" «But her I will not envy," Pippa continues; "that kind of love I covet not, to bind and to enslave me. No! rather a parent's love for me; one that should have lapped me round from the beginning. Well, at when he and his mother commune in their turrets?— what prevents that I should think myself Luigi, I will be Luigi," she says, and then, after a pause, continues eve, "If I only knew What was my father like;-my mother too." "I, to-night at least, I Will be that holy and beloved priest." “But, after all,—I myself share in God's love. need not be a holy priest for that. Why, else, should New-year's hymn declare, "All service ranks the same with God. Paradise,) God's presence fills Our earth, and each but as God wills Say not, a small event! Why small? "May not, then, my very passing by these high folks in some way affect them ?-Oh! prove that true!" she says to Heaven," and at least such passing may give joy to me. A mere look at all these happy people may teach me not to grieve for the past, and to endure the future." As they!" "I am just as great, no doubt, "It seems to me a night with a sun added. Where's dew? where's freshness ?" This is an awful scene-terrible, because psychologically truthful: a study for the dramatist which can scarcely be too often made: a lesson to every human heart, tracing as it does the gradual progress of crime, and realizing all its horrors. We shall pass it over with a general tribute to its power and truth. This dialogue, had he written nothing else, would suffice to prove Robert Browning a great dramatist. At last, the guilty Ottima, who for her lover's sake conceals her own remorse, prevails on him to promise oblivion of the past. "Crown me your queen," she says, "your spirit's arbitress-magnificent in sin. Say that!" [Pippa passes.] Sebald. God's in His heaven! Do you hear that?" &c. But we can afford no more space for extracts here. Suffice it to say, that simple song, those childish words, flash conviction of the depth of his iniquity on Sebald's she continues, in her happy consciousness of joy, soul. Ottima appears to him his direst foe. He and then thus concludes her soliloquy : With thee to lead me, Day of mine, Down the grasspath grey with dew, 'Neath the pinewood, blind with boughs, As yet, nor cicale dared carouse; No! dared carouse! [She enters the street.] Thus ends the first scene, or introduction; which is like an innocent pastoral ushering in more stormy and passionate passages, themselves no less replete with the spirit of genius and of poesy. But we must be hasty. The second scene, then, entitled "Morning," introduces us to the interior of the "shrubhouse" in old Luca's garden. His wife Ottima, and her paramour, Sebald, are together. The morning is somewhat more advanced. A fearful deed of darkness has been wrought. The lover has murdered the husband! He is now drinking and carolling fragments of wild songs, in the vain endeavour to bury the remembrance of his crime. Ottima, the wife, is more collected. She strives to calm her guilty lover's fears, to draw his attention to the scene around them. That black streak is the belfry.-Stop! Vicenza resolves to curse her, and deliver himself up to justice. But she, too, has been rebuked and chastened by the words of innocence. "Kill me, Sebald!" she says, Mine was the crime. I always meant to kill myself.' Let us leave the guilty pair in the throes of agony and remorse, and turn to the second, scarcely less exciting, compartment of the poem, "Noon," introduced by a short scene amongst a body of foreign students, assembled before the house of Jules, the intended bridegroom. From their conversation we learn that they have practised an odious deception on of Phene, the girl he is about to marry, as from her; him. They have written letters to him in the name ideal in soul, whilst she is nothing but a poor and altoand he weds her in the belief that she is the painter's gether ignorant, yet innocent, girl; herself another victim to the deception. Mortification, at the superiority assumed by Jules to themselves and their pleasures, seems to have been the incentive to this cruel pleasantry. This scene is written in pungent and pregnant clue to the individual character of each student, and prose. It is very dramatic; giving in a few words the more especially portraying the German tobacco-smoker, 'Schramm," with no little humour. But now the great scene ensues. Jules and his bride arrive, and enter the house. The doors are closed behind them, the students are in suspense without. The poet introduces us to Should lie there's Padua, plain enough-that blue-the sacred privacy of the artist's studio; and the Look o'er my shoulder-follow my finger" "Morning!" cries the guilty Sebald : interview which follows forms one of the most beautiful dramatic creations we are acquainted with. It is by no means devoid of faults, indeed, but its beauties | so high he can do nothing for her; and love would infinitely outweigh them. Jules' deep love, his artist always bestow. "Were she wronged," he says,-" to passion for his bride, are first expressed; and then the rescue of her honour! Were she poor, for her he the memories of his past life are contrasted with his then might gain the world!" But that fortune should future, as husband and as lover. have thrust all this upon her, "this works his sorrow." But he is not unheard, the page. Of this the "refrain" of the song informs us. "O, my life to come! My Tydeus must be carved, that's there in clay; Bid each conception stand, while, trait by trait, Will they, my fancies, live near you, my truth,- And then follow the bright retrospect on the first letters that passed between them, and on all their loving plots to gain each other; and the still brighter anticipation of days of joy to come. The remainder of the speech is exquisite, but we have not space to quote from it. At last Jules pauses, struck by the deathlike paleness of his loved one. He conjures her to speak. She docs speak. What he has said she understands not, but she feels that it is beautiful. But she must sing-sing a song which Lutwyche, one of the students, and her mother Natalia, have taught her; a song which reveals the fatal secret, that she is a poor innocent, wholly ignorant of that art for the love of which Jules loves her, and the will-less tool of his enemies. Her first simple accents almost disclose the truth. He turns deadly pale. She prays him not "to change so," thinking he is angry because she sings not. Her ditty follows: it teaches that as love may lie concealed in hate, so hate may cower in seeming love. "Thus I, Jules! hating thee," If I dreamt, saying that would wake me!-- Keep What's here:-this too.-We cannot meet again, Consider, and the money was but meant For two years' travel, which is over now; All chance, or hope, or care, or need of it!— This, and what comes from selling these-(my casts And books and medals excepted)-let them go Together! So the produce keeps you safe Out of Natalia's clutches. If by chance (For all's chance here) I should survive the gang At Venice-root out all fifteen of themWe might meet somewhere, since the world is wide." The deep despairing resignation of this speech, the first dawn of conviction, then the terrible certainty, then the awful calm, are all evidences of a most intimate knowledge of the human heart, or rather, of the highest dramatic powers. But now, at this climax of utter despair, "Pippa passes," singing as before. Her song is of a page's love for his mistress, a queen. The page mourns that she he loves is already 666 "Nay, list!' bade Kate the queen." Vainly does some idle courtier or some haughty dame reply, carelessly, "Only a page, that carols unseen, Fitting your hawks their jesses.'" The page has been heard. The queen shall be his consort! Pippa has passed.-And now, after a long pause, young Jules resumes: Kate? Queen Cornaro, doubtless, who renounced At Azolo. And whosoever loves Must be, in some sort, god or worshipper, know. Is not this stirring, in its noble truthfulness, almost to tears? There, on this isle, will he trace "some dusky mountain, "Whole brotherhoods of cedars on its brow: Most exquisite! We have no space to dilate on the manifold beauties of this scene. We trust that we have already said enough to induce those who have not seen it to read it for themselves forthwith; and those who have perused it but hastily, to study it with care. The next scene connects the second and third compartments. It introduces us to an English vagabond with the strange appellation of Bluphocks (query, Bluefox ?), who talks in the strain of the cynic "Spiegelberg," in Schiller's "Robbers." We spoke, before, of "Monsignor," the cardinal. This Bluphocks, it appears, has received orders from the cardinal's steward or "intendant," to carry some scheme of villany into execution, which scheme turns out to be the seduction and consequent ruin of little Pippa; the motive for which (according to Browning's usual unfortunate habit) we only discover much later. We, however, being in the secret, may as well state at per "Farewell, farewell! How could I stay? Farewell!" and rushes out. He has departed, therefore, for Vienna, and so escaped the police. We trust that he may be supposed to have abandoned his execrable design. Indeed, we cannot conceive it possible that an author, animated in general by such Christian feelings as Robert Browning, should recommend regicide, in cold blood, as a deed praiseworthy and heroic. But he has erred greatly in leaving the slightest doubt upon such a subject; unless, indeed, our lack of comprehension be alone responsible for the error. once what it is. Pippa, then, is the daughter of the eldest | mystic ballad, the application of which is the only brother of the cardinal, supposed to be no longer in really unintelligible thing we can discover in this existence by the world; the second brother, just de- dramatic poem. The issue of it is that Luigi exclaims ceased, having given orders for her assassination to the to his mother :steward, which he believed were carried into execution, in order that he might come into possession of the family property. But the steward was too wily not to preserve poor Pippa's life, so as to retain power over his employers. She is now to be decoyed to Rome, and there ruined, through the medium of this English scoundrel, Bluphocks, (but not, be it observed, with the connivance of the cardinal), and the fiendish quiet with which this rascal sets about his task is positively appalling. His first step is to bribe some girls who work in Pippa's silk-mills, to talk to her of an English gentleman who admires her, and thus excite her girlish curiosity. It will further be remembered that we adverted to "Luigi and his Mother," the chief sonages of the third compartment. Now, in the course of this scene we discover that Luigi is an Italian republican, or, at all events, a "patriot," inimical to the Austrian government, and will be seized by the police unless he leaves Azolo that evening. We cannot explain at length. The third compartment, Evening," commences. Luigi and his mother are in their tower. The scene which follows is beautiful in parts, yet inferior as a whole to the two former episodes (if we may well call them so), because its bearing is less distinct. So much, however, we discover. Luigi has actually formed the design of slaying the Austrian chief, either the viceroy or the emperor, we know not which. Nay, he is one of a club of self-styled patriots, who have voted the necessity for this deed of blood, and he is to be its executor. The unreasoning, passionate fervour of the Italian nature is finely expressed in this youth's speeches. His loving mother is the advocate for peace. She strives to work on his sense of honour, his fears, his feelings; all in vain. "Well, you shall go," she says, and continues, in a bitterly truthful and wholesome strain— "If patriotism were not The easiest virtue for a selfish man But we do not like playing with edged tools. To acquire!-He loves himself: and then, the world, develope his plan for the ruin of the child. The * Once more, your ground for killing him?- Then, go ! That treaty whereby Or, better go at once to modern times!— He has-they have-In fact, I understand, But can't restate the matter; that's my boast! How characteristic! how truthful! And now the mother refers to his loved one, his Chiara, -" with her blue eyes upturned, As if life were one sweet and long surprise!" cardinal attends with seeming resignation, nay, appears about to yield, when " Pippa passes" without, singing this charming though childish strain-this ideal of nursery rhymes: -- "Over head the tree-tops meet, Flowers and grass spring 'neath our feet. Ay, and beasts too, bul words, our words? Only so much more sweet!· That knowledge with my life begun : But I had so near made out the sun, Could count yon stars, the seven and one, Like the fingers of my hand; Nay, could all but understand How and wherefore the moon ranges: And just, when out of her soft fifty changes, [Pippa passes.] Monsignor [springing up]. My people—one and all But even this memory does not dissuade him from his-all-within there! Gag this villain-tie him hand purpose. And now "Pippa passes," and chants a and foot! He dares-I know not half he dares-but |