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 Brown | ing'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 ! a | 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.] "Day! Faster and more fast O'er night's brim day boils at last; 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 "I, to-night at least, Will be that holy and beloved priest." “But, after all,—I myself share in God's love. I need not be a holy priest for that. Why, clse, should New-year's hymn declare, "All service ranks the same with God. 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. 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!" I crown you "Sebald [repeating]. My great white queen, my spirit's arbitress, Pippa [without, passing]. The hillside's dew-pearled. 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 foc. and then thus concludes her soliloquy : "A pretty thing to care about So mightily, this single holiday! Why repine? With thee to lead me, Day of mine, As yet, nor cicale 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 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 advanced. A fearful deed of darkness has been attention to the scene around them. "Ah! the clear morning! He 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 intended bridegroom. From their conversation we students, assembled before the house of Jules, the learn that they have practised an odious deception on him. They have written letters to him in the name and he weds her in the belief that she is the painter's of Phene, the girl he is about to marry, as from her; ideal in soul, whilst she is nothing but a poor and altogether 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 prose. It is very dramatic; giving in a few words the clue to the individual character of each student, and 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 the sacred privacy of the artist's studio; and the 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 infinitely outweigh them. Jules' deep love, his artist passion for his bride, are first expressed; and then the memories of his past life are contrasted with his future, as husband and as lover. "O, my life to come! My Tydeus must be carved, that's there in clay; Bid each conception stand, while, trait by trait, 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 does 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 How strange !— Save "Kate? Queen Cornaro, doubtless, who renounced 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 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 Once more, your ground for killing him?-Then, go! Never by warfare, but by treaty; for 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!" «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 But we do not like playing with edged tools. Now ensues the preparatory scene for the fourth and last compartment. It contains a conversation among the girls whom Bluphocks has bribed to speak of him to Pippa, and is clever, but painful. There are exquisite passages in this scene, but they will not bear extraction. At its conclusion, Pippa is seen approaching, and the girls call to her to speak with them. And now we have arrived at the fourth compartment, "Night." We are in the palace of "Monsignor" the cardinal. He dismisses his friends and attendants for the night, retaining only the intendant or steward, and an interview ensues between them. This scene is written in the most masterly prose, reminding us forcibly of the very best parts of Goethe's "Egmont and "Götz von Berlichingen." The Italian cardinal, cold, wily, polite, sanctimonious, jesuitical, is wonderfully portrayed. He tells the steward he is acquainted with the latter's crime in murdering his niece, his eldest brother's child, for which he intends to consign him to condign punishment; and this he says with the blandest of smiles. But the steward is ready prepared. He reveals the truth-the child lives still, is If Monsignor will not listen to reason she shall be brought forward. Monsignor remains calm. However, he will listen. The steward proceeds to develope his plan for the ruin of the child. The 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: at hand. 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 [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 remove him-quick! Miserere mei, Domine! Quick, I say!" And thus this scene closes. And now we arrive at the epilogue of the poem, or concluding section. Once more we are in Pippa's chamber, as at the beginning: and she enters it. And then, singing and merrily talking to herself, she prepares to lay herself down for the sleep of innocence. Her childish curiosity respecting this English stranger who admires her, her firm resolution to toil industriously throughout the livelong coming year, her happy and yet half-mournful recollections of the holiday she has passed-all these form a charming whole, which is, for the most part, beautifully expressed. The soliloquy and the poem both end thus:— "Now, one thing I should like to really know: As to-in some way-move them, if you please,- Silk to-morrow, silk may bind And border Ottima's cloak's hem. [She sits on the bedside.] Ah me! And my important passing them. This morning's hymn half promised, when I rose !— True, in some sense or other, I suppose. [As she lies down.] God bless me, though I cannot pray to-night!- [She sleeps.]" And thus concludes the poem of "Pippa passes." That it will amply repay the most attentive and repeated perusals we can assure the reader; though, after the extracts we have given, we can scarcely imagine such assurance to be needful. Want of space forbids further comments on the spirit of purity which pervades the work, despite the painful nature of some passages; or on its leading moral, that God can work out great ends by small means, and give power to the child's song to change the hearts of the mighty. Some of our readers will remember the poem of "Naaman's servant." Browning is, undoubtedly, not a perfect artist: far from it. But a certain exquisite and eminently "patrician," let us add Christian, delicacy of sentiment will be found to be the prevailing characteristic of his works, combined with a force and truthfulness which are sometimes surprising. Will he ever be popular, in the widest sense of the term? This is very questionable: for, no doubt, this remarkable poet is obscure. When we first perused one of his dramas (we think, "The Last of the Druses "), we were so annoyed by its seeming confusion and mysticism, that we got through the first scene with difficulty; and though recognising great beauties here and there, made our way but slowly to an accurate appreciation of the play. Indeed, while first studying all these works, we feel as though treading the maze of a dark forest in the starlight night. Awhile, all seems obscurity around us; but, by degrees, as our eyes grow accustomed to the | forest twilight, they discern a thousand beauties that passed at first unnoticed, in every brake and bower. The dark shadows, that stretched across our path in sullen gloom, seem to add a deeper charm to the scene; while the golden star-beams, shining in betwixt green leaves above, fall on lovely flowers beneath our feet, which we trod o'er unheeded, but which prove the more lovely and fragrant the more we examine into their nature and inhale their sweetness. Then, too, there is a sacred melody breathing through the wood: a low continuous warbling, as from a distant chorus of sweet nightingales. All that seemed confusion is order. The very gnarled forest-trunks, with their wide-spread and interwoven branches, the very clouds that pass above, and momently dim the pure starsthe very midnight breezes that wail from afar-add to the beauty, to the unity, of the scene. And, finally, where we at first drew back with a feeling of dismay, we weep, perchance, from the overflowing of our hearts in love, and recognise the presence of the Divine. EDITOR'S POSTSCRIPT. "Eheu fugaces, Posthume, Posthume, wrote Horace (the Tommy Moore of the Augustan Era) to his friend Posthumus, probably under the influence of a splitting head-ache, the effect of an over dose of Falernian, imbibed during one of those "Noctes Ambrosiana," in which wit flowed from, and wine into, the mouth of the bard in about equal quantities. The same sentiment presents itself to us also: albeit we possess neither the wit nor the wine-bibbing propensities of the Latin poet, we exclaim with him at the flight of time, and note with a sort of dreamy wonder how the "flecting years glide by," leaving us the same, and yet how changed! For who is there that can look back a year, and, remembering past thoughts and feelings, not perceive that a change has taken place in him,-that he is, so to speak, a new man, for better or for worse? Twelve months ago, we hailed Christmas in our Postscript; and now the hand of Time has encircled the dial, and points to Christmas once again. Reader, does it seem nothing to you when you reach one of these milestones on the journey of Life ?-do you not stop to read its silent warning? One year farther from the cradle-from the light-hearted innocence of childhood-from the bright hopes of youth! one year nearer to the grave! It is a solemn thought! May we hope that we are one year fitter for it! Oh the changes and chances of this mortal life!what an ever-varying kaleidoscope is the existence of each one of us! Now some unhoped-for piece of good fortune casts its bright halo around us, and the glass of our minds reflects only brilliant colours; anon some unforeseen evil comes, and veils the fair prospect with the shadow of its own dark outline, and the gay colours vanish, never, as our fears suggest, to re-appear, till, from some quarter whence we least expected it, the sun-light once more streams in |