"Life will try his nerves,

When the sky, which noticed all, makes no disclosure,
And the earth keeps up her terrible composure."

But who shall say it was not well? Our own thought is expressed in the lines that follow,—

O thou swift runner of the olden days,
Who sped to tell the tale of Marathon,
And, flying fleetly till the set of sun,

Passed through the gates of Athens, as his rays
Set all the white Acropolis ablaze,

And shouted, dying, that the day was won,
Then fell triumphant when thy work was done, -
I hold thy lot was blest; I sing its praise.
In all the fulness of thy boundless joy,
In all the rapture of victorious rage,
To die amid the Grecian world's acclaim;
How better far, than wait for time's alloy,
Or disillusion of oncoming age,

Or fruits of envy of thy hard-won fame.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

UNTIL last year the student of literary biography

sought in vain for details of Mrs. Browning's life, there having been no biography of her written. Her own expressed wish was that no such life be given to the world. Mr. Browning also expressed a like wish in regard to himself. But a few years ago a life of Mr. Browning prepared by Mrs. Sutherland Orr was published in response to the steady demand for such a work; and now we have two volumes of Mrs. Browning's letters, held together by a thread of narration, that practically give us the interesting story of her life.

It has been thought that the prohibition of a biography applied only to her own lifetime, and that she would be willing to have the letters published after the passage of so many years. These letters are the simple familiar ones written to her nearest friends, and contain a complete revelation of her inner personal life, and all the little homely details of social and domestic affairs in which the reading public seems to have so absorbing an interest. No book of the last decade was read with more avidity than the Letters of Jane Carlyle, or called out more of sympathetic interest, although there was

scarcely anything in them but minute personal' details of her every-day life. The tragedy of that long life of repression and blighting disappointment moved the strong heart of the public, as few such revelations have moved it, partly from the charm of her graphic writing, but more largely from the relationship she bore to the popular idol of at least a portion of the reading world. In Mrs. Browning's letters the revelations are all of peace and love, and increasing happiness year by year, in beautiful contrast to the dark picture of Mrs. Carlyle's life. The unhappiness of Mrs. Browning passed away with her marriage instead of beginning at that time, and only the unavoidable sorrows and losses of a life darken these pages.

Elizabeth Barrett was born on March 6, 1809, the eldest child of Edward and Mary Moulton Barrett. The family had been connected for some generations with the island of Jamaica, and owned considerable estates there. Robert Browning was likewise, in part, of West Indian descent. Mr. Barrett's family was a large one, consisting of three daughters and eight sons, and the mother died while they were very young, leaving to him the bringing up and education of the little troop. While Elizabeth was still an infant, they removed to a newly purchased estate in Herefordshire, among the Malvern Hills, and only a few miles from Malvern itself. Here she lived for twenty years, in all the enjoyment of that country life she so loved, and of which she was destined to know so little for the remainder of her life. But she began to live early in the realm of books. The Greeks out of Pope's Homer haunted her, and she