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372 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. c
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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¦ I» » .¦ Death Thebe Of Are Elizab Few ...
"In 1851 appeared ' Casa Guidi Windows / a poem , the theme of which was tne repeated struggle for liberty which she had
opportunities of witnessing from the windows of the Casa Guidi ,. her own residence . In 1856 appeared Aurora Leigh ; ' and still
'• more lately a volume entitled Poems before Congress . ' " We quote a vivid and true testimony which has been given within
these last days to the excellence of her mind and character . After calling heras she indeed deserved to be called " the profound
keen scholar satirist , the , ori the ginal advocate thinker of , the oppressed courageous and suffering social , reformer humanity , the , ,
the wise Christian moralist / ' the writer goes on thus : — " When it is borne in mind that few beings have ever been sent
into this world with deeper and stronger affections than Elizabeth Barrett—that her life was eminently a life of the heart—our
readers will be able to appreciate the truth of the assertion , that smooth as the outward course of her career might seemit was
, nevertheless one of great vicissitudes . Her father , like other West Indian proprietors , saw his fortune reduced from almost
princely proportions to , not indeed the straitened means of other Jamaica lantersbut still to something very different from his
former affluence p . , Her favorite brother was drowned , almost before her eyesin the waters of Torquay- Her hale and happy
girlhood was succeeded , by long years of physical and moral sufferingand she whose sympathies embraced every flower , and
birdand , insectwas condemned to remain for years a prisoner in her , roomconfined , as closely as if she had been sentenced to a
felon ' s cell , . When , with partially restored health , she bestowed her hand on a man in all respects worthy of such a woman , this
union , opening up to her the purest domestic happiness , brought with it its sore sad trial in the total estrangement from her father ' s
heart and home ; and this from no fault of hers ; but for what ? In charity to him and justice to her , who are both gone , we may
most mildly designate it as a strange monomania . The revolution in her own life by -which she thus became removed from a quiet
mansion in Wimpole Street to the Athens of Italy , to Florence , with all its glorious traditions of _mediaeval letters and artof
, resuscitated learning and republican energy , suddenly brought her face to face with the nascent revolution of the Italian people , and
kindled in her breast the deep sympathy "with that people ' s sufferings and sorrowsthe passionate aspiration for their speedy
deliverance , and a sincere , gratitude towards the imperial ally by whose aid that deliverance had been wrought out , of which the
traces are so indelibly stamped in her later writings . " Mrs . Browning was one of the most learned women our country
ever has produced . She was equally at home in Oriental , and Greekand Eoman letters ; and it would have been difficult to have
mentioned , any remarkable work either in prose or poetry , in our own literature or that of France , which had not , at some period or
other of her life , formed the subject of her inquiry . But her
372 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. C
372 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING . c
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Aug. 1, 1861, page 372, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01081861/page/12/
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