For two together to bear out at once The difference lies in the honour, not the work, And such we're bound to, I and she. But love, (You poets are benighted in this age; The hour's too late for catching even moths, You've gnats instead), love!-love's foolparadise Is out of date, like Adam's. Set a swan To swim the Trenton, rather than true love To float its fabulous plumage safely down time, Whose roar, for ever henceforth, in my ears, Must keep me deaf to music." is In short, the man has not an atom of love for the girl, whom he proposes to wed entirely from motives of general philanthropy! At this Aurora is somewhat disgusted; but, wishing to show kindness to her cousin perhaps to testify her own indifference, which, however, rather feigned than real-she suggests that the marriage should take place at her house. But Master Romney will not hear of such an arrangement, as it might weaken the effect of the grand moral lesson which he intends to convey to society : That misbecame them in a holy place, With broidered hems of perfumed handkerchiefs; Those passed the salts with confidence of eyes And simultaneous shiver of moiré silk; While all the aisles, alive and black with heads, Crawled slowly toward the altar from the street, As bruised snakes crawl and hiss out of a hole With shuddering slow involutions, swaying From right to left, and then from left to right, In pants and pauses. What an ugly crest From that crammed mass! you did not usually See faces like them in the open day: -ay, And children's ;- babies, hanging like а rag Forgotten on their mother's neck, - poor mouths, Wiped clean of mother's milk by mother's blow, At this St. Giles' rises in insurrection, cursing Romney as a seducer, and accusing him of having made away with the girl. There is a superl row, with threats of violence and arson, until the police enter and clear the church. Beyond an engimatical letter of leave-taking, which gives no expla nation of her avoiding the marriage ceremony, we hear nothing of Mariau for a long time. Romney retires to Leigh Hall, which he has turned into a phalanstery," by which term, we presume, is meant an Owenite community. Miss Aurora continues her devotion to the muses, and becomes more notable day by day; but a horrid suspicion crosses her that Lady Waldemar has found the weak side of her wealthy cousin.. For, at a conversazione at the house of a certain Lord Howe she learns that the fair and intriguing Waldemar is commonly considered as Romney's pet disciple-nay, that she is considered as his bride intended. In the words of Mrs. Browning, which we give without the metrical divisions, "You may find her name on all his missions and commissions, schools, asylums, ladies, whom her starry lead persuaded hospitals. He has had her down with other from other spheres, to his country-place in Shropshire, in the famed phalanstery at Leigh Hall, christianised from Fourier's own, in which he has planted out his sapling stocks of knowledge into social bursaries; and there, they say, she has tarried half a week, and milked the cows, and churned, and pressed the curd, and said my sister' to the lowest drab of all the assembled castaways. Such girls! Ay, sided with them at the washing-tub." Lady Waldemar, in a very spiteful speech, confirms this impression; and Miss Aurora, who all this time has had a secret hankering for her cousin, determines to square her balances with her publisher, and to depart for Italy. In Paris she encounters Marian, dis- and finds her a mother. The expla nation is, that Lady Waldemar had tampered with the girl; and by representing to her that her marriage with Romney would be his social ruin, induced her to take flight on My friends, you are all dismissed, Go, eat poor. The vicar preached from "Revelations" (till frogs" On three stopped successive Sundays; ay, and To weep a little (for he's getting old) women of the neighbourhood subscribed, And sent me a copy bound in scarlet silk, Leigh: I own that touched me." Poor Romney!' "What, the pretty ones? 'Otherwise the effect was small. the day preceding that which had Betwixt the generous rich and grateful been arranged for the nuptials. The place of her future destiny was Australia, but her ladyship had confided her to the charge of an unprincipled soubrette, who, whether or not by design of her mistress, took Marian over to France, conveyed her to an infamous house, and sold her, while under the influence of drugs, to violation. On awakening to a sense of her situation and wrongs, the unfortunate girl became mad, and was allowed to make her escape, underwent various adventures and vicissitudes, and finnally brought into the world a male child, in whom her whole existence was wrapt up, and for whom alone she lived, when she was recognised and challenged by Aurora in the streets of Paris. The sequel may be easily imagined. Miss Leigh, convinced of Marian's innocence, insists that she, with her child, shall accompany her to Florence; and there are some letters and cross purposes, into which, for the mere sake of the story, it is not necessary to enter. In fine, Aurora, in the full belief that Lady Waldemar, to whom she has sent a most insulting letter, is now the wife of her cousin, becomes melancholy and heart-sick, and time drags wearily on, until one night, watching the stars from her terrace, she is startled by the sudden apparition of Romney by her side. Gentler than in his early youth, and far more humble, Romney first pays homage to her genius, and then confesses that his social schemes have proved an utter failure. "My vain phalanstery dissolved itself; My men and women of disordered lives, I brought in orderly to dine and sleep, I had my windows broken once or twice Who would not let men call their wives their Own To kick like Britons,---and made obstacles Toward freedom and starvation; The wicked London drabs, a bringing tavern-thieves and To affront the blessed hill-side drabs and With thieves mended morals, quotha,-fine new lives!shot at once, I was My windows paid for't. game goes, "There he Who'd drive away our Christian gentlefolks, To catch us undefended in the trap He baits with poisonous cheese, and lock us up In that pernicious prison of Leigh Hall Broke up those waxen masks I made them With all his murderers! Give another Your ancient neighbours? The great book- house, thought the proceeding rare club teems With "sketches," "summaries," and "last tracts" but twelve, On socialistic troublers of close bonds fun, and joined in the incendiarism; and Will Erle, Marian's father, "tramp and poacher," whom he had attempted to reclaim, struck Romney on the head with a burning brand as he was leaving the house, inflicting an injury which brought him nearly to the verge of the grave. In the course of conversation Romney undeceives Aurora as to his connection with Lady Waldemar, but declares that he considers himself bound, notwithstanding her misfortune, to wed Marian, and to adopt her child. Marian, who has overheard this, comes forward, and after a passionate scene of great beauty, rejects the offer. Here we cannot resist a quotation. "I have not so much life that I should love And so Marian departs. But now comes an awful disclosure-Romney is blind. The blow struck by the poacher had destroyed the visual nerves; and for that unfortunate Lord -Except the child. Ah God! I could not of Leigh, the glory of the sun, moon, bear To see my darling on a good man's knees, Or such a silence, that he thought some- "This child was fathered by some cursed wretch" For, Romney,-angels are less tender-wise What we think never. He is ours, the And we would sooner vex a soul in heaven thought, the dead It left behind it in a last month's grave, Than, in my child, see other than child. We only, never call him fatherless body's Who has God and his mother. O my babe, race That's worn as bold and open as a smile, name, And has no answer? What! a happier child Than mine, my best,-who laughed so loud to-night He could not sleep for pastime? Nay, I sware By life and love, that, if I lived like some, Such is the story, which no admirer of Mrs. Browning's genius ought in my prudence to defend. In our opinion it is fantastic, unnatural, exaggerated; and all the worse, because it professes to be a tale of our own times. No one who understands of how much value probability is to a tale, can read the foregoing sketch, or indeed peruse the poem, without painful feeling that Mrs. Browning has been perpetrating, in essentials, an extravaganza or caricature, instead of giving to the public a real lifelike picture; for who can accept, as truthful representation, Romney's proposal of marriage to an ignorant uneducated girl whom he does not love; or that scene in the church, which is absolutely of Rabelaisian conception ? hand, shall We must not be seduced by beauty and power of execution from entering our protest against this radical error, which appears more glaring as we pass from the story to the next point, which is the delineation of character. Aurora Leigh is not an attractive character. After making the most liberal allowance for pride, and fanaticism for art, and inflexible independence, she is incongruous and contradictory both in her sentiments and in her actions. But strain and touch her in her upper She is not a genuine woman; one half As some love (eyes that have wept so much, see clear), I've room for no more children in my arms; of her heart seems bounding with the beat of humanity, while the other half is ossified. What we miss in her is instinctiveness, which is the greatest charm of women. No doubt she displays it now and then, and some times very conspicuously, but it is not made the general attribute of her nature; and in her dealings with Romney Leigh, instinct disappears altogether. For we hold it absolutely impossible that a woman, gifted as she is represented to be, would have countenanced a kinsman, whom she respected only, in the desperate folly of wedding an uneducated girl from the lowest grade of society, whom he did not love, simply for the sake of a theory; thereby making himself a public laughingstock, without the least chance of advancing the progress of his own preposterous opinions. There is nothing heroic in this; there is nothing reconcilable with duty. The part which Aurora takes in the transaction, degrades rather than raises her in our eyes; nor is she otherwise thoroughly amiable; for, with all deference to Mrs. Browning, and with ideas of our own perhaps more chivalric than are commonly promulgated, we must maintain that woman was created to be dependent on the man, and not in the primary sense his lady and his mistress. The extreme independence of Aurora detracts from the feminine charm, and mars the interest which we otherwise might have felt in so intellectual a heroine. In fact, she is made to resemble too closely some of the female portraits of George Sand, which never were to our liking. In Romney we fail to take any kind of interest. Though honourable and generous, he is such a very decided noodle that we grudge him his prominence in the poem, do not feel much sympathy for his misfortunes, and cannot help wondering that Aurora should have entertained one spark of affection for so deplorable a milksop. Excess of enthusiasm we can allow; and folly, affecting to talk the words of wisdom, meets us at every turning: but Romney is a walking hyperbole. The character of Marian is very beautifully drawn and well sustained, but her thoughts and language VOL. LXXXI. are not those of a girl reared in the midst of sordid poverty, vice, and ignorance. This is an error in art which we are sure Mrs. Browning, upon mature consideration, will acknowledge; and it might easily have been avoided by the simple expedient of making Marian's origin and antecedents a few shades more respectable, which still would have left enough disparity between her and Romney to produce the effect which Mrs. Browning desires. Lady Waldemar is a disgusting character. Mrs. Browning intended her to appear as despicable; but it was not therefore necessary to make her talk coarse and revolting. As an example let us cite the following passage: |