"The Mother of the Beautiful Child."

On the streets of Florence, Italy, Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was pointed out to strangers as "the mother of the beautiful child." She was more proud of this than of her literary fame. Writing to a friend and speaking of it, she adds: "Is it not worth twenty Auroras!" As an author Mrs. Browning is too well known to need comment here. As a poet, she is one of four, who, in the latter part of this nineteenth century, are worthy to rank with that illustrious band who adorn the early years of it: Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, Mrs. Browning, Thomas Hood. "Aurora Leigh," her masterpiece, is essentially an autobiography. She was born in London (1809) and died in Florence (1861). The bursting of a blood vessel in her lungs, in early life, rendered her an invalid for many years; and her recovery was greatly retarded by the dark sorrow of her brother's tragic death. She had been ordered, by her physician, to the sea-side, and her brother had secure a house for her at Torquay. Under the influence of the mild Devonshire climate she was rapidly recovering, when, one bright morning, her brother and two of his companions went out sailing in a small boat. The boat capsized and the sea refused to give her back her dead. For a year she lay in that "cottage by the sea," too ill to be removed, and yet compelled to listen to the sad sea waves, as they chanted to her his funeral dirge. Then she was taken back to London in an invalid carriage, traveling at the rate of twenty miles per day. Gradually her strength returned, and the brightness of her life was restored by her marriage, in 1846, with Robert Browning, her equal in mind and heart. Her married life was spent in Italy, first at Pisa, then at Florence. Her love for Italy became a passion stronger than patriotism itself, and inspired the Italians with an enthusiastic admiration for her; and her son, the crowning joy of her life, became almost the idol of the people. The mother's fame was well-nigh lost in the pride and admiration with which the Florentines regarded the son, and when at one time his life was endangered by a serious illness, nothing could exceed the anxiety of the people. He had just reached the prime of boyhood, when his mother, blessed in her assured fame, and happy in an emancipated Italy, was called to her eternal home. She was buried in her beloved Florence, and her death was bewailed scarcely less in Tuscany than in England.

Over the door of her Florentine home we read:--