man who rejected her is somewhat in the style of an
ancient legend, or a romance of the Mrs. Radcliffe
school, but it is not well told-it is diluted, protracted,
spun out, so that you are tired of it before
you know
thoroughly what it is. In the midst of a grand fête,
when a party of the guests are taken to see the re-
stored rooms in the old tower, she with the assistance
of her maid contrives that Count Alfred shall be
fastened in the dungeon, and kept there. Here she
detains him, when all his relatious suppose him to be
dead; having, strangely enough, made no search for
him when he disappeared. He receives food in the
genuine moyen age, captive style, i. e. by means of a
sliding plate of iron in the wall of his dungeon. The
maid who is the confidant of her crime becomes her
tyrant. Amelia has a brain fever, recovers, learns
that Caroline was innocent of aught but losing
her heart, repents immediately, sets her captive free,
and takes the veil, giving the bulk of her property to
Count Alfred and Caroline. Fourteen years after

these occurrences

"Amelia the elder had already learnt a more important lesson still; namely, that it is possible the heaviest sorrows may find balm, and then oblivion there."

We

Thus closes the history of "the young countess." The direct moral inculcated, viz. that religion is the only true balm for sorrows however deep, is very good, and in this respect we think our authoress has done better than usual; as well as in the absence of coarseness and vulgarity of description and sentiment. pass over vulgarisms of expression, such as "the two ladies scudded along the gallery," &c. and "get Amelia to her friend the baroness Caroline. The two along with you," &c. addressed by the high-bred countess great faults of the book are its preposterous expansion into three volumes, and the want of amusing matter throughout. If one were to judge of Mrs. Trollope of her as was once said of Madame de Staël, "She is by this specimen of her powers, one might say the greatest bore in the world for 30 clever woman, and the cleverest woman in the world for so

great a bore."

RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW.'

"Sister Agnes (no longer Amelia de Rosenau) was elevated to the rank of abbess of the monastery of St. Ursula, and never was any promotion of the kind hailed Robert Browning's "Bells and Pomegranates."with more universal joy, for there was not a single individual in the convent who did not both love and honour her.

"Several noble families with whom she had been acquainted before she retired from the world, made a point of waiting on her to congratulate her upon her very gratifying appointment, for she was still a young woman to be selected for so important a charge. But there was one party among these guests in whom she evidently took particular interest. The group consisted of a very tall and comely gentleman of some forty years of age, or so, a still lovely wife nearly ten years his junior, and a boy and girl, the very prettiest copies of their respective parents that nature ever indulged a handsome couple by producing.

"The lady abbess of St. Ursula entered her parlour to welcome them with a smile of affectionate gladness on her lip; but she was very pale, and not all her habitual dignity (and never had the convent of St. Ursula boasted of an abbess who had more) could prevent a slight trembling of the knees as she approached

them.

"The first movement made to meet her was by the Count de Hermanstadt, for he it was who stepped forward the moment she appeared, and reverently bent

his knee before her.

"There was something in this action that seemed in every way to reconcile her to herself and restore her to composure.

"The tall, thin, but ever graceful abbess of St. Ursula laid her hand upon his head as he knelt, and pronounced a fervent blessing on him.

"And can this be Caroline that magnificently handsome woman, so much taller, so much larger than when we saw her last! Can that be Caroline?

"The heart of the abbess told her that it was so, though her eyes would hardly have served her so faithfully, but as it was, she felt no doubt about it, and in another

moment they were locked in each other's arms.

The boy and girl stood blushing and apart, for their education had been too well begun to leave them ignorant that a lady abbess was rather an awful personage; but the first lesson learnt by the young Amelia de Hermanstadt, in the convent where she was subsequently educated, was that the best affections of the heart do not always become blighted there.

"Pippa passes." Moxon.

a

To return to Robert Browning, we recognise in him a genius which soars above all the trammels of conventionalism, and which may even be said to have laid the foundation for a new school. He has none of the faults, and perhaps not all the merits, of the Elizabethan dramatists. He approximates in one respect to the French dramatic bards, namely, in unity both of conception and execution. These are qualities which English critics are least able to appreciate; they hunt for show-passages-passages independent of the context, consequently dramatic blots; and if they do not discover these, they can see little or nothing to admire. Now, in Browning's plays, not a speech, not a line, scarcely a word is introduced, which does not tend to exhibit some phase of character, which has not a direct bearing on the development of the plot, which does not contribute to the unity of the whole creation. This, almost as of course, has not been appreciated (speaking generally), and thus Robert Browning's works have been neglected and slighted by the smaller fry of critics in the literary organs of the day. But, despite this, our author has succeeded in placing a series of plays before us in his so-called Bells and Pomegranates," which will live and be honoured as long as our country's tongue endures.

And now, without further preamble, we will proceed to notice the first work in this series, entitled "Pippa passes," which is couched in a peculiar form and vein, but which, nevertheless, must command the sympathies of all who have once learned to understand it. And here let us confess that a certain needless obscurity is but too characteristic of Browning's strains, and suffices in some degree to account for the slow progress he has made in popular estimation. He is not only in the habit of omitting

(1) Continued from p. 63.

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 Browning'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! à 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.]

Faster and more fast

O'er night's brim day boils at last;

Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim,
Where spurting and supprest it lay:
For not a froth-flake touched the rim
Of yonder gap in the solid gray
Of eastern cloud, an hour away :-
But forth one wavelet, then another, curled;
Till the whole sunrise, not to be supprest,
Rose-reddened, and its seething breast
Flickered in bourds, grew gold, then overflowed
the world.-

Day! If I waste a wavelet of thee,
Aught of my twelve hours' treasure,—
One of thy gazes, one of thy glances,
(Grants thou art bound to, gifts above measure,)
One of thy choices, one of thy chances,
(Tasks God imposed thee, freaks at thy pleasure,)
Day! if I waste such labour or leisure,
Shame betide Azolo, mischief to me!"

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

"For are not such

Used to be tended, flower-like every feature, As if one's breath would fray the lily of a creature?" «But her I will not envy," Pippa continues; "that kind of love I covet not, to bind and to enslave me. No! rather a parent's love for me; one that should have lapped me round from the beginning. Well, at when he and his mother commune in their turrets?— what prevents that I should think myself Luigi, I will be Luigi," she says, and then, after a pause, continues

eve,

"If I only knew

What was my father like;-my mother too."

she continues, in her happy consciousness of joy, soul. Ottima appears to him his direst foe. He and then thus concludes her soliloquy :

Should lie there's Padua, plain enough-that blue-the sacred privacy of the artist's studio; and the Look o'er my shoulder-follow my finger"

by no means devoid of faults, indeed, but its beauties | so high he can do nothing for her; and love would infinitely outweigh them. Jules' deep love, his artist always bestow. "Were she wronged," he says,-" to passion for his bride, are first expressed; and then the rescue of her honour! Were she poor, for her he the memories of his past life are contrasted with his then might gain the world!" But that fortune should future, as husband and as lover. have thrust all this upon her, "this works his sorrow." But he is not unheard, the page. Of this the "refrain" of the song informs us.

per

"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

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

But we do not like playing with edged tools.
Now ensues the preparatory scene for the fourth and
It contains a conversation among
last compartment.
the girls whom Bluphocks has bribed to speak of him
to Pippa, and is clever, but painful. There are exqui-
site passages in this scene, but they will not bear
extraction. At its conclusion, Pippa is seen approach-
ing, 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
The Italian cardinal,
and "Götz von Berlichingen."
cold, wily, polite, sanctimonious, jesuitical, is wonder-
fully 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 pre-
pared. He reveals the truth—the child lives still, is
at hand. If Monsignor will not listen to reason she
shall be brought forward. Monsignor remains calm.
However, he will listen. The steward proceeds to

To acquire!-He loves himself: and then, the world, develope his plan for the ruin of the child. The
If he must love beyond; but nought between.
As a short-sighted man sees nought betwixt
His body and the sun above.

*

Once more, your ground for killing him?- Then, go !
Luigi. Now, do you ask me, or make sport of me?-
How first the Austrians got these provinces?
(If that is all, I'll satisfy you soon :)
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!
Others could reason it out to you, and prove
Things they have made me feel."

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!"

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:

--

"Over head the tree-tops meet,

Flowers and grass spring 'neath our feet.
What are the voices of birds,

Ay, and beasts too, bul words, our words?

Only so much more sweet!·

That knowledge with my life begun :

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

How and wherefore the moon ranges:

And just, when out of her soft fifty changes,
No unfamiliar face might overlook me,
Suddenly God took me.

[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