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ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
his child-companion, teaching her such stray scraps of learning as came into his mind: "Out of books he taught me all the ignorance of men." But after a few years, "entranced with thoughts, not aims," her father died, and Aurora, now thirteen, was doubly orphaned—
There ended childhood: what succeeded next
I recollect as, after fevers, men
Thread back the passage of delirium.
I recollect as, after fevers, men
Thread back the passage of delirium.
When her last parent died, Aurora was conveyed from her native land to England, and placed in charge of her aunt—her father's sister. This aunt—Miss Leigh—is wonderfully well described—this prim English gentlewoman, with—
Cheeks in which was yet a rose
Of perished summers, like a rose in a book,
Kept more for ruth than pleasure,—
Of perished summers, like a rose in a book,
Kept more for ruth than pleasure,—
and is, indeed, the one successful delineation of the tale. Miss Leigh
Had lived, we'll say,
A harmless life, she called a virtuous life,
A quiet life, which was not life at all,
(But that, she had not lived enough to know)
Between the vicar and the country squires,
The Lord-Lieutenant looking down sometimes
From the empyreal, to assure their souls
Against chance vulgarisms, and, in the abyss,
The apothecary looked on once a year,
To prove their soundness of humility.
The poor-club exercised her Christian gifts
Of knitting stockings, stitching petticoats,
Because we are of one flesh after all
And need one flannel (with a proper sense
Of difference in the quality), and still
The book-club, guarded from your modern trick
Of shaking dangerous questions from the crease,
Preserved her intellectual
A harmless life, she called a virtuous life,
A quiet life, which was not life at all,
(But that, she had not lived enough to know)
Between the vicar and the country squires,
The Lord-Lieutenant looking down sometimes
From the empyreal, to assure their souls
Against chance vulgarisms, and, in the abyss,
The apothecary looked on once a year,
To prove their soundness of humility.
The poor-club exercised her Christian gifts
Of knitting stockings, stitching petticoats,
Because we are of one flesh after all
And need one flannel (with a proper sense
Of difference in the quality), and still
The book-club, guarded from your modern trick
Of shaking dangerous questions from the crease,
Preserved her intellectual
