James Parton, Horace Greeley, T. W. Higginson, J. S. C. Abbott, E. M. Hoppin, William Winter, Theodore Tilton, Fanny Fern, Grace Greenwood, Mrs. E. C. Stanton, Women of the age; being natives of the lives and deeds of the most prominent women of the present gentlemen

[235] and truthfulness and freedom from false shame that the most fastidious taste cannot be offended by their recital. Nor are they interesting alone from the insight which they give us into the heart of their author. They are of unique interest, because they give us the revelation of a great woman's love. They set before us an affection which combines, with the passionate fervor of man's devotion, a clinging, self-renouncing tenderness which is peculiar to woman. They reveal to us a love unselfish in its essence, distrusting only its own worthiness and sufficiency to satisfy its object, and longing to be swallowed up in his larger nature. How false in the presence of such desire for self-renunciation on the part of so highly-gifted a nature appears the common cant that culture and genius and strong thought injure the finer qualities of a woman's soul! What better refutation to this theory than such lines as these:--

A heavy heart, beloved, have I worn,
From year to year, until I saw thy face,
And sorrow after sorrow took the place
Of all those natural joys as lightly worn
As the stringed pearls,--each lifted in its turn
By a beating heart at dance-time. Hopes apace
Were changed to long despairs, till God's own grace
Could scarcely lift above the world forlorn
My heavy heart. Then thou didst bid me bring
And let it drop adown thy calmly great
Deep being! Fast it sinketh, as a thing
Which its own nature doth precipitate,
While thine doth close above it, mediating
Betwixt the stars and the unaccomplished fate.

“From their wedding day,” writes a friend, “Mrs. Browning seemed to be endowed with new life. Her health visibly improved, and she was enabled to make excursions in England prior to her departure for the land of her adoption,--Italy,--where she found a second and a dearer home.”