Flash in God's justice to the world's amaze, Sublime Deliverer !''

Before illustrating the manner in which the ethical impulse of her mind displays itself in the most sustained and imposing of her works, we may allow ourselves to linger for a moment over the exquisite sonnets in which she has preserved the rapture of the sweetest experience of her life. Even here, although human sympathies too often crowd out religious exercise-and no doubt the most intense devotional expression of Mrs. Browning's faith did precede the time of passionate exaltation to which the mystical-we had a most said incommunicable-tenderness of the Portuguese sonnets refers, yet running through them, ever and anon flashes out the crystalline radiance of her love of the Highest. In one place she exclaims:

"There's nothing low

In love, when love the lowest meanest creatures

Who love God, God accepts while loving so." The same thought finds expression in the tender reference

When I sue

God for myself, He hears that name of thine, And sees within my eyes the tears of two."

The Sonnets from the Portuguese by date belong to the year 1846; and undoubtedly there is a more buoyant, exhilaration in their inspiration than in that of earlier poems. In the later outpourings there is not that constant longing for a peace beyond that of the passing hour, so directly noticeable in the earlier. In the sonnets all is serene, unclouded, spontaneously-enthusiastic joyance; the consummation of a heart's truest, deepest feeling, in unison with a gifted and reciprocal spirit that can understand, sympathize with, and divine her sweetest, lowliest as well as her intensest aspirations. We might sum up one impression of these poems by saying that they are hymns of praise at the realization of a new and thrilling sense; and are lifted as far above

erations as the strains of some angel choir heard in rapt vision by mystics of old must have been to the wondering listeners. With what enthusiasm and sweet forgetfulness of any listener does the poetess pour out her soulher eyes, as it were, full of radiant gladness and the tone of her voice vibrating with passionate conviction-in such lines are these :

The

It may seem a somewhat startling transition to pass, as it were, from the secluded paradise of sweet, exalted emotion into the turmoil of clashing ideas and sensations so strangely, but on the whole not inharmoniously, mingled in "Aurora Leigh." fierce current of ideas that coursed through the poetess's mind in the earlier years of her married life found an outcome in this remarkable effort. If form is to the poem what the sculpture is to the marble-that without it there can be no singleness of effect, "Aurora Leigh," although it may not commend itself in parts certainly presents a splendid unity and vitality as a whole.

It is because her genius has shone into its subject, not with the calm, sustained radiance of sunlight, but with the sudden, fitful, dazzling splendor of storm-lightning that a sense of bewilderment seizes on the mind, as it is hurried through the varied scenes and experiences of the poem, and endeavors to harmonize the different impressions left upon it, in the hope of thus discerning the social, aesthetical, political, and religious ideals which the authoress is struggling to present to us. At times she appears content to spin filaments of beautiful but nebulous pictures as if for the mere delight of her readers; at other times she is stirred to the very depths of her nature at some profoundly pitiable or revolting circumstance, and presents us with a picture that in intensity and vivid realistic grimness of detail belongs to the art of Holbein or Hogarth. Aurora Leigh" is unique in its overflowing vigor and variety of picturesque de

scriptions, in its burning, outspoken sympathy with whatever conduces to social reforms, individual or national; in its daring unconventionality of treat ment of honored, in some instances, even sacred, subjects; in its abandonment of the atmosphere and surroundings of romantic or idyllic interest; its preference, almost obtrusively displayed, for the out-of-the-way and unpleasant in incident and description. The poem reads throughout as the sudden, excited outpouring of a largehearted, grandly gifted, but over-sensitive nature, whose wealth of images, seething at white heat in the brain, overflows before her spirit is calm enough, or sufficiently on the alert to allow of them being shaped into restrained vigor or loveliness.

But this effect of some of the parts is not the abiding impression of the whole, of which a fuller appreciation is attained when we divine the informing idea at the heart of the poem. The chief aim of "Aurora Leigh" is to establish a harmony between the thoughts and aspirations of the poet and the practical exertions of the worker in the world's highways-in other words, it is a daring and masterly attempt to bridge the gulf between the ideal and the real, and to unite the followers of each in unwearied enthusiastic endeavor for the welfare of humanity. The closing passages of the poem illustrate this in language as exalted as imaginatively beautiful; and in no part is it expressed more clearly than where the voice of Romney Leigh rose, as some chief musician's song"

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rora Leigh do we not see foreshadowed a glorious reconciliation between an exalted faith in man's energy to bring about that ideal of the future of humanity which is alike the aspiration of poets and thinkers, as well as the aim of the philanthropic workers of our day?

In the pages of the poem, however, we are content to be beguiled, if we are not always convinced by the peculiar Quixotism of both Aurora and Romney-a Quixotism which, if it does not entirely harmonize with the saner enthusiasm of more moderate social and religious reformers, may at least stir admiration at the daring which does not flinch from piercing through the skin of the evils of the day and laying them bare to the eyes of all. Heroic impulses and exertions, such as those of Romney, however rashly directed, are the pioneers of more practical efforts; although it may well be that the quieter, less ostentatious sympathy and charity of Aurora may carry more with it in the end; but in the union of the two have we not the promise— rising, as it were, through the dawnstreaks of a new day-of a fresh philanthropic force for humanity?

Here again throughout it is in the largeness and freedom of her treatment that the transforming and expansive effect of the impulse of Mrs. Browning's genius is most distinctly evidenced. Religion as well as passion; faith no less than love; sorrow and despair in similar degrees to joy and hope, are touched by the same irradiating influence, and become etherealized in her conception.

"A mon sens,' ," writes M. Taine, in his Notes sur l'Angleterre, " il n'y a point de poésie qui vaille la poésie anglaise; qui parle si fortement et si nettement à l'âme, qui la remue plus à fond, en qui les mots soient si chargés de sense, qui traduise mieux les secousses et les élans de l'être intérieur."

manifestations, is largely charged with English poetry, especially in recent the sensitive vibration of the spiritual transports of our inmost consciousness; and, perhaps, hardly any of the gifted singers of this century is a nobler instance of this, more thoroughly or significantly illustrates it, than Mrs. Browning. Underlying the stately

and solemn beauties of her religious dramas, in the ardor and lyric strength and sweetness of her ballad poems, in the eloquent flow of enthusiastic sympathy of her social and political outbursts, in the fierce and rugged expression of daring thoughts, moulded into imperishable distinctness throughout her sustained masterpiece, we have the same significant impulse. This is made the more striking from her language being so largely metaphoricalso full of the most forcible images to emphasize her ideas. Notwithstanding her Greek studies, there is little of the serene calm, faultless taste, or inimitable finish of Greek art in her verse. Her style is vigorous, effusive, extravagant, rather than subtle, grace

ful, and restrained. When we turn from her artistic method of expression to the imaginative breadth and grandeur of her more enduring efforts to her alert and comprehensive sympathies-to her piercing, intense, even terrific scorn and indignation at whatever is cruel, inhuman, or oppressive, it is to recognize, in addition to the splendor of her genius, a spirit profoundly sensitive to the difficulties and suffering of the struggling and downtrodden, the helpless and fallen, which throbs throughout her works with an ever-radiant hopefulness for humanity; a hopefulness, drawing its strength from the source of all true philanthropy-faith in a beneficent ruler of the universe.- Westminster Review.

"WHERE there are monks," exclaimed brusquely the authors of "Les Prisons de Paris,' ""there are prisoners." The folds of the priestly garb conceal a place of torment which monastic justice, with a grisly humor, names a Vade in Pace; the last bead of the rosary grazes the first rings of a chain which bears the bloody impress of the sworn tormentor. At Bicêtre, as at the Luxembourg, ages ago, bigbellied cenobites sang and tippled in the cosy cells piled above the dungeons of the church.

Bicêtre more anciently Bissestre is a corrupt form of Vincestre, or Winchester, after John, Bishop of Winchester, who is thought to have built the original château, and who certainly held it in the first years of the thirteenth century. It was famous among the pleasure-houses of the Duc de Berri, who embellished it with windows of glass, which at that epoch were only beginning to be an ornament of architecture"objects of luxury," says Villaret," reserved exclusively for the mansions of the wealthiest seigneurs." In one of the rather frequent "popular demonstrations" in the Paris of the early fifteenth century, these "objects of luxury'' were smashed, and

little of the château remained except the bare walls. It was rebuilt by the Duc de Berri, a noted amateur of books, and was by him presented to an order of monks in 1416.

A colony of Carthusians under St. Louis; John of Winchester under Philippe-Auguste; Amédée le Rouge, Count of Savoy, under Charles VI.; the Bourguignons and the Armagnacs in the fifteenth century; the canons of Nôtre-Dame de Paris under Louis XI.; the robbers and "bohémiens" in the sixteenth century; the Invalides under Cardinal Richelieu, and the foundlings of St. Vincent de Paulall these preceded at Bicêtre the vagabonds, the bons-pauvres, the epileptics and other diseased, the lunatics and "all prisoners and captives." In becoming an asylum and hospital, in a word, Bicêtre became also one of the most horrible of the countless prisons of Paris; it grew into dreadful fame as "the Bastille of the canaille and the bourgeoisie.'

The enormous numbers of the poor, the hordes of sturdy mendicants who "demanded alms sword in hand," and the soldiers who took to the road when they could get no pay, became one of the chief scourges of Paris. Early in

the seventeenth century it was sought to confine them in the various hospitals or houses of detention in the Faubourg Saint-Victor, but under the disorders and weaknesses of the Government these establishments soon collapsed. Parliament issued decree after decree; all strollers and beggars were to be locked up in a prison or asylum specially appropriated to them; the buildings were commenced and large sums of money were spent on them, but they were never carried to completion. In course of time the magistrates took the matter in hand, dived into old records, but drew no counsel thence, for the evil, albeit not new, was of extraordinary proportions; went to the king for a special edict, and procured one "which ordered the setting-up of a general hospital and prescribed the rules for its governance." The château of Bicêtre and the Maison de la Salpêtrière were ceded for the purpose. Children and women went to the Salpêtrière; at Bicêtre were placed men with no visible means of subsistence, "widowers," beggars, feeble or sturdy, and "young men worn out by debauchery." Before taking these last in hand, the doctors were accustomed to order them a whipping."

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This destiny of Bicêtre is pretty clear, and as hospital and asylum combined it should, under decent conduct, have played a useful part in the social economy of Paris. But the absolutism of that age had its own notions as to the proper functions of "hospitals," and the too-familiar ordres du roi, and the not less familiar lettres de cachet (which Mirabeau had not yet come forward to denounce), were presently in hot competition with the charitable ordonnances of the doctors. Madness was a capital new excuse for vengeance in high places, and the cells set apart for cases of mental disease were quickly tenanted by "luckless prisoners whose wrong most usually consisted in being strictly right." Bicêtre, it must be admitted, did the thing conscientiously, and with the best grace in the world. Rational individuals were despatched there whom, according to the authors of "Les Prisons de Paris," Bicêtre promptly transformed into imbeciles and raging maniacs.

" Indeed the philanthropists" and the criminologists of the early part of this century need not have taxed their imaginations for any scheme of cellular imprisonment. The system existed in diabolical perfection at Bicêtre. That much-abused "depôt" of indigent males, "widowers," and young rakes had an assortment of dark cells which realized à merveille the conditions of the vaunted programme of the penitentiary-isolation and the silence of the tomb. Buried in a cabanon or black hole of Bicêtre, the prisoner endured a fate of life in death; he was as one dead who lived long, "tête à-tête with God and his conscience." If a human sound penetrated to him, it was the sobbing moan of some companion in woe.

There was a subterranean Bicêtre, of which at this day only the dark memory survives. For a dim idea of this, one has to stoop and peer in fancy into a far-reaching abyss or pit, partitioned into little tunnels; in each little tunnel a chain riven to the wall; at the end of the chain a man. Now there were men in these hellish tunnels who had been guilty of crimes, but far oftener they stifled slowly the lives or the intelligences, or both, of men who had done no crimes at all. Innocent or guilty, Bicêtre in the long run had one way with all its guests; and when the prisoners and their wits had definitely parted company the governor of the prison effected a transfer with his colleague the administrator of the asylum. It was expeditious and simple, and no one asked questions or called for a report.

It is on record, nevertheless, that existence in underground Bicêtre was a degree less insupportable than a sojourn in the cabanons. Here the strenuous greet of Latude, with its wonted vividness of detail:

"When the wet weather began, or when it thawed in the winter, water streamed from all parts of my cell. I was crippled with rheu matism, and the pains I had from it were such that I was sometimes whole weeks without getting up. . . In cold weather it was even worse. The window' of the cell, protected by an iron grating gave on the corridor, the wall of which was pierced exactly opposite at the height of ten feet. Through this aperture (garnished, like my own window, with iron

bars) I received a little air and a glimmer of light, but the same aperture let in both snow and rain. I had neither fire nor artificial

light, and the rags of the prison were my only clothing. I had to break with my wooden shoe the ice in my pail, and then to suck morsels of ice to quench my thirst. I stopped up the window, but the stench from the sewers and the tunnels came nigh to choke me; I was stung in the eyes, and had a oathsome savor in the mouth, and was horribly op pressed in the lungs. The eight-and-thirty months they kept me in that noisome cell, I endured the miseries of hunger, cold, and damp.... The scurvy that had attacked me showed itself in a lassitude which spread through all my members; I was presently un able either to sit or to rise. In ten days my legs and thighs were twice their proper size; my body was black; my teeth, loosened in their sockets, were no longer able to masticate Three full days I fasted; they saw me dying, and cared not a jot. Neighbors in the prison did this and that to have me speak to them; I could not utter a word. At length they thought me dead, and called out that I should be removed. I was in sooth at death's gate when the surgeon looked in on me and had me fetched to the infirmary."-Mémoires.

Whether Masers de Latude existed, or was but a creature projected on paper by some able enemy of La Pompadour, those famous and titillating Mémoires are excellent documents-all but unique of their kind-of the prisons of bygone France. If the question is of the Bastille, of the dungeon of Vincennes, of Charenton, or of Bicêtre, these pungent pages, with a luxuriance and color of realistic detail not so well nor so plausibly sustained by any other pen, are always pat and complete to the purpose. To compare great things with small, it is as unimportant to inquire who wrote Shakespeare as to seek to know who was the author of the "Mémoires" of Latude. It is necessary only to feel certain that the writer of this extraordinary volume was as intimately acquainted with the prisons he describes as Mirabeau was with the Dungeon of Vincennes, or Cardinal de Retz with the Château de Nantes. His book (an epitome of what men might and could and did endure under the absolute monarchy, when his rights as an individual were the least secure of a citizen's possessions) is the main thing, and the sole thing; the name and identity of the author are not now, if they ever were, of the most infinitesimal consequence.

A fine sample of the work of Bicêtre, considered as a machine for the manufacture of lunatics, is offered in the person of that interesting, unhappy genius, Salomon de Caus. A Protestant Frenchman, he lived much in England and Germany, and at the age of twenty he was already a skilled architect, a painter of distinction, and an engineer with ideas in advance of his time. He was in the service of the Prince of Wales in 1612, and of the Elector Palatine, at Heidelberg, 161420. In 1623 he returned to live and work in France, dans sa patrie et pour sa patrie. He became engineer and architect to the king.

Eight years before his return to France, De Caus had published at Frankfort his 'Raison des Forces Mouvantes," a treatise in which he described "an apparatus for forcing up water by a steam fountain," which differs only in one particular from that of Della Porta. The apparatus seems never to have been constructed, but Arago, relying on the description, has named De Caus the inventor of the steam-engine.

It is not, however, with the inventive genius that we are concerned, but with the ill-starred lover of Marion Delorme. The minister Particelli took De Caus one day to the "petit lever" of the brilliant and beautiful Aspasia of the Place Royale. Particelli, one of the most prodigal of her adorers, wanted De Caus to surpass, in the palace of Mademoiselle Delorme, the splendors he had achieved in the palace of the Prince of Wales. "At my charge, look you, Monsieur Salomon, and spare nothing! Scatter with both hands gold, silver, colors, marble, bronze and precious stuffs-what you please. Imagine, seek, invent, and count on me!''