Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/136

120 had been soothed by kindness and all that wealth could provide. Had she been enabled, like the majority of the world's women, to enter into the labours and struggles of the life around her, she would have plaeed her sorrow on one side; but, separated as she was both from the activity and ordinary anxieties of life, she nursed her griefs as if they had been petted babes, and fed her favourite sorrows with unceasing tears. She sang—

But all these long-hoarded and much-cherished griefs—truly become, through lapse of time, but ideals—now became as visionary and transient as dreams. A sudden change had taken place: "The face of all the world is changed, I think," she wrote. The ideas of Death—which she had long regarded as near—were transformed, and a restless energy took the place of her ancient langour. Most truly does she image forth, in the first of her love Sonnets, the change which had taken place in her whole being:—

Henry Chorley, a literary friend, who made the acquaintance of Miss Barrett through the medium of