Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/143

Rh by no means unpleasant to those who, like ourselves, do not look for distractions and amusements in order to be very happy. Afterwards we go anywhere but to England—we shall not leave Italy at present. If I get quite strong I may cross the desert on a camel yet, and see Jerusalem. There's a dream for you—nothing is too high or too low for my dreams just now."

For some time before and for a long time after her marriage, Mrs. Browning did not publish anything of importance. But, need it be said, neither her pen nor brain were idle, nor, indeed, was her zest for literary matters dormant. Poetic aspirations still swayed her thoughts; to an American proposition to issue a selection from her poems she lent a pleased attention, only wishing to have a voice in the selection. To the suggestion of a prose volume she gave a decided negative, for the time at least. She continued to enjoy literary gossip about her favourite authors, and being informed that Tennyson, then in Switzerland, was "disappointed with the mountains," expressed her wonder that anyone could be disappointed with anything in Nature. "She always seems to me," was her remark, "to leap up to the level of the heart."

In her political feelings Mrs. Browning continued to be somewhat ahead of her contemporaries, and did not increase her popularity by the readiness with which she gave expression to ideas generally antagonistic to the views of the majority. As yet she had not obtained a very intimate knowledge of the aspirations for liberty with which the hearts of the Italians around her were burning, but was greatly roused by "the dreadful details from Ireland. Oh! when I write against slavery," she exclaimed to an American friend,