Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/148

132 with rare learning, there was a girl-like simplicity and sensitiveness and a womanly earnestness, that took the heart captive. She was deeply and most intelligently interested in America and Americans, and felt a kind of enthusiastic gratitude to them for their generous fondness of her poetry."

Another account throwing some light upon that home in the Casa Guidi, as it appeared in those days, is furnished by Mr. George Stillman Hillard. Mr. Hillard, also an American, says:—

"One of my most delightful associations with Florence arises from the fact that here I made the acquaintance of Robert and Elizabeth Browning. . . . A happier home and a more perfect union than theirs it is not easy to imagine; and this completeness arises, not only from the rare qualities which each possesses, but from their adaptation to each other. . . Mrs. Browning is in many respects the correlative of her husband. As he is full of manly power, so is she the type of the most sensitive and delicate womanhood. She has been a great sufferer from ill-health, and the marks of pain are stamped upon her person and manner. Her figure is slight, her countenance expressive of genius and sensibility, shaded by a veil of long brown locks; and her tremulous voice often flutters over her words like the flame of a dying candle over the wick. I have never seen a human frame which seemed so nearly a transparent veil for a celestial and immortal spirit. She is a soul of fire enclosed in a shell of pearl. Her rare and fine genius needs no setting forth at my hands. She is, also, what is not so generally known, a woman of uncommon, nay, profound learning, even measured by a masculine standard. Nor is she more remarkable for