Page:Poems Blagden.djvu/22

 ceptional few with whom Love is a consuming passion, and Genius an unquenchable torch. The subject of this memoir had a joy-loving frame, a throbbing soul, and a soaring mind. She combined in herself the qualities both of Martha and of Mary, and she superadded to these the prodigal tenderness of Magdalen without her errors. This is the supremest praise that can be given to a woman; but those who knew Isa Blagden know that I do not exaggerate.

She first settled in Florence in 1849, and that fairest and fullest spot of Earth was her adopted home till the day of her death. Nay, she resides there still, under the spiral cypress-shadow which stretches athwart the tombs of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Theodosia Trollope. Thus she was present at the entombment of Italy's hopes of liberty and unity at the close of one decade, and at their glorious and final resurrection towards the close of the next. She even lived to see Rome delivered, and raised to its proper dignity as the capital of the new Kingdom. As her poems testify, she took the warmest interest in the fortunes of the beautiful and now prosperous land. But there was one drop of bitterness reserved for her share in the political exultation so many of us have felt. Like Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whose sentiments are recorded in the 'Poems Before Congress,' she entertained an enthusiastic admiration for Napoléon III, which many friends of Italy shared but in marked moderation, and some did not share at all. In the days of that monarch's pros-