luxuriously, do not much dread it; however, occasionally a fatal instance occurs where fearful spasmodic pain, and a short duration of frightful agony, are terminated by the death of the hapless sufferer. The most striking and astonishing fact with regard to this disease is the manner in which the infection is conveyed. That is a mystery and an enigma which no one as yet has given the slightest clue to discover.

their

Thus on the landing of these two young officers, whether it was that they passed through the native town, and that stopping at one of the houses, Mardell lit his cigar and caught some infection from the inmates of the house, or that the air of this place, pregnant with distemper, had had a pestiferous effect upon him on leaving the clearer atmosphere of the river, but it is certain that, shortly after his arrival at his own bungalow, he was seized with the symptoms of this violent sickness. The doctor of the regiment of course was sent for, and it was from him, indeed, that I afterwards learned the whole of the facts which I have here set down, and this true tale, more strange than the fanciful dream of fiction, made a lasting impression on my mind, which many subsequent events and fitful varieties of situation have never served to chase from my memory. The images of those who enacted their part in it frequently rise to my fancy, and I recollect mournfully how gay, how bright, how full of promise was appearance in the heyday of their life, and how fearfully sudden was their fall. The doctor could give very little hope when he saw the frightful manner in which the cholera had seized young Mardell, but his friend watched by his bedside, and tried every means in his power to soothe the violent pain which the spasms gave him. Hot water and brandy, laudanum, all the recipes which are invariably used in such cases by those who have been conversant with cholera, were tried by degrees with him. The pain increased very much on the third day after he had been first attacked, and the next day after that, the 31st of December, in the morning, the doctor pronounced that he could not possibly hope for his recovery. Many years have elapsed since then, but I was certain of the dates, as upon them rested the wonderful character of the facts. During this last day the frightful spasms were so violent that his friend was fearful, every new return of them, that he would be taken off by the excruciating agony. About two o'clock in the morning of the 1st of January a complete prostration of his strength succeeded to the series of vomiting spasms and acute pangs which he had been suffering for the last four days; and his friend flattered himself with the belief that he might have sunk into sleep, and would wake up refreshed and renovated in strength. But he waited for two hours, and saw that no sleep came to tranquillise him, but an icy stillness stole gradually over his features and his frame. He felt his pulse dying slowly away, and about an hour before the first grey dawn of the morning, when the gun of the station had just been fired, and the native servants and labourers had risen and folded the clothes which had been their couch, and gone about their labours, and the horsekeepers had gone to get ready the horses for their masters' riding, and the brightness of the morning star was just waning, an "hour before the sun rose of the coming year," young Mardell breathed his last.

BROWNING'S DRAMATIS PERSONA.*

It used to be the fashion to say that Robert Browning could not be understood at all. Those of his admirers who are blind to his peculiarities now say that he can be understood with ease. Between the two ex

tremes lies the truth. To say that his thoughts are quickly fathomed is indeed no compliment to him; and saying it will send no earnest reader to his pages. He requires careful study: the trouble without which no good thing is to be got at. To that he does not is to compare his work with the work of his weaker contemporaries

say

Things done, that took the eye and had the price,
O'er which, from level stand,

The low world laid its hand,

Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice.

The student and beholder must spend much time in rightly valuing that which the artist has fashioned. A single hearing of "Mirella" will give no true idea of Gounod's genius: Holman Hunt is not to be known by a rapid survey of "The After-Glow in Egypt." Nor is Mr. Browning to be judged by a careless reading of two or three of his poems. To read them once is as if we were to go by night to see a cathedral. There would come to us immediately some sense of its grandeur and of its mystery. We should see the outline of its towers and spire. But the tracery of its front, the colouring of its windows, the play of shadow and sunshine among its sculptured stones, we should wholly lose. To see these to perfection we must walk round the church many times, and watch it by different lights. To learn the strength and beauty of Mr. Browning's poems they must be read many times, and in many moods. More than this: it requires differing intellects justly to discern his abounding beauties. The minds of men, in ever-varying forms, are mirrored in his works. The reflection that pleases one may not please the other. Or, if it please because of its beauty, bounded vision will prevent the recognition of its truth. There is a delicate tinge of melancholy in the lines of "Evelyn Hope," that may seem too fanciful to those who can duly estimate the pathos and passion of "In a Year;" lovers of the gentle Pippa may not admire the erring and impulsive Mildred; those who feel such lusty life as beats through the frame of Fra Lippo Lippi may know little of the resignation of Andrea del Sarto; while followers in the steps of Blougram, the modern materialist Bishop, will hardly understand the hopes and fears that filled the heart of the Greek poet, Cleon.

We do not purpose to consider, in this paper, each poem in "Dramatis Personæ." We shall seek rather to notice some of the characteristics of the book. Throughout the book there runs, we think, one air; and upon

* Dramatis Personæ. By Robert Browning. Second Edition. Chapman and Hall.

it there are many variations. It is not present to the exclusion of other airs; but it is oftenest and plainest heard.

When pain ends, gain ends too,

that might be the motto. Mr. Browning contends that by enduring sorrow sometimes by suffering wrong-a man may learn more than he can ever learn by pleasure and prosperity. "Is there nought better than to enjoy ?" he is for ever asking. And the answer he gives in varying forms, whose essence is always the same.

Calm years, exacting their accompt

Of pain, mature the mind.

He says this in "James Lee." And the old Jew, Rabbi Ben Ezra, who finds his strength in quietness and confidence, thus exhorts to courage and endurance:

Be our joys three-parts pain!
Strive, and hold cheap the strain;

Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe.

And Abt Vogler,* with his much-loved music always in his thoughts, giving strange turns to his phrases, asks:

Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?

The abbot believes that our failure here is but "a triumph's evidence for the fulness of the days;" and in God's will that we shall strain and strive through all the years of our life he is content to acquiesce. In his words there is the expression of simple contentment, as in the words of Rabbi Ben Ezra there is the expression of quiet joy. The old Jew is persuaded that, good as the days have proved to him already, "the best is yet to be." He deems that wisdom comes with age, that of God's plan for working the world "youth shows but half," and that we must patiently endure His act, "see all, nor be afraid." A sermon-and a better one than we are often fortunate enough to listen to-may be read in the noble lines of "Rabbi Ben Ezra.” An optimist, the old strong-hearted Jew has been called; and happy he must have been. We should do well to copy his unfaltering courage, to learn a lesson from his unquestioning faith and his undisturbed repose. But the lesson is hard to learn in our time, when so many can but "faintly trust the larger hope," and mount with such uncertain steps

the great world's altar stairs,

That slope through darkness up to God.

Though told in a lighter strain than are the thoughts of Rabbi Ben Ezra, the tale of "Gold Hair"- a legend of Pornic, by the Loire-has a darker moral. "Gold Hair" is the story of a girl who was supposed by her friends to be too good for this life, and whose only fault, as they believed, was that "she knew her gold hair's worth." Dying, she begged

* Abt Vogler's tune, extemporised on the instrument of his invention, may be found in some ecclesiastical music-books. Mr. Browning exactly describes it.

that in her coffin her hair might be left untouched; and her wish was granted. Years afterwards, when the pavement of Pornic Church was to be repaired, a mass of louis d'or-the price of her secret fall—were found wrapped in the folds of her mouldering hair. The priest, to whom the strange news was brought, dismissed it from his mind with the comment,

Saints tumble to earth with so slight a tilt!

But Mr. Browning has other words for us, suggested by this discovery of sin in one who had been held to be so pure. He has hitherto hurried on with his story, and hurriedly we may have read it; but now he pulls us up with an old and forgotten truth, very forcibly expressed:

Why deliver this horrible verse,

As the text of a sermon which now I preach?
Evil or Good may be better or worse

In the human heart; but the mixture of each
Is a marvel and a curse.

These weighty lines deserve to be noted, for they are characteristic of Mr.
Browning. As the lime-light, used in a theatre, can cast a dazzling
glow over the well-worn scenery of the stage, so can Mr. Browning flash
new life and meaning into a truth which previously his readers had
ignored. We know that in the human heart there is good as well as
evil; but in individual cases we are apt to forget it. We are apt to for-
get that no man is entirely wicked; that no man is altogether holy;
that in every soul—and ever striving each against the other with more or
less earnestness—are the evil and the good, whose mixture is at once the
greatest marvel of our life and its bitterest curse.

There is a poem called "Dîs Aliter Visum; or, Le Byron de nos Jours," which tells the story of two wasted lives. A married woman, who is still young, meets an eminent writer at a ball, and blames him because he did not ask her to marry him ten years before, when he was a man of middle age who "knew too much," and she was an innocent girl who loved "with faculties to seek."

There was a morning when they walked together up the cliff-road of a French watering-place, and he considered her "a pretty thoughtful thing," whose love he would like to gain if that were possible. All accomplished as he was, he deemed that love was better than art, poetry, and music. The girl by his side in that cliff-walk was better than the saints of Ingres, the songs of Heine, or the music of Schumann. She might be his wife. He did not fear a refusal, for in offering himself he would offer a great name. The lady in the ball-room says to the writer -and says it truly—that these were his thoughts when they walked side by side ten years ago :

He feared that she would tire of him; that she would ask if all his equals

had the stains of fifty years; that she would prefer the young man's "Love me, or I die," to the old man's request for the loan of youth, and sight, and touch. It might be a charitable deed, on her part, to oil his grating wheels of life; but it would be pleasanter for her if the wheels needed no oil, going on swiftly and smoothly by themselves. And if, indeed, it might happen that the young girl should repent of her choice, it would be better for him not to put the choice in her way. And, thinking thus, he asked her nothing, took his last look at the old church on the cliff and at the sea and sky, then brought her down into the town, where they parted. Years afterwards, she married for money, and with a certain "Stephanie" he dragged a weary life. Now, as the girl of ten years ago talks to him at the ball, her husband solaces himself over the card-table, and "Stephanie's vogue has had its day." Bitterly the poet is reproached for his folly. Why had he not tried to win the younghearted girl? In all she saw or heard around her-in the sea, in the grey old church, in the crosses and tombstones, in the swallows' callGod seemed to show her that there was a worthier thing to live for than the moment's pleasure; that there was a way-the way of love-by which earth could teach the uses of heaven. But their chance is lost. The Present is dark enough, and they dare not look into the Future.

The poems we have hitherto considered deal with the lives of common men and women. We shall soon have to speak of three works differing entirely from these; but before we do so, something must be said of "James Lee," the story of a love that grew greater on the one side, while it dwindled to nothing on the other. "James Lee" is divided into nine parts, the first of which shows us how, as husband and wife sit at the window, a dim fear rises in the woman's mind:

Look in my eyes!

Wilt thou change, too?
Should I fear surprise?
Shall I find aught new
In the old and dear,

In the good and true,
With the changing year ?*

They sit again together.

This time it is by the fireside. The wife is brooding over her chance of losing her husband's love. She looks at the

burning logs, the shipwreck wood of oak and pine, and thinks of the sailors who trusted themselves on a sea that might be stormy, or still. They took their chance; she must do the same.

In the doorway of their house-on the south coast of France-she

* The words have been set to music, very successfully, by Virginia Gabriel. Feb.-VOL. CXXXIII. NO. DXXX.