Among God’s days!”
And so it had, for that day was a forerunner of better days to come, though many a reverse was in store for the House of Savoie, and many a check was to be given to the brave Sardinians in the battle-field. Still, that day, commemorated by our English poetess, shadowed forth the time when the King of Sardinia became the King of Italy, and Imperial Rome the capital of his kingdom.
And now that I have had occasion to speak of that poet pair, the Brownings, let me recall the hours of enchantment which I passed beneath their roof. I was the bearer of a letter from a common friend, and well do I remember knocking at the door, which was opened to me by the poet in person. How kindly they received me! how truly they welcomed me, stranger as I was, whose very name was unknown to them. How one-sided seemed the advantages of that acquaintance; for I had known and loved them long, and when I went up to the sofa where the poetess lay, half bird, half spirit, as a loving hand described her, I felt inclined to address her by the name of “Bar,” the pet name of her own sweet poem, which her brother gave her
“When we were children ’twain,
When names acquired baptismally
Were hard to utter as to see
That life had any pain.”
“FLUSH”
And there on her lap was her dog “Flush,” with whom I was so well acquainted in verse. The pale, thin hand of his mistress resting on the glossy head of that “gentle fellow-creature” like a benediction.
All seemed familiar to me from the first moment, and all became truly familiar to me soon, and now remains a sacred memory. I have never in the course of my life seen a more spiritual face, or one in which the soul looked more clearly from the windows; clusters of long curls, in a fashion now obsolete, framed in her small delicate face, and even shrouded its outline, and her form was so fragile as to appear but an ethereal covering.