hunters, notwithstanding their patriotic motives, for pursuing to the death the noble stag; and yet we feel he ought to die. We wish that he had been killed, not by the hands of men, with their spotted and doubtful feelings, but smitten direct by pure fire from heaven. Still we feel he ought to die, and our grief wants the true tragic element which hallows it in the Antigone, the Lear, and even Schiller's "Mary Stuart," or "Wallenstein."

But of the two, Sterling's conception of the character and conduct of the drama is fur superior to that of Browning. Both dramas are less interesting and effective than the simple outline history gives, but Browning weakens the truth in his representation of it, while Sterling at least did not falsify the character of Strafford, bitter, ruthlessly ambitious, but strong and majestic throughout. Browning loses, too, his accustomed originality and grace in the details of this work, through a misplaced ambition.

But believing that our poet has not reached that epoch of mastery, when he can do himself full justice in a great work, we would turn rather to the consideration of a series of sketches, dramatic and lyric, which he has been publishing for several years, under the title of "Bells and Pomegranates." We do not know whether this seemingly affected title is assumed in conformity with the catch-penny temper of the present day, or whether these be really in the mind of Robert Browning no more than the glittering fringe of his priestly garment. If so, we shall cherish high hopes, indeed, as to the splendors that will wait upon the unfolding of the main vesture.

The plan of these sketches is original, the execution in many respects, admirable, and the range of talent and perception they display, wider than that of any contemporary poet in England.

"Pippa Passes" is the title of the first of these little two shilling volumes, which seem to contain just about as much as a man who lives wisely, might, after a good summer of mingled

work, business and pleasure, have to offer to the world, as the honey he could spare from his hive.

Pippa is a little Italian girl who works in a silk mill. Once a year the work people in these mills have an entire day given them for their pleasure. She is introduced at sunrise of such a day, singing her morning thoughts. She then goes forth to wander through the town, singing her little songs of childish gayety and purity. She passes, not through, but by, different scenes of life, passes by a scene of guilty pleasure, by the conspiracies of the malicious, by the cruel undeception of the young sculptor who had dared trust his own heart more fully than is the wont of the corrupt and cautious world. Every where the notes of her song pierce their walls and windows, awakening them to memories of innocence and checking the course of misdeed. The plan of this work is, it will be seen, at once rich and simple. It admits of an enchanting variety, and an unobtrusive unity. Browning has made the best use of its advantages. The slides in the magic lantern succeed one another with perfect distinctness, but, through them all shines the light of this one beautiful Italian day, and the little silk winder, its angel, discloses to us as fine gleams of garden, stream and sky, as we have time to notice while passing such various and interesting groups of human beings.

The finest sketch of these is that of Jules, the sculptor, and his young bride. Jules, like many persons of a lofty mould, in the uncompromising fervour of youth, makes all those among his companions whom he thinks weak, base and vicious, his enviers and bitter enemies. A set of such among his fellow-students have devised this most wicked plan to break his heart and pride at once. They write letters as from a maiden who has distinguished him from the multitude, and knows how to sympathize with all his tastes and aims. They buy of her mother a beautiful young girl, who is to represent the character. The letters assuine that she is of a family of rank who will not favour the

Your letters to me-was't not well contrived?

A hiding place in Psyche's robe-there lie

Next to her skin your letters; which comes foremost 1 Good-this that swam down like a first moonbcam Into my world.

Those? Books I told you of.

Let your first word to me rejoice them, too,—

This minion of Coluthus, writ in red

Bistre and azure by Bessarion's scribe

Read this line-no, shame-Homer's be the Greek!

My Odyssey in coarse black vivid type

With faded yellow blossoms 'twixt page and page;

"He said, and on Antin us directed

A bitter shaft"—then blots a flower the rest! .

-Ah, do not mind that-better that will look
When cast in bronze-an Almaign Kaiser that,

Swart-green and gold with truncheon based on hip
This rather, turn to—but a check already—

Or you had recognized that here you sit
As I imagined you, Hippolyta

Naked upon her bright Numidian horse!
-Forgot you this then? "carve in bold relief,”—
So you command me-"carve against I como
A Greek, bay filleted and thunder free,

Rising beneath the lifted myrtle-branch,

Whose turn arrives to praise Harmodius."-Praise him

Quite round, a cluster of mere hands and arms
Thrust in all senses, all ways, from all sides,

Only consenting at the branches' end

They strain towards, serves for frame to a sole face(Place your own face)—the Praiser's, who with eyes Sightless, so bend they back to light inside His brain where visionary forms throng up, (Gazc-I am your Harmodius dead and gone,) Sings, minding not the palpitating arch

Of hands and arms, nor the quick drip of wine
From the drenched leaves o'erhead, nor who cast off

Their violet crowns for him to trample on-
Sings, pausing as the patron-ghosts approve,
Devoutly their unconquerable hymn-

But you must say a "well" to that—say "well"
Because you gaze--am I fantastic, sweet?
Gaze like my very life's stuff, marble-marbly
Even to the silence-and before I found
The real flesh Phene, 1 inured myself
To see throughout all nature varied stuff
For better nature's birth by means of art:

With me, each substance tended to one form
Of beauty-to the human Archetype-
And every side occurred suggestive germs
Of that the tree, the flower-why, take the fruit,
Some rosy shape, continuing the peach,

Curved bcewise o'er its bough, as rosy limbs

Depending nestled in the leaves-and just
From a cleft rose-peach the whole Dryad sprung!
But of the stuffs one can be master of,
How I divined their capabilities

From the soft-rinded smoothening facile chalk
That yields your outline to the air's embrace,
Down to the crisp imperious steel, so suro
To cut its one confided thought clean out

Of all the world: but marble!-'neath my tools
More pliable than jelly—as it were

Some clear primordial creature dug from deep
In the Earth's heart where itself breeds itself

And whence all baser substance may be worked;
Refine it off to air you may-condense it
Down to the diamond;—is not metal there
When o'er the sudden specks my chisel trips?
—Not flesh-as flake off flake I scale, approach,

Lay bare these bluish veins of blood asleep?

Lurks flame in no strange windings where surprised
By the swift implements sent home at once,
Flushes and glowings radiate and hover
About its track 3-

The girl, thus addressed, feels the wings budding within her, that shall upbear her from the birth-place of pollution in whose mud her young feet have been imprisoned. Still, her first words reveal to the proud, passionate, confiding genius the horrible deception that has been practised on him. After his first anguish, one of Pippa's songs steals in to awaken consoling thoughts. He feels that only because his heart was capable of noble trust could it be so deceived; feels too that the beauty which had enchanted him could not be a mere mask, but yet might be vivified by a soul worthy of it, and finds the way to soar above his own pride and the opinions of an often purblind world.

Another song, with which Pippa passes, contains, in its first stanza, this grand picture:

A king lived long ago,

In the morning of the world,

When Earth was nigher Heaven than now:

And the King's locks curled

Disparting o'er a forehead full

As the milk-white apace 'twixt horn and horn

Of some sacrificial bull.

Only calm as a babc new-born;

For he has got to a sleepy mood,
So safe from all decrepitude.

Age with its bane so sure gone by,
(The gods so loved him while he dreamed)
That, having lived thus long there scemod

No need the King should ever die.

Luigi-No need that sort of King should ever dia.

Among the rocks his city was;

Before his palace, in the sun,

He sat to see his people pass,

And judge them every one,

From its threshold of smooth stone.

This picture is as good as the Greeks.

Next came a set of Dramatic Lyrics, all more or less good, from which we select

ITALY.

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive; I call
That piece a wonder, now; Frà Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
"Frà Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of that earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so not the first