Let us admit then, that it is true that these legends of the Browning family have every abstract possibility.

But it is a far more cogent and apposite truth that if a man had knocked at the door of every house in the street where Browning was born, he would have found similar legends in all of them.

There is hardly a family in Camberwell that has not a story or two about foreign marriages a few generations back; and in all this the Brownings are simply a typical Camberwell family.

The real truth about Browning and men like him can scarcely be better expressed than in the words of that very wise and witty story, Kingsley's _Water Babies_, in which the pedigree of the Professor is treated in a manner which is an excellent example of the wild common sense of the book.

"His mother was a Dutch woman, and therefore she was born at Curacoa (of course, you have read your geography and therefore know why), and his father was a Pole, and therefore he was brought up at Petropaulowski (of course, you have learnt your modern politics, and therefore know why), but for all that he was as thorough an Englishman as ever coveted his neighbour's goods." It may be well therefore to abandon the task of obtaining a clear account of Brownings family, and endeavour to obtain, what is much more important, a clear account of his home.