For the worst tyrant is not the man who rules by fear; the worst tyrant is he who rules by love and plays on it as on a harp.

Barrett was one of the oppressors who have discovered the last secret of oppression, that which is told in the fine verse of Swinburne:-- "The racks of the earth and the rods Are weak as the foam on the sands; The heart is the prey for the gods, Who crucify hearts, not hands." He, with his terrible appeal to the vibrating consciences of women, was, with regard to one of them, very near to the end of his reign.
When Browning heard that the Italian journey was forbidden, he proposed definitely that they should marry and go on the journey together.
Many other persons had taken cognisance of the fact, and were active in the matter.

Kenyon, the gentlest and most universally complimentary of mortals, had marched into the house and given Arabella Barrett, the sister of the sick woman, his opinion of her father's conduct with a degree of fire and frankness which must have been perfectly amazing in a man of his almost antiquated social delicacy.

Mrs.
Jameson, an old and generous friend of the family, had immediately stepped in and offered to take Elizabeth to Italy herself, thus removing all questions of expense or arrangement.

She would appear to have stood to her guns in the matter with splendid persistence and magnanimity.