LONDON.

_DRAMATIS PERSONAE._ Ah, Love! but a day And the world has changed! The sun's away, And the bird estranged.
-- _James Lee's Wife_.
That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, Or decomposes but to recompose, Become my universe that feels and knows.
-- _Epilogue_.
The catastrophe of June 29, 1861, closed with appalling suddenness the fifteen years' married life of Browning.

"I shall grow still, I hope," he wrote to Miss Haworth, a month later, "but my root is taken, and remains." The words vividly express the valour in the midst of desolation which animated one little tried hitherto by sorrow.

The Italian home was shattered, and no thought of even attempting a patched-up existence in its ruined walls seems to have occurred to him; even the neighbourhood of the spot in which all that was mortal of her had been laid had no power to detain him.

But his departure was no mere flight from scenes intolerably dear.