and essayist of some note. Through him some of her poems found their way to the magazines, and he long remained one of her trusted friends and received her help in some of his literary enterprises. During her years of darkness he was appointed assistant commissioner in a government inquiry into the employment of children in mines and manufactories. His friend, though then lying apparently at the door of death, read the official reports and roused herself to utter her protest against the sacrifice of youthful lives to Mammon. It has not yet ceased to echo in the hearts of English-speaking people.
In 1856 appeared Mrs. Browning's longest poem, "Aurora Leigh," which embodies much of her experience. It is divided into nine books, and is in fact a novel in verse. It gives the story of an English girl educated with all the advantages of the nineteenth century and thoroughly imbued with its restless progressive spirit. The author declared it the most mature of her works, the one into which her highest convictions upon Life and Art had entered. She dedicated it to her cousin, burly John Kenyon, who had in all her career most generously aided and encouraged her.
In 1859 a new movement for the redemption of Italy from the Austrian yoke gave gladness to her soul. Regarding Louis Napoleon as the Liberator of Italy she gave him glorious praise in more than one poem. But the Peace of Villafranca, July 11th, 1859, by which so quickly after the victories of Solferino and Magenta he brought to a close the war with Austria, was a serious blow to her hopes and her health. She suffered much, and though she afterwards seemed to her friends to rally, she never regained her hold on life. Still her profound interest in the welfare of the land of her residence caused her to appeal to the world on its behalf, to call for the completion of the great work which had been begun, the regeneration of Italy. She lived to see the first Italian Parliament, but not to see
