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CHAPTER IX.
BEFORE CONGRESS.
For some months the records of Mrs. Browning's story are nought but blank pages. Burning, heart-burning questions, however, were coming to the fore, thrilling her delicate frame and agitating her weary heart with volcanic themes. Instead of the quietude and repose her invalided constitution needed, she gave herself up with her usual ardency to the aspirations of her Italian friends and neighbours. "To her," says Mr. Story, "Italy was from the first a living fire." Her joy and enthusiasm at the Italian uprising in 1848 was fervently sung in the early portion of Casa Guidi Windows; the second part expresses her sorrow and dejection at the abortive results of that revolution. Still she hoped on, watching events from her Florentine home, with a firm trust that the days of fulfilment would arrive. She was angered with her native land, or rather with its leaders, that they turned their back upon the trials and struggles of her adopted country, and scorned them for what she deemed their insular view of the world.
Her hopes, however, were largely if not entirely
