"The child turned round And looked up piteous in the mother's face (Be sure that mother's death-bed will not want Another devil to damn, than such a look). 'Oh, mother!' then with desperate glance to heaven, 'God free me from my mother,' she shrieked out, 'These mothers are too dreadful.' And with force As passionate as fear, she tore her hands, Like lilies from the rocks, from hers and his, And sprang down, bounded headlong down the steep, Away from both, away if possible, As far as God--away. They yelled at her As famished hounds at a hare, She heard them yell, And felt her name hiss after her from the hills Like shot from guns." The whole of that wonderful poem of "Aurora Leigh" is full of such impassioned sympathy with womanhood, and shows the great heart of the poet as perhaps none of her other poems do. Written in the maturity of her powers, and after she had learned much of life in all its intricate depths, it contains perhaps more passion and power and fiery-burning eloquence than any other poem in the English language. Only an inspired womanly hand, which had sounded all the deeps of the world's scanty wisdom, could have penned it. But Mrs. Browning shows great wealth of human sympathy in all her poems. Oppression and wrong sink into the very depths of her nature, and she cannot bear that they shall go unreproved in the universe while she exists. Her sympathy with our labors for the emancipation of the slaves was well known, in a time when little sympathy was to be found among the English, and her feeling for the poor and oppressed of her native land was always deep and strong. Her "Cry of the Children" will never be forgotten while there are suffering children in the world, and while there are human hearts to listen to their wail. It is as sacred a piece of inspiration as the Psalms of David; and the need for such an expression of the woe of the outcast poor of England is almost as great to-day as when the immortal poem was written. Still can we ask of the English people:-- "Do you hear the children weeping, O my brothers, Ere the sorrow comes with years? They are leaning their heads against their mothers, And that cannot stop tears. The young lambs are bleating in the meadows; The young birds are chirping in their nest; The young fawns are playing with the shadows; The young flowers are blowing toward the west. But the young, young children, O my brothers, They are weeping bitterly; They are weeping in the playtime of the others, In the country of the free."