"At an early stage of his illness," wrote Mr. R. Barrett Browning, when the doctor first saw him he was up and dressed, standing near the fire in his sitting-room.

"He assured the doctor that his liver was out of order, but Dr. Cini pronounced it to be bronchitis and told me later his heart's action was irregular. . . . We then persuaded him to change his room for one upstairs, in order to have him near us. I was with him when he walked quickly up three flights of stairs . . . he was strong physically to the last. About two hours before the end he was unconscious and death came with a violent heaving of his big chest as he lay otherwise motionless.

He

"There was no pain. I believe the cause of the heart trouble to have been hardening of the arteries. repeatedly assured us he was not suffering."

66

Mr. Sharp writes of the

Superb pomp of the Venetian funeral, the solemn grandeur of the interment in Westminster Abbey. Venice has never in modern times afforded a more impressive sight than those craped processional gondolas following the high flower-strewn barge through the thronged water-ways and out across the lagoon to the desolate Isle of the Dead: London has rarely seen aught more solemn than the fog-dusked Cathedral spaces echoing at first with the slow tramp of the pallbearers."

Amid national mourning, to the solemn chanting of his wife's poem, "He Giveth His Beloved Sleep," he was laid to his rest.

A stone in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey marks the spot where the body of Robert Browning lies; on it is a simple inscription recording his name, and the date of his birth and death.

Below this is an inscription to the memory of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, recording her dates of birth and death, with the addition that her body lies in the English cemetery at Florence.

Time has crumbled the mould of "A Grammarian's Funeral." The statue of the poet is revealed.

Again the words of the disciple chanting the praise of

the master are heard; are heard through the soft footfall of the poet's pall-bearers that dark day in Westminster Abbey:

"This is our master, famous, calm, and dead,
Borne on our shoulders.

"Here's the top-peak: the multitude below
Live, for they can there;

This man decided not to Live but Know,-
Bury this man there?

"Lofty designs must close in like effects:
Loftily lying,

Leave him-still loftier than the world suspects,
Living and dying."