God's fruit of justice ripens slow:
Men's souls are narrow; let them grow.
My brothers, we must wait.'"
And truly, what Napoleon then failed, from opposition, to accomplish by
the sword, has since been, to a great extent, accomplished by diplomacy.
But though Mrs. Browning wrote her "Tale of Villafranca" in full faith,
after many a mile-stone in time lay between her and the _fact_, her
friends remember how the woman bent and was wellnigh crushed, as by a
thunderbolt, when the intelligence of this Imperial Treaty was first
received. Coming so quickly upon the heels of the victories of Solferino
and San Martino, it is no marvel that what stunned Italy should have
almost killed Mrs. Browning. That it hastened her into the grave is
beyond a doubt, as she never fully shook off the severe attack of
illness occasioned by this check upon her life-hopes. The summer of 1859
was a weary, suffering season for her in consequence; and although the
following winter, passed in Rome, helped to repair the evil that had
been wrought, a heavy cold, caught at the end of the season, (and
for the sake of seeing Rome's gift of swords to Napoleon and Victor
Emmanuel,) told upon her lungs. The autumn of 1860 brought with it
another sorrow in the death of a beloved sister, and this loss seemed
more than Mrs.
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