her love for him, the remark would naturally be made by the proverbial Senior Wrangler that each of two objects cannot be lower than the other. Miss Barrett, in fact, takes the only possible solution when she declares that love should have no reason or be its own reason. The motive, she reports herself to have said, should be in the feeling itself, and not in the object of it; and the affection which could throw itself out 'on an idiot with a goitre would be more admirable than Abelard's!' Some awkward deductions might follow from that principle too, but we can, as enlightened lookers-on, supply some very obvious reasons, not being bound to take either side in the play of ostensible argument, which is, in fact, merely one way of expressing entire mutual devotion and what Browning once calls agreement to the point of 'tremblingly exquisite exactness.'
It would appear that on the whole, though Browning never admits it, Miss Barrett succeeds best in getting into the attitude of a worshipper. The situation naturally implies it. Brought up, as she says, in a kind of conventual seclusion, looking at the world mainly through books, and with her sensibilities stimulated by her invalid life, she was even abnormally feminine, and it is easy
