slight body from the maiden face to the melodious feet; no tyrannous or
treacherous goddess of deadly beauty, but a simple virgin, with the cold
charm of girlhood and the mobile charm of childhood; as indifferent and
innocent when she stands before Herodias and when she receives the
severed head of John with her slender and steady hands; a pure bright
animal, knowing nothing of man, and of life nothing but instinct and
motion. In her mother's mature and conscious beauty there is visible the
voluptuous will of a harlot and a queen; but, for herself, she has
neither malice nor pity; her beauty is a maiden force of nature, capable
of bloodshed without bloodguiltiness; the King hangs upon the music of
her movement, the rhythm of leaping life in her fair fleet limbs, as one
who listens to a tune, subdued by the rapture of sound, absorbed in
purity of passion. I know not where the subject has been touched with
such fine and keen imagination as here. The time came when another than
Salome was to dance before the eyes of the painter; and she required of
him the head of no man, but his own soul; and he paid the forfeit into
her hands. With the coming of that time upon him came the change upon
his heart and hand; "the work of an imperious whorish woman." Those
words, set by the prophet as a brand upon the fallen forehead of the
chosen bride, come back to mind as one studies in her husband's pictures
the full calm lineaments, the large and serene beauty of Lucrezia del
Fede; a predominant and placid beauty, placid and implacable, not to be
pleaded with or fought against. Voluptuous always and slothful, subtle
at times no doubt and sweet beyond measure, full of heavy beauty and
warm, slow grace, her features bear no sign of possible love or
conscience. Seen side by side with his clear sad face, hers tells more
of the story than any written record, even though two poets of our age
have taken it up. In the feverish and feeble melodrama of Alfred de
Musset there is no touch of tragedy, hardly a shadow of passionate and
piteous truth; in Mr. Browning's noblest poem--his noblest it seems to