had witnessed with disapprobation.*

--
* An actual red cotton nightcap had been made to flutter down

on to the Poet's head.
--

==
. . . You are far too hard on the very harmless drolleries of the young men,

licensed as they are moreover by immemorial usage. Indeed there used to be
a regularly appointed jester, `Filius Terrae' he was called,

whose business it was to jibe and jeer at the honoured ones,
by way of reminder that all human glories are merely gilded bubbles

and must not be fancied metal. You saw that the Reverend Dons escaped no more
than the poor Poet -- or rather I should say than myself the poor Poet --

for I was pleased to observe with what attention they listened
to the Newdigate. . . .

Ever affectionately yours,
R. Browning.

==
In 1875 he was unanimously nominated by its Independent Club,

to the office of Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow;
and in 1877 he again received the offer of the Rectorship of St. Andrews,

couched in very urgent and flattering terms. A letter addressed to him from
this University by Dr. William Knight, Professor of Moral Philosophy there,

which I have his permission to publish, bears witness to what had long been
and was always to remain a prominent fact of Mr. Browning's literary career:

his great influence on the minds of the rising generation of his countrymen.
==

The University, St. Andrews N.B.: Nov. 17, 1877.
My dear Sir, -- . . . The students of this University, in which

I have the honour to hold office, have nominated you as their Lord Rector;
and intend unanimously, I am told, to elect you to that office on Thursday.

I believe that hitherto no Rector has been chosen by the undivided suffrage
of any Scottish University. They have heard however that you are unable

to accept the office: and your committee, who were deeply disappointed
to learn this afternoon of the way in which you have been informed

of their intentions, are, I believe, writing to you on the subject.
So keen is their regret that they intend respectfully" target="_blank" title="ad.恭敬地">respectfully to wait upon you

on Tuesday morning by deputation, and ask if you cannot
waive your difficulties in deference to their enthusiasm,

and allow them to proceed with your election.
Their suffrage may, I think, be regarded as one sign

of how the thoughtful youth of Scotland estimate the work you have done
in the world of letters.

And permit me to say that while these Rectorial elections
in the other Universities have frequently turned on local questions,

or been inspired by political partisanship, St. Andrews has honourably sought
to choose men distinguished for literaryeminence, and to make the Rectorship

a tribute at once of intellectual and moral esteem.
May I add that when the `perfervidum ingenium' of our northern race

takes the form not of youthful hero-worship, but of loyal admiration
and respectfulhomage, it is a very genuine affair. In the present instance

I may say it is no mere outburst of young undisciplined enthusiasm,
but an honest expression of intellectual and moral indebtedness,

the genuine and distincttribute of many minds that have been touched
to some higher issues by what you have taught them. They do not presume

to speak of your place in English literature. They merely tell you
by this proffered honour (the highest in their power to bestow),

how they have felt your influence over them.
My own obligations to you, and to the author of Aurora Leigh, are such,

that of them `silence is golden'. Yours ever gratefully.
William Knight.

==
Mr. Browning was deeply touched and gratified by these professions of esteem.

He persisted nevertheless in his refusal. The Glasgow nomination
had also been declined by him.

On August 17, 1877, he wrote to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald from La Saisiaz:
==

`How lovely is this place in its solitude and seclusion,
with its trees and shrubs and flowers, and above all its live mountain stream

which supplies three fountains, and two delightful baths,
a marvel of delicate delight framed in with trees -- I bathe there

twice a day -- and then what wonderful views from the chalet on every side!
Geneva lying under us, with the lake and the whole plain

bounded by the Jura and our own Saleve, which latter seems rather close
behind our house, and yet takes a hard hour and a half to ascend --

all this you can imagine since you know the environs of the town;
the peace and quiet move me the most -- And I fancy I shall drowse out

the two months or more, doing no more of serious work than reading --
and that is virtuous renunciation of the glorious view to my right here --

as I sit aerially like Euripides, and see the clouds come and go
and the view change in correspondence with them. It will help me

to get rid of the pain which attaches itself to the recollections
of Lucerne and Berne "in the old days when the Greeks suffered so much,"

as Homer says. But a very real and sharp pain touched me here
when I heard of the death of poor Virginia March whom I knew particularly,

and parted with hardly a fortnight ago, leaving her affectionate
and happy as ever. The tones of her voice as on one memorable occasion

she ejaculated repeatedly `Good friend!' are fresh still.
Poor Virginia! . . .'

==
Mr. Browning was more than quiescent during this stay

in the Savoyard mountains. He was unusuallydepressed,
and unusually disposed to regard the absence from home as a banishment;

and he tried subsequently" target="_blank" title="a.其次，接着">subsequently to account for this condition
by the shadow which coming trouble sometimes casts before it.

It was more probably due to the want of the sea air which he had enjoyed
for so many years, and to that special oppressive heat of the Swiss valleys

which ascends with them to almost their highest level. When he said
that the Saleve seemed close behind the house, he was saying in other words

that the sun beat back from, and the air was intercepted by it.
We see, nevertheless, in his description of the surrounding scenery,

a promise of the contemplative delight in natural beauty to be henceforth
so conspicuous in his experience, and which seemed a new feature in it.

He had hitherto approached every living thing with curious
and pathetic" target="_blank" title="a.同情的，有同情心的">sympatheticobservation -- this hardly requires saying of one

who had animals for his first and always familiar friends.
Flowers also attracted him by their perfume. But what he loved in nature

was essentially its prefiguring of human existence, or its echo of it;
and it never appeared, in either his works or his conversation,

that he was much impressed by its inanimate forms --
by even those larger phenomena of mountain and cloud-land

on which the latter dwells. Such beauty as most appealed to him
he had left behind with the joys and sorrows of his Italian life,

and it had almost inevitably passed out of his consideration.
During years of his residence in London he never thought of the country

as a source of pleasurable emotions, other than those contingent
on renewed health; and the places to which he resorted

had often not much beyond their health-giving qualities to recommend them;
his appetite for the beautiful had probably dwindled for lack of food.

But when a friend once said to him: `You have not a great love for nature,
have you?' he had replied: `Yes, I have, but I love men and women better;'

and the admission, which conveyed more than it literally expressed,
would have been true I believe at any, up to the present,

period of his history. Even now he did not cease to love men and women best;
but he found increasing enjoyment in the beauties of nature,

above all as they opened upon him on the southern slopes of the Alps;
and the delight of the aesthetic sense merged gradually

in the satisfied craving for pure air and brilliant sunshine
which marked his final struggle for physical life. A ring of enthusiasm

comes into his letters from the mountains, and deepens as the years advance;
doubtless enhanced by the great -- perhaps too great -- exhilaration

which the Alpine atmosphere produced, but also in large measure
independent of it. Each new place into which the summer carries him

he declares more beautiful than the last. It possibly was so.
A touch of autumnal freshness had barely crept into the atmosphere

of the Saleve, when a moral thunderbolt fell on the little group of persons
domiciled at its base: Miss Egerton-Smith died, in what had seemed for her

unusually good health, in the act of preparing for a mountain excursion
with her friends -- the words still almost on her lips

in which she had given some directions for their comfort.
Mr. Browning's impressionable nervoussystem was for a moment paralyzed

by the shock. It revived in all the emotional and intellectual impulses
which gave birth to `La Saisiaz'.

This poem contains, besides its personal reference and association,
elements of distinctive biographical interest. It is the author's

first -- as also last -- attempt to reconstruct his hope of immortality