"Casa Guidi Windows" is, in one aspect, a poem very typical of its
author. Mrs. Browning may fairly be called the peculiar poet of
Liberalism, of that great movement of the first half of the nineteenth
century towards the emancipation of men from ancient institutions which
had gradually changed their nature, from the houses of refuge which had
turned into dungeons, and the mystic jewels which remained only as
fetters. It was not what we ordinarily understand by revolt. It had no
hatred in its heart for ancient and essentially human institutions. It
had that deeply conservative belief in the most ancient of institutions,
the average man, which goes by the name of democracy. It had none of
the spirit of modern Imperialism which is kicking a man because he is
down. But, on the other hand, it had none of the spirit of modern
Anarchism and scepticism which is kicking a man merely because he is up.
It was based fundamentally on a belief in the destiny of humanity,
whether that belief took an irreligious form, as in Swinburne, or a
religious form, as in Mrs. Browning. It had that rooted and natural
conviction that the Millennium was coming to-morrow which has been the
conviction of all iconoclasts and reformers, and for which some
rationalists have been absurd enough to blame the early Christians. But
they had none of that disposition to pin their whole faith to some
black-and-white scientific system which afterwards became the curse of
philosophical Radicalism.
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