ABSTRACT
The Browning's made that first journey back to London via Paris, taking advantage of the cheap railway rates designed to encourage visitors to the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851. Elizabeth learned painfully that any reconciliation with her father, almost psychotically estranged by her marriage, was impossible. The Great Exhibition was a fit symbol of the new industrial society Britain had become. The 'ancient faith' had been steadily eroded by rationalism since the Renaissance, but by the middle of the nineteenth century the problem of belief in traditional religion had become acute throughout western culture. The two dominant features in G. M. Young's portrait of Victorian England are 'the transition from oligarchic to democratic representation' and 'the dethronement of ancient faith by natural science and historical criticism'. Though greatly overshadowed by two other personal testaments of nineteenth-century doubt and faith published later in the year Browning's poem remains an interesting personal as well as cultural document.
