rt in London
at Lady Morgan's, has hunted us out, and paid us a visit. A very
vivacious little person, with sparkling talk enough . . .'

In this year, 1847, the question arose of a British mission to the
Vatican; and Mr. Browning wrote to Mr. Monckton Milnes begging him to
signify to the Foreign Office his more than willingness to take part
in it. He would be glad and proud, he said, to be secretary to such an
embassy, and to work like a horse in his vocation. The letter is given
in the lately published biography of Lord Houghton, and I am obliged to
confess that it has been my first intimation of the fact recorded there.
When once his 'Paracelsus' had appeared, and Mr. Browning had taken rank
as a poet, he renounced all idea of more active work; and the tone and
habits of his early married life would have seemed scarcely consistent
with a renewed impulse towards it. But the fact was in some sense due
to the very circumstances of that life: among them, his wife's probable
incitement to, and certain sympathy with, the proceeding.

The projected winter in Rome had been given up, I believe against the
doctor's advice, on the strength of the greater attractions of Florence.
Our next extract is dated from thence, Dec. 8, 1847.

'. . . Think what we have done since I last wrote to you. Taken two
houses, that is, two apartments, each for six months, presigning the
contract. You will set it down to excellent poet's work in the way
of domestic economy, but the fault was altogether mine, as usual. My
husband, to please me, took rooms which I could not be pleased with
three days through the absence of sunshine and warmth. The consequence
was that we had to pay heaps of guineas away, for leave to go away
ourselves--any alternative being preferable to a return of illness--and
I am sure I should have been ill if we had persisted in staying there.
You can scarcely fancy the wonderful difference which the sun makes
in Italy. So away we came into the blaze of him in the Piazza Pitti;
precisely opposite the Grand Duke's palace; I with my remorse, and poor
Robert without a single reproach. Any other man, a little lower than the
angels, would have stamped and sworn a little for the mere relief of the
thing--but as to _his_ being angry with _me_ for any cause except not
eating enough dinner, the said sun would turn the wrong way first. So
here we are in the Pitti till April, in small rooms yellow with sunshine
from morning till eveni