s through Miss Blagden, August 18:

'. . . This is a wild little place in Brittany, something like that
village where we stayed last year. Close to the sea--a hamlet of a dozen
houses, perfectly lonely--one may walk on the edge of the low rocks by
the sea for miles. Our house is the Mayor's, large enough, clean and
bare. If I could, I would stay just as I am for many a day. I feel out
of the very earth sometimes as I sit here at the window; with the little
church, a field, a few houses, and the sea. On a weekday there is nobody
in the village, plenty of hay-stacks, cows and fowls; all our butter,
eggs, milk, are produced in the farm-house. Such a soft sea, and such a
mournful wind!

'I wrote a poem yesterday of 120 lines, and mean to keep writing whether
I like it or not. . . .'

That 'window' was the 'Doorway' in 'James Lee's Wife'. The sea, the
field, and the fig-tree were visible from it.

A long interval in the correspondence, at all events so far as we are
concerned, carries us to the December of 1864, and then Mr. Browning
wrote:

'. . . on the other hand, I feel such comfort and delight in doing the
best I can with my own object of life, poetry--which, I think, I never
could have seen the good of before, that it shows me I have taken the
root I _did_ take, _well_. I hope to do much more yet--and that the
flower of it will be put into Her hand somehow. I really have great
opportunities and advantages--on the whole, almost unprecedented ones--I
think, no other disturbances and cares than those I am most grateful for
being allowed to have. . . .'

One of our very few written reminiscences of Mr. Browning's social life
refers to this year, 1864, and to the evening, February 12, on which
he signed his will in the presence of Mr. Francis Palgrave and Alfred
Tennyson. It is inscribed in the diary of Mr. Thomas Richmond, then
chaplain to St. George's Hospital; and Mr. Reginald Palgrave has kindly
procured me a copy of it. A brilliant party had met at dinner at the
house of Mr. F. Palgrave, York Gate, Regent's Park; Mr. Richmond, having
fulfilled a prior engagement, had joined it later. 'There were, in
order,' he says, 'round the dinner-table (dinner being over), Gifford
Palgrave, Tennyson, Dr. John Ogle, Sir Francis H. Doyle, Frank Palgrave,
W. E. Gladstone, Browning, Sir John Simeon, Monsignor Patterson,
Woolner, and Reginald Palgrave.'

Mr. Richmond closes his entry by saying he will never forget that