asserted itself as a bond of sympathy
between them. They did not, however, see much of each other till he had
finally left Italy, and she also had made her home in London. She there
led a secluded life, although free from family ties, and enjoying a
large income derived from the ownership of an important provincial
paper. Mr. Browning was one of the very few persons whose society she
cared to cultivate; and for many years the common musical interest took
the practical, and for both of them convenient form, of their going to
concerts together. After her death, in the autumn of 1877, he almost
mechanically renounced all the musical entertainments to which she had
so regularly accompanied him. The special motive and special facility
were gone--she had been wont to call for him in her carriage; the
habit was broken; there would have been first pain, and afterwards an
unwelcome exertion in renewing it. Time was also beginning to sap his
strength, while society, and perhaps friendship, were making increasing
claims upon it. It may have been for this same reason that music after
a time seemed to pass out of his life altogether. Yet its almost sudden
eclipse was striking in the case of one who not only had been so
deeply susceptible to its emotional influences, so conversant with
its scientific construction and its multitudinous forms, but who was
acknowledged as 'musical' by those who best knew the subtle and complex
meaning of that often misused term.

Mr. Browning could do all that I have said during the period through
which we are now following him; but he could not quite do it with
impunity. Each winter brought its searching attack of cold and cough;
each summer reduced him to the state of nervous prostration or physical
apathy of which I have already spoken, and which at once rendered change
imperative, and the exertion of seeking it almost intolerable. His
health and spirits rebounded at the first draught of foreign air; the
first breath from an English cliff or moor might have had the same
result. But the remembrance of this fact never nerved him to the
preliminary effort. The conviction renewed itself with the close of
every season, that the best thing which could happen to him would be to
be left quiet at home; and his disinclination to face even the idea
of moving equally hampered his sister in her endeavour to make timely
arrangements for their change of abode.

This special craving for rest helped to limit the are