till then, Dear Friend, remember me ever as yours
affectionately, Robert Browning.

If the tone of this does not express disappointment, it has none of the
rapture which his last visit was to inspire. The charm which forty years
of remembrance had cast around the little city on the hill was dispelled
for, at all events, the time being. The hot weather and dust-covered
landscape, with the more than primitive accommodation of which he spoke
in a letter to another friend, may have contributed something to this
result.

At Venice the travellers fared better in some essential respects.
A London acquaintance, who passed them on their way to Italy, had
recommended a cool and quiet hotel there, the Albergo dell' Universo.
The house, Palazzo Brandolin-Rota, was situated on the shady side of
the Grand Canal, just below the Accademia and the Suspension Bridge. The
open stretches of the Giudecca lay not far behind; and a scrap of garden
and a clean and open little street made pleasant the approach from back
and side. It accommodated few persons in proportion to its size, and
fewer still took up their abode there; for it was managed by a lady of
good birth and fallen fortunes whose home and patrimony it had been; and
her husband, a retired Austrian officer, and two grown-up daughters
did not lighten her task. Every year the fortunes sank lower; the upper
storey of the house was already falling into decay, and the fine old
furniture passing into the brokers' or private buyers' hands. It still,
however, afforded sufficiently comfortable, and, by reason of its very
drawbacks, desirable quarters to Mr. Browning. It perhaps turned the
scale in favour of his return to Venice; for the lady whose hospitality
he was to enjoy there was as yet unknown to him; and nothing would have
induced him to enter, with his eyes open, one of the English-haunted
hotels, in which acquaintance, old and new, would daily greet him in the
public rooms or jostle him in the corridors.

He and his sister remained at the Universo for a fortnight; their
programme did not this year include a longer stay; but it gave them time
to decide that no place could better suit them for an autumn holiday
than Venice, or better lend itself to a preparatory sojourn among the
Alps; and the plan of their next, and, though they did not know it, many
a following summer, was thus sketched out before the homeward journey
had begun.

Mr. Browning did not forget his work, even whi