excursion--only _then_ we should have had companions.'

The letter then passes to other subjects.

'This is the fifth magnificent day--like magnificence, unfit for turning
to much account--for we cannot walk till sunset. I had two hours' walk,
or nearly, before breakfast, however: It is the loveliest country I ever
had experience of, and we shall prolong our stay perhaps--apart from
the concern for poor Cholmondeley and his friends, I should be glad
to apprehend no long journey--besides the annoyance of having to pass
Florence and Rome unvisited, for S.'s sake, I mean: even Naples would
have been with its wonderful environs a tantalizing impracticability.

'Your "Academy" came and was welcomed. The newspaper is like an electric
eel, as one touches it and expects a shock. I am very anxious about the
Archbishop who has always been strangely kind to me.'

He and his sister had accepted an invitation to spend the month of
October with Mr. Cholmondeley at his villa in Ischia; but the party
assembled there was broken up by the death of one of Mr. Cholmondeley's
guests, a young lady who had imprudently attempted the ascent of
a dangerous mountain without a guide, and who lost her life in the
experiment.

A short extract from a letter to Mrs. Charles Skirrow will show that
even in this complete seclusion Mr. Browning's patriotism did not go to
sleep. There had been already sufficient evidence that his friendship
did not; but it was not in the nature of his mental activities that they
should be largely absorbed by politics, though he followed the course of
his country's history as a necessary part of his own life. It needed
a crisis like that of our Egyptian campaign, or the subsequent Irish
struggle, to arouse him to a full emotional participation in current
events. How deeply he could be thus aroused remained yet to be seen.

'If the George Smiths are still with you, give them my love, and tell
them we shall expect to see them at Venice,--which was not so likely
to be the case when we were bound for Ischia. As for Lady Wolseley--one
dares not pretend to vie with her in anxiety just now; but my own pulses
beat pretty strongly when I open the day's newspaper--which, by some new
arrangement, reaches us, oftener than not, on the day after publication.
Where is your Bertie? I had an impassioned letter, a fortnight ago,
from a nephew of mine, who is in the second division [battalion?] of
the Black Watch; he was ordered