ndor, and many
another known to fame; and a copy, also, of a study of Mrs. Browning's
poetry[4] by an American writer.

There is one memento over which the visitor always smiled--a souvenir of
a London evening in 1855 when the Brownings had invited Dante Gabriel
Rossetti and his brother and Lord Madox Brown to meet Tennyson and
listen to his reading of his new poem, "Maud," then still unpublished.
During the reading Rossetti drew a caricature representing Tennyson with
his hair standing on end, his eyes glowering and his hand theatrically
extended, as he held a manuscript inscribed,

"I hate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood."

A reproduction of John Singer Sargent's painting, "The Gypsy Dance,"
bore the inscription, "To _mon ami_, Browning." From the library is a
niche, decorated in gold, with memorial entablatures to the memory of
Mrs. Browning. On the outer wall of the palace is an inscription that
runs:--

"Robert Browning died in this house 12th December, 1889.

"Open my heart and you will see
Graven inside it 'Italy.'"

There is a sadness in the fact that this palace, consecrated to the
memory of the immortal poets, husband and wife, has passed into the
hands of strangers; but that is a part of the play in a world in which
we have no continuing city. In the spring of 1905, Miss Sarianna
Browning died in the home of her nephew, near Florence, and her body was
buried in the new Protestant cemetery in that city; the old one, where
all that was mortal of Elizabeth Barrett Browning was laid to rest,
being now closed. Mr. Barrett Browning, in his Tuscan villa, is again
dwelling near Florence, his native city, which must forever hold to him
its atmosphere of consecrated beauty as the beloved home of his
mother,--the noblest and greatest of all woman poets.

The centenary of Carlo Goldoni was celebrated in Venice in the spring
of 1907 by the publication of all his works and a monograph on his life;
an exhibition of personal relics; the presentation of one of his dramas
set to music by Baldassare Galuppi, the great Venetian composer of his
time, and by a procession to lay a wreath of laurel on his monument in
the Campo San Bartolommeo. The drama given, entitled the "Buranello,"
was the last work of the author, and it was presented in the theatre
Goldoni. The Municipal Council of Venice voted the sum of fifty thousand
lire for the _edition de luxe_, which consists of twenty volumes, in
oct