kindly friend of Longfellow and of Lowell
in their Cambridge homes, and the Greenoughs and Storys were also of the
Cambridge circle. To friends at home the Marchesa wrote of going to the
opera with the Greenoughs, and that she saw the Brownings often, "and I
love and admire them more and more," she continued. "Mr. Browning enriches
every hour passed with him, and he is a most true, cordial, and noble
man."

The Florentine days have left their picturings: Mr. Story opens a studio,
and while he is modeling, Mrs. Story reads to him from Monckton Milnes's
Life of Keats, which Mr. Browning loaned them. Mrs. Story drives to Casa
Guidi to carry Mrs. Browning her copy of "Jane Eyre," and Mrs. Greenough
takes both Mrs. Story and Mrs. Browning to drive in the Cascine. Two
American painters, Frank Boott and Frank Heath, are in Florence, and are
more or less caught up in the Casa Guidi life; and the coterie all go to
Mrs. Trollope's to see fancy costumes arranged for a ball to be given at
Sir George Hamilton's. In one of the three villas on Bellosguardo Miss Isa
Blagden was now domiciled. For more than a quarter of a century Miss
Blagden was a central figure in English society in Florence. She became
Mrs. Browning's nearest and most intimate friend, and she was the ardently
prized friend of the Trollopes also, and of Miss Frances Power Cobbe, who
shared her villa during one spring when Florence was in her most radiant
beauty. "Isa was a very bright, warm-hearted, clever little woman," said
Thomas Adolphus Trollope of her; "who knew everybody, and was, I think,
more universally beloved among us than any other individual." Miss Blagden
had written one or two novels, of little claim, however, and after her
death a small volume of her poems was published, but all these had no more
than the mere _succes d'estime_, as apparently the pen was with her, as
with Margaret Fuller, a non-conductor; but as a choice spirit, of the most
beautiful and engaging qualities of companionship, "Isa," as she was
always caressingly called, is still held in memory. Madame Pasquale
Villari, the wife of the great historian and the biographer of Machiavelli
and of Savonarola, well remembers Miss Blagden, who died, indeed, in her
arms in the summer of 1872.

The intimate friendship between Mrs. Browning and Miss Blagden was
initiated in the early months of the residence of the Brownings in
Florence; but it was in this winter of 1849-1850 that they began to see