the
use of language, he by no means concealed these sentiments. Mazzini
immediately sought the Brownings, his "pale, spiritual face" shining, and
his "intense eyes full of melancholy illusions." He brought Mrs. Carlyle
with him, Mrs. Browning finding her "full of thought, and feeling, and
character." Miss Mulock, who had then written "The Ogilvies," and had also
read her title clear to some poetic recognition, was in evidence that
season, as were Mr. and Mrs. Monckton Milnes, and Fanny Kemble was also a
brilliant figure in the social life. Nor was the London of that day
apparently without a taste for the sorceress and the soothsayer, for no
less a personage than Lord Stanhope was, it seems, showing to the elect
the "spirits of the sun" in a crystal ball, which Lady Blessington had
bought from an Egyptian magician and had sold again. Lady Blessington
declared she had no understanding of the use of it, but it was on record
that the initiated could therein behold Oremus, Spirit of the Sun. Both
the crystal ball and the seers were immensely sought, notwithstanding the
indignation expressed by Mr. Chorley, who regarded the combination of
social festivities and crystal gazing as eminently scandalous. Which
element he considered the more dangerous is not on the palimpsest that
records the story of these days. Lord Stanhope invited the Brownings to
these occult occasions of intermingled attractions, and Mrs. Browning
writes: "For my part, I endured both luncheon and spiritual phenomena with
great equanimity." An optician of London took advantage of the popular
demand and offered a fine assortment of crystal ball spheres, at prices
which quite restricted their sale to the possessors of comfortable
rent-rolls, and Lord Stanhope asserted that a great number of persons
resorted to these balls to divine the future, without the courage to
confess it. One wonders as to whom "the American Corinna, in yellow silk,"
in London, that season, could have been?

The Brownings were invited to a country house in Farnham, to meet Charles
Kingsley, who impressed them with his genial and tender kindness, and
while they thought some of his social views wild and theoretical, they
loved his earnestness and originality, and believed he could not be
"otherwise than good and noble." It was during this summer (according to
William Michael Rossetti) that Browning and Dante Gabriel Rossetti first
met, Rossetti coming to call on them in company with William