heir Casa Guidi
home, which looked, wrote Mrs. Browning to her sister-in-law, as if they
had only left it yesterday. The little Penini was "in a state of complete
agitation" on entering Florence, through having heard so much talk of it,
and expressed his emotion by repeated caresses and embraces. Mrs. Browning
shared the same amazement at the contrast of climate between Turin and
Genoa that twentieth-century travelers experience; Turin having been so
cold that they were even obliged to have a fire all night, while at Genoa
they were "gasping for breath, with all the windows and doors open, blue
skies burning overhead, and no air stirring." But this very heat was
life-giving to Mrs. Browning as they lingered on the terraces, gazing on
the beautiful bay encircled by its sweep of old marble palaces. She even
climbed half-way up the lighthouse for the view, resting there while
Browning climbed to the top, for that incomparable outlook which every
visitor endeavors to enjoy. In Florence there were the "divine sunsets"
over the Arno, and Penini's Italian nurse rushing in to greet the child,
exclaiming, "_Dio mio, come e bellino!_" They "caught up their ancient
traditions" just where they left them, Mrs. Browning observes, though Mr.
Browning, "demoralized by the boulevards," missed the stir and intensity
of Parisian life. They found Powers, the sculptor, changing his location,
and Mr. Lytton (the future Earl), who was an attache at the English
Embassy, became a frequent and a welcome visitor. In a letter to Mr.
Kenyon Mrs. Browning mentions that Mr. Lytton is interested in
manifestations of spiritualism, and had informed her that, to his father's
great satisfaction (his father being Sir E. Bulwer Lytton), these
manifestations had occurred at Knebworth, the Lytton home in England.
Tennyson's brother, who had married an Italian lady, was in Florence,
and the American Minister, Mr. Marsh. With young Lytton at this time,
Poetry was an article of faith, and nothing would have seemed to him more
improbable, even had any of his clairvoyants foretold it, than his future
splendid career as Viceroy of India.

[Illustration: THE PONTE VECCHIO AND THE ARNO, FLORENCE.]

Mrs. Browning was reading Prudhon that winter, and also Swedenborg,
Lamartine, and other of the French writers. Browning was writing from time
to time many of the lyrics that appear in the Collection entitled "Men and
Women," while on Mrs. Browning had already dawned t