sidence." This plan, however, was never carried out, as
Italy came to lay over them a still deeper spell, which it was impossible
to break. Mr. Lytton, with whom Mrs. Browning talked of all these plans
and dreams that evening on his terrace, had just privately printed his
drama, "Clytemnestra," which Mrs. Browning found "full of promise,"
although "too ambitious" because after Aeschylus. But this young poet,
afterward to be so widely known in the realm of poetry as "Owen Meredith,"
and as Lord Lytton in the realm of diplomacy and statesmanship, impressed
her at the time as possessing an incontestable "faculty" in poetry, that
made her expect a great deal from him in the future. She invited him to
visit them in their sylvan retreat that summer at Bagni di Lucca, an
invitation that he joyously accepted. Some great _savant_, who was "strong
in veritable Chinese," found his way to Casa Guidi, as most of the
wandering minstrels of the time did, and "nearly assassinated" the
mistress of the _menage_ with an interminable analysis of a Japanese
novel. Mr. Lytton, who was present, declared she grew paler and paler
every moment, which she afterward asserted was not because of sympathy
with the heroine of this complex tale! But this formidable scholar had a
passport to Mrs. Browning's consideration by bringing her a little black
profile of her beloved Isa, which gave "the air of her head," and then,
said Mrs. Browning, laughingly, "how could I complain of a man who rather
flattered me than otherwise, and compared me to Isaiah?"

But at last, after the middle of July, what with poets, and sunsets from
terraces, and savants, and stars, they really left their Florence
"dissolving in her purple hills" behind them, and bestowed themselves in
Casa Tolomei, at the Baths, where a row of plane trees stood before the
door, in which the cicale sang all day, and solemn, mysterious mountains
kept watch all day and night. There was a garden, lighted by the fireflies
at night, and Penini mistook the place for Eden. His happiness overflowed
in his prayers, and he thriftily united the petition that God would "mate
him dood" with the supplication that God would also "tate him on a
dontey," thus uniting all possible spiritual and temporal aspirations. The
little fellow was wild with happiness in this enchanted glade, where the
poets were "safe among mountains, shut in with a row of seven plane-trees
joined at top." Mr. Browning was still working on hi