opes of Monte Cavo; on again, to the rocky terraces from which one
looks down on Alba Longa and the depths of Lago di Nemi, beneath whose
waters is still supposed to be the barque of Caligula, and across the
expanse of the green Campagna to where Aeneas landed.

[Illustration: THE CAMPAGNA AND RUINS OF THE CLAUDIAN AQUEDUCTS, ROME.

"_There, branching from the brickwork's cleft,_
_Some old tomb's ruin...._"

Two in the Campagna. ]

Miss Hosmer is the authority on this poetic pilgrimage, and she related
that they all talked of art, of the difficulties of art,--those
encountered by the poet, the sculptor, and the painter,--each regarding
his own medium of expression as the most difficult. Mrs. Browning's
"Hatty" had bestowed in her bag a volume of Mr. Browning's, and on the
homeward journey from Albano to Rome he read aloud to them his "Saul." At
the half-way house on the Campagna, the Torre di Mezza, they paused, to
gaze at the "weird watcher of the Roman Campagna," the monument to
Apuleia, whose ruins are said to have assumed her features.

Nothing in all the classic atmosphere of Rome, filled with the most
impressive associations of its mighty past, appealed more strongly to the
Brownings than the glorious Campagna, with its apparently infinite open
space, brilliant with myriads of flowers, and the vast billowing slopes
that break like green waves against the purple hills, in their changeful
panorama of clouds and mists and snow-crowned heights dazzling under a
glowing sun.

Fascinating as this winter in Rome had been to them, rich in friendships
and in art, the Brownings were yet glad to return to their Florence with
the May days, to give diligence and devotion to their poetic work, which
nowhere proceeded so felicitously as in Casa Guidi.

Browning was now definitely engaged on the poems that were to make up the
"Men and Women." Mrs. Browning was equally absorbed in "Aurora Leigh."
Each morning after their Arcadian repast of coffee and fruit, he went to
his study, and she to the _salotto_, whose windows opened on the terrace
looking out on old gray San Felice where she always wrote, to devote
themselves to serious work. "Aurora Leigh" proceeded rapidly some
mornings, and again its progress would remind her of the web of Penelope.
During this summer Browning completed "In a Balcony," and wrote the "Holy
Cross Day," the "Epistle of Karnish," and "Ben Karshook's Wisdom." Like
his wife, Browning held poetr