a transformation scene on a stage. The trees in the Cascine
were all a "green mist." Everywhere was that ethereal enchantment of the
Flower City, with her gleaming towers and domes, her encircling purple
hills and picturesque streets. And how, indeed, could any one who has
watched the loveliness of a Florentine springtime ever escape its haunting
spell? The dweller in Italy may see a thousand things to desire,--better
public privileges, more facilities for comfort, but the day comes when, if
he has learned to love the Italian atmosphere so intensely that all the
glories of earth could not begin to compensate for it, he would give every
conceivable achievement of modern art and progress for one hour among
those purple hills, for one hour with the sunset splendors over the
towers, and the olive-crowned heights of Fiesole and Bellosguardo; or to
hear again the impassioned strains of street singers ring out in pathetic
intensity in the bewildering moonlight. _La Bella Firenze_, lying
dream-enchanted among her amethyst hills, would draw her lover from the
wilds of Siberia, for even one of those etherial evenings, when the stars
blaze in a splendor over San Miniato, or one rose-crowned morning, when
the golden sunshine gilds the tower of the old cathedral on Fiesole.

In that spring Mrs. Stowe visited Florence, and the Brownings liked her
and rejoiced that she had moved the world for good. To Mrs. Jameson Mrs.
Browning wrote that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was a "sign of the times." She
read Victor Hugo's "Contemplations," finding some of the personal poems
"overcoming in their pathos"; they went to tea on the terrace at
Bellosguardo, in April evenings, gazing over Florence veiled in
transparent blue haze in the valley below.

In this April Mrs. Browning's father died; she had never ceased to hope
for reconciliation, and her sorrow was great, but, as usual, she was
gently serene, "not despondingly calm," she said. Mrs. Jameson again came
to Florence, and there were more teas on overhanging terraces, and
enjoyments of the divine sunsets.

In August they went with Miss Blagden, Mr. Lytton, and one or two others
to again make _villeggiatura_ at Bagni di Lucca, where Mrs. Browning rose
every morning at six to bathe in the rapid little mountain
stream,--finding herself strengthened by this heroic practice,--and Penini
flourished "like a rose possessed by a fairy."

The succeeding winter was passed in Florence, Mrs. Browning instructin