s and stature. For two hours every day his father taught him
music, and the lad already played Beethoven sonatas, and music of
difficult execution from German composers.

The Brownings and the Storys passed many evenings together, "sitting on
the lawn under the ilexes and the cypresses, with tea and talk, until the
moon had made the circuit of the quarter of the sky." Mrs. Browning's
health grew better, and Story writes to Charles Eliot Norton that
"Browning is in good spirits about her, and Pen is well, and as I write,"
he continues, "I hear him laughing and playing with my boys and Edith on
the terrace below."

It was late in October before they returned to Florence, and then only for
a sojourn of six weeks before going to Rome for the winter. The Siena
summer had been a period of unalloyed delight to Mrs. Browning, whose
health was much improved, and not the least of the happiness of both had
been due to the congenial companionship of the Storys, and to their
delicate courtesies, which Mrs. Browning wrote to Mrs. Jameson that she
could never forget. Browning wrote to Mrs. Story saying to her that she
surely did not need to be told how entirely they owed "the delightful
summer" to her own and Mr. Story's kindness. "Ba is hardly so well," he
adds, "as when she was let thrive in that dear old villa and the pleasant
country it hardly shut out."

Mrs. Browning's small book, the "Poems before Congress," only eight in
all, was published in this early spring of 1860, and met with no cheering
reception. She felt this keenly, but said, "If I were ambitious of any
thing it would be to be wronged where, for instance, Cavour is wronged."
With Mrs. Browning a political question was equally a moral question. Her
devotion to Italy, and faith in the regeneration of the country, were
vital matters to her. She was deeply touched by the American attitude
toward her poem, "A Curse for a Nation," for the Americans, she noted,
rendered thanks to the reprover of ill deeds, "understanding the pure love
of the motive." These very "Poems before Congress" brought to her praises,
and the offer of high prices as well, and of this nation she said it was
generous.

A letter from Robert Browning written to Kate Field, who was then in
Florence with Miss Blagden, and which has never before been published, is
as follows:

ROME, VIA DEL TRITONE, 28,

March 29th, 1860.

DEAR MISS FIELD,--Do you really care to have the little photograp