ch
occupied in modeling, and passed long mornings in Mr. Story's improvised
studio, where he copied two busts, the "Young Augustus" and the "Psyche,"
with notable success.

In the October of that year both the Brownings and the Storys returned to
Rome, the poets finding a new apartment in the Via Felice. Mrs. Browning's
sister Henrietta died that autumn, and in her grief she said that one of
the first things that did her good was a letter from Mrs. Stowe. She notes
her feeling that "how mere a line it is to overstep between the living and
the dead." Her spiritual insight never failed her, and of herself she
said: "I wish to live just so long, and no longer, than to grow in the
spirit."

In the days of inevitable sadness after her sister's death, whatever the
consolations and reassurances of faith and philosophy, Mrs. Browning wrote
to a friend of the tender way in which her husband shielded her, and "for
the rest," she said, "I ought to have comfort, for I believe that love, in
its most human relations, is an eternal thing." She added: "One must live;
and the only way is to look away from one's self into the larger and
higher circle of life in which the merely personal grief or joy forgets
itself."

Penini and his friend, Miss Edith, continued their studies under the old
Abbe; his mother heard him read a little German daily, and his father
"sees to his music, and the getting up of arithmetic," noted Mrs.
Browning. The lad rode on his pony over Monte Pincio, and occasionally
cantered out on the Campagna with his father. But Mrs. Browning had come
to know that her stay on earth was to be very brief, and to her dear Isa
she wrote that for the first time she had pain in looking into her little
son's face--"which you will understand," she adds, but to her husband she
did not speak of this premonition. She urged him to go out into the great
world, for Rome was socially resplendent that winter. Among other notable
festivities there was a great ball given by Mrs. Hooker, where princes and
cardinals were present, and where the old Roman custom of attending the
princes of the church up and down the grand staircase with flaming torches
was observed. The beautiful Princess Rospoli was a guest that night,
appearing in the tri-color. Commenting on the Civil War that was
threatening America, Mrs. Browning said she "believed the unity of the
country should be asserted with a strong hand."

Val Prinsep, in Rome that winter, was impr