rs of detail were concluded, Miss Blagden, "perfect in all
kindness," accompanied them to Paris, continuing her own journey to
England, while Browning with his son, his father, and sister, proceeded to
St. Enogat, near St. Malo, on the Normandy coast. Before Mrs. Browning's
illness there had been a plan that all the Brownings and Mr. and Mrs. W.
J. Stillman should pass the summer together at Fontainebleau.

There was something about St. Enogat singularly restful to Browning, the
sea, the solitude, the "unspoiled, fresh, and picturesque place," as he
described it in a letter to Madame Du Quaire. The mystic enchantment of it
wrought its spell, and Penini had his pony and was well and cheerful, and
Browning realized too well that the change called death is but the passing
through "the gates of new life," to be despairing in his sorrow. The
spirit of one

"... who never turned his back, but marched breast forward,"

breathes through all the letters that he wrote at this time to friends.
"Don't fancy I am prostrated," he wrote to Leighton; "I have enough to do
for myself and the boy, in carrying out her wishes." Somewhat later he
expressed his wish that Mr. (later Sir Frederick) Leighton should design
the memorial tomb, in that little Florence cemetery, for his wife; and the
marble with only "E. B. B." inscribed on it, visited constantly by all
travelers in Florence and rarely found without flowers, is the one Sir
Frederick designed.

[Illustration: TOMB OF ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING IN THE ENGLISH CEMETERY,
FLORENCE

Designed by Sir Frederick Leighton, R.A.]

In a letter to his boyhood's friend, Miss Haworth, Browning alluded to the
future, when Penini would so need the help of "the wisdom, the genius, the
piety" of his mother; and the poet adds: "I have had everything, and
shall not forget." In reply to a letter of sympathy from Kate Field, he
wrote:

"DEAR FRIEND,--God bless you for all your kindness which I shall never
forget. I cannot write now except to say this, and beside, that I have
had great comfort from the beginning."

In the early autumn Browning took his son to London. The parting of the
ways had come, and already he dimly perceived that the future would not
copy fair the past. There are "reincarnations," in all practical effect,
that are realized in this life as well as, speculatively, hereafter; and
his days of Italian terraces and oleander blooms, of enchanting hours on
Bellosgu