se years," and Browning writing to a
friend: "... I have enjoyed nothing so much as a dinner last week with
Tennyson, who with his wife and one son is staying in town for a few
weeks, and she is just what she was and always will be, very sweet and
dear: he seems to me better than ever. I met him at a large party ... also
at Carlyle's...."

In May of 1866 Browning's father was in poor health, and on June 14 he
died, at his home in Paris, his son having arrived three days before.
Although nearly eighty-five years of age, the elder Browning had retained
all his clearness of mind, and only just before he passed away he had
responded to some question of his son regarding a disputed point in
medieval history with "a regular book-full of notes and extracts." His son
speaks of the aged man's "strange sweetness of soul," apparently a
transmitted trait, for the poet shared it, and has left it in liberal
heritage to his son, Robert Barrett Browning, the "Pen" of all these
pages. Of his father the poet said:

"He was worthy of being Ba's father,--out of the whole world, only he,
so far as my experience goes. She loved him, and he said very
recently, while gazing at her portrait, that only that picture had put
into his head that there might be such a thing as the worship of the
images of saints."

Miss Browning came henceforth to live with her brother, and for the
remainder of his life she was his constant companion. She was a woman of
delightful qualities,--of poise, cheerfulness, of great intelligence and
of liberal culture. She was a very discriminating reader, and was
peculiarly gifted with that sympathetic comprehension that makes an ideal
companionship. Her presence now transformed the London house into a home.

The next summer they passed at Le Croisic, where Browning wrote "Herve
Riel," in "the most delicious and peculiar old house," and he and his
sister, both very fond of the open air, walked once to Guerande, the old
capital of Bretagne, some nine miles from their house.

Browning had received his first academic honors that summer, Oxford having
conferred on him her degree of M.A. The next October Browning was made
Honorary Fellow of Balliol College, a distinction that he greatly prized.

During this summer Rev. Dr. Phillips Brooks (later Bishop of
Massachusetts) was in London, and visited Browning once or twice. To a
Boston friend who asked for his impressions of the great poet, Dr. Brooks
wro