y vines all in a tangle; the wayside
shrine, the vast white monastery perched on an isolated mountain top; the
flaming scarlet of the poppies in the grass, the castles and battlements
dimly caught on the far horizon,--the poetry, the loveliness, the
ineffable beauty of Italy! Seventeen years had passed since that midsummer
day when the dear form of his "Lyric Love" had been laid under the
Florentine lilies, when Browning, in the spring of 1878, returned to his
Italy. What dreams and associations thronged upon him!

"Places are too much,
Or else too little for immortal man,--

* * * * *

... thinking how two hands before
Had held up what is left to only one."

Seventeen years had passed, but Venice, the ethereal city, the mystic
dream of sea and sky, was unchanged, and, however unconsciously, the poet
was now to initiate another era, another new "state" in his life. He
never again went farther south than Venice; he could never see Florence
or Rome again, where _she_ had lived beside him; but the dream city now
became for him a second and dearer home. With his sister Sarianna, he
broke the journey by lingering in a hotel on the summit of the Spluegen,
where he indulged himself in those long walks which he loved, Miss
Browning often accompanying him down the Via Cala Mala, or to the summit
where they could look down into Lombardy. Browning was at work on his
"Dramatic Idyls," and not only "Ivan Ivanovitch," but several others were
written on the Spluegen. Pausing at Lago di Como, and a day in Verona, they
made their way to Asolo, "my very own of all Italian cities," the poet
would say of it. Asolo, which from its rocky hilltop, has an outlook over
all Veneto,--over all Italy, it would almost seem, for the towers and
domes of Venice are visible on a clear day,--gave its full measure of joy
to Browning, and when they descended into Venice they were domiciled in
the Palazzo Brandolin-Rota, on the Grand Canal, near the Accademia. In
Venice he met a Russian lady whom he consulted about some of the names he
was giving to the characters in his "Ivan Ivanovitch."

The success of his son in the Paris Salon and other exhibitions was a
continual happiness to Mr. Browning. Both in Paris and in London the
pictures of Barrett Browning were accorded an honorable place "on the
line"; he received a medal from the Salon, and there was not wanting,
either, that commercial sid