ZE GRATA
1861.

On the first floor was the room in which the poet wrote when the guest of
his son in the palace; a _sala_ empaneled with the most exquisite
decorated alabaster, panels of which also formed the doors, and opening
from this was his sleeping-room, also beautifully decorated.

In one splendid _sala_, with rich mural decorations, and floor of black
Italian marble, were many choice works of art, rare souvenirs, pictures of
special claim to interest, wonderful tapestries, and almost, indeed, an
_embarras de richesse_ of beauty.

In 1906 Robert Barrett Browning sold the Rezzonico; and now, beside his
_casa_ and studios in Asolo, he has one of the old Medici villas, near
Florence,--"La Torre all' Antella," with a lofty tower, from which the
view is one of the most commanding and fascinating in all Tuscany. The
panorama includes all Florence, with her domes and campanile and towers;
and the Fiesolean hills, with the old town picturesquely revealed among
the trees and against the background of sky, and with numerous other
villages and hamlets, and a mountain panorama of changing color always
before the eye. Mr. Browning is one of the choicest of spirits, with all
that culture and beauty of spiritual life that characterized his parents.
He is a great linguist, and is one of the most interesting of men. No one
knew his father, in that wonderful inner way, as did his son. He was
twelve years old at the time of his mother's death, and from that period
he was the almost constant companion of his father, until Browning's
death, twenty-eight years later. Robert Barrett Browning has also
purchased the massive Casa Guidi, thus fitly becoming the owner of the
palace in which he was born, and that is forever enshrined in literary
history and poetic romance. It is, also, one of those poetic sequences of
life, that Casa Guidi and Palazzo Peruzzi, near each other, in the Via
Maggiore in Florence, are respectively owned by Mr. Browning and the
Marchesa Peruzzi di' Medici, under which stately title Mr. Story's
daughter Edith, the childhood friend and companion of "Penini," is now
known.

After the return to London of Browning and his sister Sarianna, from St.
Moritz, his constant letters to Mrs. Bronson again take up the story of a
poet's days.

In the early winter he thus writes to his cherished friend--the date being
December 4, 1887:

"Now let us shut the gondola glasses (I forget the technical word) and
Tal