-hued plain, stretching away to Padua, Vicenzo,
Bassano; the entire atmosphere filled with historic and poetic
associations. How the poet mirrored the panorama in his stanzas:

"How many a year, my Asolo,
Since--one step just from sea to land--
I found you, loved yet feared you so--
For natural objects seemed to stand
Palpably fire-clothed! No--"

The "lambent flame," and "Italia's rare, o'er-running beauty," enchanted
his vision.

Returning from their saunterings, the brother and sister took up their
morning reading of English and French newspapers, Italian books, with the
poet's interludes always of his beloved Greek dramatists.

In these October days the Storys arrived to visit Mrs. Bronson in her
picturesque abode. An ancient wall, mostly in ruins, with eighteen towers,
still surrounds Asolo, and partly in one of these towers, and partly in
the arch of the old portal, "La Mura" was half discovered and half
constructed. Its loggia had one wall composed entirely of sliding glass,
which could be a shelter from the storm with no obstruction of the view,
or be thrown open to all the bloom and beauty of the radiant summer. Just
across the street was the apartment in which Mrs. Bronson bestowed her
guests.

That Browning and Story should thus be brought together again for their
last meeting on earth, however undreamed of to them, prefigures itself now
as another of those mosaic-like events that combined in beauty and
loveliness to make all his last months on earth a poetic sequence. The
Storys afterward spoke of Mr. Browning as being "well, and in such force,
brilliant, and delightful as ever"; and the last words that passed between
the poet and the sculptor were these of Browning's: "We have been friends
for forty years, forty years without a break!"

On the first day of November this perfect and final visit to Asolo ended,
and yielding to the entreaties of his son, Browning and his sister bade
farewell to Mrs. Bronson and her daughter, who were soon to follow them to
Venice, where the poet and Miss Browning were to be the guests of the
Barrett Brownings in Palazzo Rezzonico.

The events of all these weeks seem divinely appointed to complete with
stately symmetry this noble life. As one of them he found in Venice his
old friend, and (as has before been said) the greatest interpreter of his
poetry, Dr. Hiram Corson. The Cornell professor was taking his University
Sabbatical year, and with Mrs. Corson