ney at one end, the
supports of which are life-size dogs, modeled by Isadore Bonheur.
Portraits of the father and mother in oval frames hang at each
side, and a pair of gigantic horns ornaments the centre. The room
is decorated with stuffed heads of animals of various kinds,--boars,
bears, wolves, and oxen; and birds perch in every convenient place."

When Prussia conquered France, and swept through this town, orders
were given that Rosa Bonheur's home and paintings be carefully
preserved. Even her servants went unmolested. The peasants idolized
the great woman who lived in the chateau, and were eager to serve her.
She always talked to them pleasantly. Rosa Bonheur died at her home at
11 P.M., Thursday, May 25, 1899.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

[Illustration: Elizabeth Barrett Browning Rome. February. 1859]

Ever since I had received in my girlhood, from my best friend, the
works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in five volumes in blue and gold,
I had read and re-read the pages, till I knew scores by heart. I
had longed to see the face and home of her whom the English call
"Shakespeare's daughter," and whom Edmund Clarence Stedman names "the
passion-flower of the century."

I shall never forget that beautiful July morning spent in the Browning
home in London. The poet-wife had gone out from it, and lay buried in
Florence, but here were her books and her pictures. Here was a marble
bust, the hair clustering about the face, and a smile on the lips that
showed happiness. Near by was another bust of the idolized only child,
of whom she wrote in _Casa Guidi Windows_:--

"The sun strikes through the windows, up the floor:
Stand out in it, my own young Florentine,
Not two years old, and let me see thee more!
It grows along thy amber curls to shine
Brighter than elsewhere. Now look straight before
And fix thy brave blue English eyes on mine,
And from thy soul, which fronts the future so
With unabashed and unabated gaze,
Teach me to hope for what the Angels know
When they smile clear as thou dost!"

Here was the breakfast-table at which they three had often sat
together. Close beside it hung a picture of the room in Florence,
where she lived so many years in a wedded bliss as perfect as any
known in history. Tears gathered in the eyes of Robert Browning, as he
pointed out her chair, and sofa, and writing-table.

Of this room in Casa Guidi, Kate Field wrote in the _Atlantic
Monthly