a natural but a most unjust feeling,
that she had been in some sort the cause of this great misery. It was not
until the following year that she could be removed in an invalid carriage,
and by journeys of twenty miles a day, to her afflicted family and her
London home. The house that she occupied at Torquay had been chosen as one
of the most sheltered in the place. It stood at the bottom of the cliffs,
almost close to the sea; and she told me herself, that during that whole
winter the sound of the waves rang in her ears like the moans of one
dying. Still she clung to literature and to Greek; in all probability she
would have died without that wholesome diversion to her thoughts. Her
medical attendant did not always understand this. To prevent the
remonstrances of her friendly physician, Dr. Barry, she caused a small
edition of Plato to be so bound as to resemble a novel. He did not know,
skillful and kind though he were, that to her such books were not an
arduous and painful study, but a consolation and a delight.

Returned to London, she began the life which she continued for so many
years, confined to one large and commodious but darkened chamber admitting
only her own affectionate family and a few devoted friends (I, myself,
have often joyfully traveled five-and-forty miles to see her, and returned
the same evening, without entering another house); reading almost every
book worth reading in almost every language, and giving herself, heart and
soul, to that poetry of which she seemed born to be the priestess.

Gradually her health improved. About four years ago she married Mr.
Browning, and immediately accompanied him to Pisa. They then settled at
Florence; and this summer I have had the exquisite pleasure of seeing her
once more in London, with a lovely boy at her knee, almost as well as
ever, and telling tales of Italian rambles, of losing herself in chestnut
forests, and scrambling on mule-back up the sources of extinct volcanoes.
May Heaven continue to her such health and such happiness!

The same visit to London that brought me acquainted with my beloved
friend, Elizabeth Barrett, first gave me a sight of Mr. Browning. It was
at a period that forms an epoch in the annals of the modern drama--the
first representation of "Ion."

I had the honor and pleasure of being the inmate of Mr. and Mrs. Serjeant
Talfourd (my accomplished friend has since worthily changed his
professional title--but his higher title of poet