time. It proves them to
have had great gifts of character. There is no such building any more.

The Grotto close to the Pitti entrance, which contains some of
Michelangelo's less remarkable "Prisoners," intended for the great
Julian tomb, is so "grottesque" that the statues are almost lost, and
altogether it is rather an Old Rye House affair; and though Giovanni
da Bologna's fountain in the midst of a lake is very fine, I doubt if
the walk is quite worth it. My advice rather is to climb at once to
the top, at the back of the Pitti, by way of the amphitheatre where
the gentlemen and ladies used to watch court pageants, and past that
ingenious fountain above it, in which Neptune's trident itself spouts
water, and rest in the pretty flower garden on the very summit of the
hill, among the lizards. There, seated on the wall, you may watch the
peasants at work in the vineyards, and the white oxen ploughing in
the olive groves, in the valley between this hill and S. Miniato. In
spring the contrast between the greens of the crops and the silver
grey of the olives is vivid and gladsome; in September, one may see
the grapes being picked and piled into the barrels, immediately below,
and hear the squdge as the wooden pestle is driven into the purple
mass and the juice gushes out.

CHAPTER XXIV

English Poets in Florence

Casa Guidi--The Brownings--Giotto's missing spire--James Russell
Lowell--Lander's early life--Fra Bartolommeo before Raphael--The Tuscan
gardener--The "Villa Landor" to-day--Storms on the hillside--Pastoral
poetry--Italian memories in England--The final outburst--Last days
in Florence--The old lion's beguilements--The famous epitaph.

On a house in the Piazza S. Felice, obliquely facing the Pitti, with
windows both in the Via Maggio and Via Mazzetta, is a tablet, placed
there by grateful Florence, stating that it was the home of Robert
and of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and that her verse made a golden
ring to link England to Italy. In other words, this is Casa Guidi.

A third member of the family, Flush the spaniel, was also with them,
and they moved here in 1848, and it was here that Mrs. Browning
died, in 1861. But it was not their first Florentine home, for in
1847 they had gone into rooms in the Via delle Belle Donne--the
Street of Beautiful Ladies--whose name so fascinated Ruskin, near
S. Maria Novella. At Casa Guidi Browning wrote, among other poems,
"Christinas Eve and Easter Day," "The Statue an