orquay, had known Elizabeth Barrett. The latter was very much of an
invalid at the time; so much so, as I think I have gathered from my
wife's talk about those times, as to have prevented her from being a
visitor to "The Braddons." But Theodosia was, I take it, to be very
frequently found by the side of the sofa to which her friend was more
or less confined. I fancy that Mr. Kenyon, who was an old friend
and family connection of Elizabeth Barrett's family, and was also
intimately acquainted with the Garrows and with Theodosia, must have
been the first means of bringing the girls together. There were
assuredly _very_ few young women in England at that day to whom
Theodosia Garrow in social intercourse would have had to look _up_,
as to one on a higher intellectual level than her own. But Elizabeth
Barrett was one of them. I am not talking of _acquirements_. Nor was
my wife thinking of such when she used to speak of the poetess as she
had known her at that time. I am talking, as my wife used to talk,
of pure native intellectual power. And I consider it to have been no
small indication of the capacity of my wife's intelligence, that she
so clearly and appreciatingly recognised and measured the distance
between her friend's intellect and her own. But this appreciation on
the one side was in nowise incompatible with a large and generous
amount of admiration on the other. And many a talk in long subsequent
years left with me the impression of the high estimation which the
gifted poetess had formed of the value of her highly, but not so
exceptionally, gifted admirer.

Of course this old friendship paved the way for a new one when the
Brownings came to live in Florence. I flatter myself that that would
in any case have found some _raison d'etre_. But the pleasure of the
two girls--girls no more in any sense--in meeting again quickened
the growth of an intimacy which might otherwise have been slower in
ripening.

To say that amid all that frivolous, gay, giddy, and, it must be
owned, for the most part very unintellectual society (in the pleasures
and pursuits of which, to speak honestly, I took, well pleased, my
full share), my visits to Casa Guidi were valued by me as choice
morsels of my existence, is to say not half enough. I was conscious
even then of coming away from those visits a better man, with higher
views and aims. And pray, reader, understand that any such effect was
not produced by any talk or look or word of the