me to read in it sooner
than I should otherwise have done, those contributions of her own
which help to justify its title, and which are indeed sweet and
touching verses.

"It is among the vexations brought upon me by my illness, that I still
remain personally unacquainted with Miss Garrow, though seeming to
myself to know her through those who actually do so. And I should
venture to hope that it might be a vexation the first to leave me, if
a visit to an invalid condemned to the _peine forte et dure_ of being
very silent, notwithstanding her womanhood, were a less gloomy thing.
At any rate I am encouraged to thank Miss Fisher and Miss Garrow
for their visits of repeated inquiry, and their other very kind
attentions, by these written words, rather than by a message. For I am
sure that wherever kindness _can_ come thankfulness _may_, and that
whatever intrusion my note can be guilty of, it is excusable by the
fact of my being Miss Garrow's

"Sincerely obliged,

"E. BARRETT."

* * * * *

Could anything be more charmingly girlish, or more prettily worded!
The diminutive little note seems to have been preserved, an almost
solitary survival of the memorials of the days to which it belongs.
It must doubtless have been followed by sundry others, but was, I
suppose, specially treasured as having been the first step towards a
friendship which was already highly valued.

Of course, in the recollections of an Englishman living during those
years in Florence, Robert Browning must necessarily stand out in high
relief, and in the foremost line. But very obviously this is neither
the time nor the place, nor is my dose of presumption sufficient for
any attempt at a delineation of the man. To speak of the poet, since
I write for Englishmen, would be very superfluous. It may be readily
imagined that the "tag-rag and bobtail" of the men who mainly
constituted that very pleasant but not very intellectual society, were
not likely to be such as Mr. Browning would readily make intimates
of. And I think I see in memory's magic glass that the men used to be
rather afraid of him. Not that I ever saw him rough or uncourteous
with the most exasperating fool that ever rubbed a man's nervous
system the wrong way; but there was a quiet, lurking smile which,
supported by very few words, used to seem to have the singular
property of making the utterers of platitudes and the mistakers of
_non-sequiturs_ for _sequi