d with him and ever devoted herself to the task
of securing his comfort and happiness. She would write out his poems and
otherwise make herself useful as his amanuensis; frequent too were the
opportunities the brother and sister took to travel together, and when
abroad, they would enjoy nothing better than a walk of several hours.

The last time I saw him at the Studio, he had come to tell me that he
was shortly leaving for Italy. He spoke with enthusiasm of Asolo,
describing its beauties in glowing colours, and he told me how, some
forty years ago, as a young man, he had reached it when on a walking
tour through the Venetian province.

"How many a year, my Asolo,
Since--one step just from sea to land--
I found you!"

It was the old tower crowning the hills, the Rocca, at that time
tenanted by hawks, that had made the most lasting impression on his
mind. He had been there again in later years with his sister, and now he
was elated at the prospect of once more revisiting it and the
picturesque old city he loved so well. He went, and it was there he
wrote his last work, "Asolando."

Prompted by the desire to ramble over the ground he had so lately
trodden, and to gather what evidence I could of his passage, I went to
Venice and Asolo in the following year, and painted a series of
water-colours (some fourteen or fifteen) in illustration of notes I took
during my stay in these places. Some of those notes may not be out of
place here to complete my sketch of Browning.[18]

* * * * *

A couple of hours' ride by rail took me from Venice to Cornuda, two more
by diligence to my destination. Leaving the plain an excellent road, cut
into the flanks of the hill on which the town is built, soon brought me
to the summit. I had only risen six or seven hundred feet, but a
magnificent view greeted me on all sides. "In clear weather you can see
Venice," the driver told me; but I was anxious to look forward, not
backward, and alighting at the entrance to a narrow street, I walked
along the _Sotto-portici_, formed by a series of quaint thick-set arches
supporting the upper storeys. A few steps brought me to the house in
which, as the tablet on the wall says, had lived the "Somma Poeta."

"What a curious place to select!" was my first thought as I stood at the
door of the old house. I walked up twelve or fifteen hard stone steps,
grasping the banister to guide myself in the dark, and was