ustiniani palaces which are its
neighbours have such interesting artistic associations that they demand
a chapter to themselves.

Browning is more intimately associated with Florence and Asolo than with
Venice; but he enjoyed his later Venetian days to the full. His first
visit here in 1851, with his wife, was however marred by illness. Mrs.
Browning loved the city, as her letters tell. "I have been," she wrote,
"between heaven and earth since our arrival at Venice. The heaven of it
is ineffable. Never had I touched the skirts of so celestial a place.
The beauty of the architecture, the silver trails of water up between
all that gorgeous colour and carving, the enchanting silence, the
moonlight, the music, the gondolas--I mix it all up together, and
maintain that nothing is like it, nothing equal to it, not a second
Venice in the world."

Browning left Florence for ever after his wife's death, and to Venice he
came again in 1878, with his sister, and thereafter for some years they
returned regularly. Until 1881 their home was at the Brandolin Rota.
After that they stayed with Mrs. Arthur Bronson, to whom he dedicated
_Asolando_, his last book, and who has written a record of his habits in
the city of the sea. She tells us that he delighted in walking and was a
great frequenter of old curiosity shops. His especial triumph was to
discover a calle so narrow that he could not put up an umbrella in it.
Every morning he visited the Giardini Pubblici to feed certain of the
animals; and on every disengaged afternoon he went over to the Lido, to
walk there, or, as Byron had done, to ride. On being asked by his
gondolier where he would like to be rowed, he always said, "Towards the
Lido," and after his failure to acquire the Palazzo Manzoni he thought
seriously for a while of buying an unfinished Lido villa which had been
begun for Victor Emmanuel. Browning's desire was to see sunsets from it.

Mrs. Bronson tells us that the poet delighted in the seagulls, which in
stormy weather come into the city waters. He used to wonder that no
books referred to them. "They are more interesting," he said, "than the
doves of St. Mark." Venice did not inspire the poet to much verse. There
is of course that poignant little drama entitled "In a Gondola," but not
much else, and for some reason the collected works omit the sonnet in
honour of Goldoni which was written for the ceremonies attaching to the
erection of the dramatist's statue near the