hich elicited his father's peculiar tenderness; it was natural
that he should exact more pictorial or more companionable qualities from
them. But father and son concurred in the fondness for snakes, and in a
singular predilection for owls; and they had not been long established
in Warwick Crescent, when a bird of that family was domesticated there.
We shall hear of it in a letter from Mr. Browning.

Of his son's moral quality as quite a little child his father has told
me pretty and very distinctive stories, but they would be out of place
here.*

* I am induced, on second thoughts, to subjoin one of these,
for its testimony to the moral atmosphere into which the
child had been born. He was sometimes allowed to play with a
little boy not of his own class--perhaps the son of a
'contadino'. The child was unobjectionable, or neither
Penini nor his parents would have endured the association;
but the servants once thought themselves justified in
treating him cavalierly, and Pen flew indignant to his
mother, to complain of their behaviour. Mrs. Browning at
once sought little Alessandro, with kind words and a large
piece of cake; but this, in Pen's eyes, only aggravated the
offence; it was a direct reflection on his visitor's
quality. 'He doesn't tome for take,' he burst forth; 'he
tomes because he is my friend.' How often, since I heard
this first, have we repeated the words, 'he doesn't tome for
take,' in half-serious definition of a disinterested person
or act! They became a standing joke.

Mrs. Browning seems now to have adopted the plan of writing independent
letters to her sister-in-law; and those available for our purpose are
especially interesting. The buoyancy of tone which has habitually
marked her communications, but which failed during the winter in Rome,
reasserts itself in the following extract. Her maternal comments on Peni
and his perfections have hitherto been so carefully excluded, that a
brief allusion to him may be allowed on the present occasion.

1857.

'My dearest Sarianna, . . . Here is Penini's letter, which takes up
so much room that I must be sparing of mine--and, by the way, if you
consider him improved in his writing, give the praise to Robert, who
has been taking most patient pains with him indeed. You will see how
the little curly head is turned with carnival doings. So gay a carnival
never was in our