e--he will want what he
never had--that is, for the time when he could be helped by her wisdom,
and genius and piety--I _have_ had everything and shall not forget.

God bless you, dear friend. I believe I shall set out in a week. Isa
goes with me--dear, true heart. You, too, would do what you could for us
were you here and your assistance needful. A letter from you came a day
or two before the end--she made me enquire about the Frescobaldi Palace
for you,--Isa wrote to you in consequence. I shall be heard of at 151,
rue de Grenelle St. Germain. Faithfully and affectionately yours, Robert
Browning.

The first of these displays even more self-control, it might be thought
less feeling, than the second; but it illustrates the reserve which, I
believe, habitually characterized Mr. Browning's attitude towards men.
His natural, and certainly most complete, confidants were women. At
about the end of July he left Florence with his son; also accompanied by
Miss Blagden, who travelled with them as far as Paris. She herself must
soon have returned to Italy; since he wrote to her in September on the
subject of his wife's provisional disinterment,* in a manner which shows
her to have been on the spot.

* Required for the subsequent placing of the monument
designed by F. Leighton.

Sept. '61.

'. . . Isa, may I ask you one favour? Will you, whenever these dreadful
preliminaries, the provisional removement &c. when they are proceeded
with,--will you do--all you can--suggest every regard to decency and
proper feeling to the persons concerned? I have a horror of that man
of the grave-yard, and needless publicity and exposure--I rely on you,
dearest friend of ours, to at least lend us your influence when the
time shall come--a word may be invaluable. If there is any show made,
or gratification of strangers' curiosity, far better that I had left
the turf untouched. These things occur through sheer thoughtlessness,
carelessness, not anything worse, but the effect is irreparable. I won't
think any more of it--now--at least. . . .'

The dread expressed in this letter of any offence to the delicacies of
the occasion was too natural to be remarked upon here; but it connects
itself with an habitual aversion for the paraphernalia of death, which
was a marked peculiarity of Mr. Browning's nature. He shrank, as his
wife had done, from the 'earth side' of the portentous change; but truth
compels me to own that her infinite pit