y; so my day begins."

Later, of his son's palace, Mr. Browning wrote:--

"Have I told you that there is a chapel which he has restored in
honor of his mother--putting up there the inscription by
Tommaseo,[3] now above Casa Guidi in Florence?"

In this palace Mr. Browning wrote some of his later poems, and it may
well be that it was when he was clad in his singing robes that he
perhaps most deeply felt the ineffable charm of Venice:--

"For the stars help me, and the sea bears part;
The very night is clinging
Closer to Venice' streets to leave one space
Above me...."

It was from these lofty salons in the Browning Palace that the poet
passed to the "life more abundant" on that December day of 1889, on the
very day that his last volume, "Asolando," was published and also the
last volume of Tennyson's. Regarding these Mr. Gladstone said, in a
letter to Lord Tennyson: "The death of Browning on the day of the
appearance of your volume, and we hear of one of his own, is a touching
event."

From the time of Mrs. Browning's death in Florence (in June of 1861) Mr.
Browning never felt that he could see Italy again, until the autumn of
1878, when he, with his sister, Miss Sarianna Browning, came to Venice
by way of the Italian lakes and Verona. At this time they only remained
for a fortnight, domiciled in the old Palazzo Brandolin-Rota, which was
transformed into the Albergo dell'Universo. This palace was on the Grand
Canal below the Accademia, and here he returned through two or three
subsequent years. Mr. Browning became very fond of Venice, and he
explored its winding ways and gardens and knew it, not merely from the
gondola view, but from the point of view of the curious little dark and
narrow byways, the bridges, and the piazzas.

It was in 1880 that Mr. Browning first met, through the kind offices of
Mr. Story, a most charming and notable American lady, Mrs. Arthur
Bronson (Katherine DeKay), who had domiciled herself in Casa Alvisi, an
old palace on the Grand Canal opposite the Church of Santa Maria della
Salute. She was a woman of very interesting personality, and had drawn
about her a circle including many of the most distinguished people of
her time, authors, artists, poets, and notable figures in the social
world. She was eminently _simpatica_ and her lovely impulses of generous
kindness were rendered possible to translate into the world of the
actual by the freedom which a