ust for _that_ reason I complain more
about Robert.... In America he is a power, a writer, a poet--he is read,
he lives in the hearts of the people."[4]

Among the Americans associated with the Brownings for longer or shorter
periods during their life in Florence were two distinguished women,
Margaret Fuller Ossoli and Harriet Beecher Stowe. In 1847, George
William Curtis spent two days with the Brownings at Vallombrosa, a visit
later described in his _Easy Chair_. Mr. Field, who had brought out the
American reprint of the two-volume edition of Browning's poems in 1849,
was a guest at Casa Guidi in 1852. Charles Sumner writes of "delicious
Tuscan evenings" with the Brownings and the Storys in 1859. Mr.
Browning's interests in art led to friendships with American artists,
among whom were Mr. Page, who painted a successful portrait of Browning;
Miss Harriet Hosmer, to whom Mr. and Mrs. Browning finally consented to
sit for the "Clasped Hands"; and Hiram Powers. The dearest American
friends were, however, Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne and Mr. and Mrs. Story.

Music and art were among Browning's chief delights in Florence. George
William Curtis in describing the trip to Vallombrosa says that it was
part of their pleasure to sit in the dusky convent chapel while Browning
at the organ "chased a fugue of Master Hughes of Saxe Gotha, or dreamed
out upon twilight keys a faint throbbing toccata of Galuppi's." Modeling
in clay was even more satisfying as a personal resource. In the autumn
of 1860 Mrs. Browning wrote, "Robert has taken to modeling under Mr.
Story (at his studio) and is making extraordinary progress, turning to
account his studies in anatomy. He has copied already two busts, the
young Augustus and the Psyche, and is engaged on another, enchanted with
his new trade, working six hours a day." Some months later she added,
"The modeling combines body-work and soul-work, and the more tired he
has been, and the more his back ached, poor fellow, the more he has
exulted and been happy--'_no, nothing ever made him so happy before_.'"
He found, also, an unfailing pleasure in the study of great pictures.
And he was a buyer of pictures with a collector's delight in hunting out
the work of the unappreciated early Tuscan artists. Mrs. Orr says that
he owned at least one picture by each of the obscure artists mentioned
in "Old Pictures in Florence."

Mrs. Browning sometimes expressed regret that Browning should give
himself so unreserv