ypt, too, and
float down the mystical Nile, and stand in the shadow of the Pyramids?
All of it is more possible now, than walking up the street seemed to
me last year."

And he writes that he always felt her "Wine of Cyprus" poem to fill his
heart "with unutterable desires."

To book-lovers the question as to how many books may be taken on a
journey, or what volumes, indeed, may be left behind, is a vital one. The
reader will smile sympathetically at Miss Barrett's consultation with
Browning as to whether, if they do "achieve the peculiar madness of going
to Italy," they could take any books? And whether it would be well to so
arrange that they should not take duplicates? He advises the narrowest
compass for luggage. "We can return for what we want, or procure it
abroad," he says, made wise by his two Italian journeys; and he adds:

"I think the fewer books we take the better; they take up room,--and
the wise way always seemed to me to read at home, and open one's eyes
and see abroad. A critic somewhere mentioned that as my
characteristic--there were two other poets he named placed in novel
circumstances ... in a great wood, for instance, Mr. Trench would
begin opening books to see how woods were treated ... the other man
would set to writing poetry forthwith,--and R. B. would sit still and
learn how to write after! A pretty compliment, I thought that. But,
seriously, there must be a great library at Pisa (with that
University) and abroad they are delighted to facilitate such
matters.... I have read in a chamber of the Doges' palace at Venice
painted all over by Tintoretto, walls and ceiling, and at Rome there
is a library with a learned priest always kept ready 'to solve any
doubts that may arise.'"

Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett were married on September 12, 1846,
in the church of St. Pancras, Marylebone, the only witnesses being his
cousin, James Silverthorne, and her maid, Wilson. To have taken her
sisters into her confidence would have been to expose them to the fairly
insane wrath of her father. "I hate and loathe everything which is
clandestine--we both do, Robert and I," said Mrs. Browning later; but this
was the only possible way. Had Mr. Browning spoken to her father in the
usual manner, "he would have been forbidden the house without a moment's
scruple," she explained to a friend; "and I should have been incapacitated
from any a