fellow! Oh, I forgot to say that the _soi-disante_ invalid, once
emancipated from the paternal despotism, has had a wondrous revival,
or rather, a complete metamorphosis; walks, rides, eats, and drinks
like a young and healthy woman,--in fact, is a healthy woman of, I
believe, some five and thirty. But one word covers all; they are in
Love, who lends his own youth to everything."

The journey from Paris to Italy, if less comfortable and expeditious than
now, was certainly more romantic, and the Brownings, in company with Mrs.
Jameson and her niece, fared forth to Orleans, and thence to Avignon,
where they rested for two days, making a poetic pilgrimage to Vaucluse,
where Petrarca had sought solitude. "There at the very source of the
'_chiare, fresche e dolci acque_,'" records Mrs. MacPherson in her
biography of Mrs. Jameson, "Mr. Browning took his wife up in his arms, and
carrying her across through the shallow, curling waters, seated her on a
rock that rose throne-like in the middle of the stream. Thus Love and
Poetry took a new possession of the spot immortalized by Petrarca's
fancy."

From Marseilles they sailed to Livorno (Leghorn), the port only a few
miles from Pisa. The voyage was a delight to Mrs. Browning. She was
enchanted with the beautiful panorama of the Riviera as they sailed down
the coast, where the terraces of mountains rise, with old castles and
ruins often crowning their summits, and the white gleam of the hill-towns
against a background of blue sky. All the Spezzia region was haunted by
memories of Shelley; Lerici, where last he had lived, was plainly in view,
and they gazed sadly at Viareggio, encircled by pine woods and mountains,
where the body of the poet had been found. In Pisa they took rooms in the
Collegio Fernandino, in the Piazza del Duomo, in that corner of Pisa
wherein are grouped the Cathedral, the Baptistery, the Leaning Tower, and
the Campo Santo, all in this consummate beauty of silence and
seclusion,--a splendor of abandoned glory. All the stir of life (if,
indeed, one may dream of life in Pisa) is far away on the other side of
the city; to this corner is left the wraith-like haunted atmosphere, where
only shadows flit over the grass, and the sunset reflections linger on the
Tower. A statue of Cosimo di Medici was near; the Lanfranchi palace, where
Byron had lived, was not far away, on the banks of the Arno. They quite
preferred the Duomo and the Campo Santo to