gray sea, and not a human
habitation."

[Illustration: MONUMENT TO DANTE, IN THE PIAZZA DI SANTA CROCE.

STEFANO RICCI.

"_....The architect and hewer_
_Did pile the empty marbles as thy tomb._"

Casa Guidi Windows.]

It was during this _villeggiatura_ that Mrs. Browning, one morning after
their breakfast, with shy sweetness, tucked the pages of the "Sonnets"
into her husband's pocket and swiftly vanished. Robert Barrett Browning,
who, as already noted, gave the history of this poetic interlude _viva
voce_, has also recorded it in writing, as follows:

What earthly vocabulary can offer fit words in which to speak of
celestial beauty? How these exquisite "Sonnets" tell the story of that
romance of Genius and Love,--from the woman's first thrill of interest in
the poetry of an unknown poet, to the hour when he, "the princely giver,"
brought to her "the gold and purple" of his heart

"For such as I to take or leave withal,"

and she questions

"Can it be right to give what I can give?"

with the fear that her delicacy of health should make such gifts

"Be counted with the ungenerous."

But she thinks of how he "was in the world a year ago," and thus she
drinks

"Of life's great cup of wonder! Wonderful,
Never to feel thee thrill the day or night
With personal act or speech,--

* * * * *

... Atheists are as dull,
Who cannot guess God's presence out of sight."

And the questioning,--

"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach,...
... I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death."

Returning to Florence in October, Browning soon began the preparation for
his poem, "Christmas Eve and Easter Day," and Mrs. Browning arranged for a
new one-volume edition of her poems, to include "The Seraphim," and the
poems that had appeared in the same volume, and also the poems appearing
in 1844, many of them revised.

Marchesa d'Ossoli, whom the Brownings had heretofore known as Margaret
Fuller, surprised them by appearing in Florence with her husband and
child, the private marriage having taken place some two years before. The
Greenoughs, the Storys, and Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Pearse Cranch were
all in Florence, and were all habitues of Casa Guidi. Mr. Cranch, poet,
painter, and musician, was the