each other so constantly. The poems of Matthew Arnold were published that
winter, among which Mrs. Browning especially liked "The Deserted Merman"
and "The Sick King of Bokkara," and about this time the authorship of
"Jane Eyre" was revealed, and Charlotte Bronte discovered under the
_nom-de-plume_ of Currer Bell.

During the time that Mrs. Browning had passed at Torquay, before her
marriage, she had met Theodosia Garrow, whose family were on intimate
terms with Mr. Kenyon. Miss Barrett and Miss Garrow became friends, and
when they met again it was in Florence, Miss Garrow having become the wife
of Thomas Adolphus Trollope. Hiram Powers in these days was domiciled in
the Via dei Serragli, in close proximity to Casa Guidi, and he frequently
dropped in to have his morning coffee with the Brownings.

[Illustration: THE PALAZZO VECCHIO, FLORENCE.]

Landor had been for some years in his villa on the Fiesolean slope, not
far from Maiano, where Leigh Hunt had wandered, dreaming of Boccaccio. Two
scenes of the "Decameron" were laid in this region, and the deep ravine
at the foot of one of the neighboring hills was the original of the
"Valley of the Ladies." Not far away had been the house of Machiavelli;
and nestling among the blue hills was the little white village of
Settignano, where Michael Angelo was born. Leigh Hunt had been on terms of
the most cordial intimacy with Landor, whom he described as "living among
his paintings and hospitalities"; and Landor had also been visited by
Emerson, and by Lord and Lady Blessington, by Nathaniel Parker Willis
(introduced by Lady Blessington), by Greenough, Francis and Julius Hare,
and by that universal friend of every one, Mr. Kenyon, all before the
arrival of the Brownings in Florence. Landor had, however, been again in
England for several years, where Browning and Miss Barrett had both met
and admired him, as has been recorded.

The Florence on which the Brownings had entered differed little from the
Florence of to-day. The Palazzo Pitti, within a stone's throw of Casa
Guidi, stood in the same cyclopean massiveness as now; the piazza and
church of San Miniato, cypress-shaded, rose from the sweep of the hills,
and the miraculous crucifix of San Giovanni Gualberto was then, as now, an
object of pilgrimage. The wonder of the Italian sunsets, that "perished
silently of their own glory," burned away over the far hills, and the
strange, lofty tower of the Palazzo Vecchio caught the