der; but the very nature of the poem, its very fidelity to the
conditions and impressions of the moment, give it great value, though
these impressions were to be modified or canceled by those of a later
time; it should stand as it is, if given to the world at all. And the
courage to avow one's self mistaken is not the least of the forms that
moral courage may assume.

Regarding Pio Nono, Mrs. Browning is justified by history, notwithstanding
the many amiable and beautiful qualities of the Pontiff which forever
assure him a place in affection, if not in political confidence. Even his
most disastrous errors were the errors of judgment rather than those of
conscious intention. Pio Nono had the defects of his qualities, but loving
and reverent pilgrimages are constantly made to that little chapel behind
the iron railing in the old church of San Lorenzo _Fuori le Mura_ in Rome
(occupying the site of the church founded by Constantine), where his body
is entombed in a marble sarcophagus of the plainest design according to
his own instructions; but the interior of the vestibule is richly
decorated with mosaic paintings, the tribute of those who loved him.

Leopoldo was so kindly a man, so sincere in his work for the liberty of
the press and for other important reforms, that it is no marvel that Mrs.
Browning invested him with resplendence of gifts he did not actually
possess, but which it was only logical to feel that such a man must have.
Sometimes a too complete reliance on the _ex pede Herculem_ method of
judgment is misleading.

While the cause of Italian liberty had the entire sympathy of Robert
Browning, he was yet little moved to use it as a poetic motive. Professor
Hall Griffin suggests that it is possible that Browning deliberately chose
not to enter a field which his wife so particularly made her own; but that
is the less tenable as they never discussed their poetic work with each
other, and as a rule rarely showed to each other a single poem until it
was completed.

The foreign society in Florence at this time included some delightful
American sojourners, for, beside the Storys and Hiram Powers (an especial
friend of the Brownings), there were George S. Hillard, George William
Curtis, and the Marchesa d'Ossoli with her husband,--all of whom were
welcomed at Casa Guidi. The English society then in Florence was, as Mrs.
Browning wrote to Miss Mitford, "kept up much after the old English
models, with a proper disdain