of verse of Landor's:

SIENA, VILLA ALBERTI, July 18.

DEAR MISS FIELD:--I have only a minute to say that Mr. Landor wrote
these really pretty lines in your honor the other day,--you remember
on what circumstances they turn. I know somebody who is ready to
versify to double the extent at the same cost to you, and do his best,
too, and you also know.

Yours Affectionately Ever,

R. B.

The servant waits for this and stops the expansion of soul!

P. S. ... What do you mean by pretending that we are not the obliged,
the grateful people? Your stay had made us so happy, come and make us
happy again, says (or would say were she not asleep) my wife, and
yours also,--

R. B.

Of Landor, while they were in Siena, Mrs. Browning wrote to a friend that
Robert always said he owed more to him than any other contemporary, and
that Landor's genius insured him the gratitude of all artists. In these
idyllic days Mr. Story's young daughter, Edith, (now the Marchesa Peruzzi
di Medici, of Florence,) had a birthday, which the poetic group all united
to celebrate. In honor of the occasion Landor not only wrote a Latin poem
for the charming girl, but he appeared in a wonderful flowered waistcoat,
one that dated back to the days of Lady Blessington, to the amusement of
all the group. From Isa Blagden, who remained in her villa on
Bellosguardo, came almost daily letters to Mrs. Browning, who constantly
gained strength in the life-giving air of Siena, where they looked afar
over a panorama of purple hills, with scarlet sunsets flaming in the west,
the wind blowing nearly every day, as now. The Cave of the Winds, as
celebrated by Virgil, might well have been located in Siena.

Mrs. Browning and Mrs. Story would go back and forth to visit each other,
mounted on donkeys, their husbands walking beside, as they had done in the
Arcadian days at Bagni di Lucca. Odo Russell passed two days with the
Brownings on his way from Rome to London, to their great enjoyment.
Landor's health and peace of mind became so far restored that he was able
to "write awful Latin alcaics." Penini, happy in his great friends, the
Story children, Julian, Waldo, and Edith, and hardly less so with the
_contadini_, whom he helped to herd the sheep and drive in the
grape-carts, galloped through lanes on his own pony, insisted on reading
to his _contadini_ from the poems of Dall' Ongaro, and grew apace in
happines