my
respect and esteem--understand me literally, and give me only the
precise information I want--not one half-syllable about accommodation
in your house!

"I ask because when I and Sarianna went there years ago, the old
Locanda on the Square lay in ruins, and we put up at a rougher inn in
the town's self. I dare say the principal hotel is rebuilt by this
time, or rather has grown somewhat old. Probably you are there indeed.
Just tell us exactly. Pen is trying his best to entice us his way,
which means to Primiero and Venice; but the laziness of age is
subduing me, and how I shrink from the 'middle passage,'--all that day
and night whirling from London to Basle, with the eleven or twelve
hours to Milan. Milan opens on Paradise, but the getting to Milan!
Perhaps I shall turn northward and go to Scotland after all. Still,
dear and good one, tell me what I ask. After the requisite information
you will please tell me accurately how you are, how that wicked
gad-a-bout, Edith, is, and where; and what else you can generously
afford of news,--news Venetian, I mean...."

Later the poet writes:

"... I trust that as few clouds as may be may trouble the blue of our
month at Asolo; I shall bring your book full of verses for a final
overhauling on the spot where, when I first saw it, inspiration seemed
to steam up from the very ground.

"And so Edith is (I conjecture, I hope, rightly) to be with you; won't
I show her the little ridge in the ruin where one talks to the echo to
greatest advantage."

From Milan Browning wrote to Mrs. Bronson:

DEAREST FRIEND,--It is indeed a delight to expect a meeting so soon.
Be good and mindful of how simple our tastes and wants are, and how
they have been far more than satisfied by the half of what you
provided to content them. I shall have nothing to do but to enjoy your
company, not even the little business of improving my health since
that seems perfect. I hear you do not walk as in the old days. I count
upon setting that right again. O Venezia, benedetta!

It was with greater enjoyment, apparently, than ever before even, that Mr.
Browning turned to the Asolo of his "Pippa Passes" and "Sordello." Mrs.
Bronson, in her brilliant and sympathetic picturing of the poet, speaks of
his project "to raise a tower like Pippa's near a certain property in
Asolo, where he a