a most charming, simple, straight-forward, genial American,
as simple as the man of genius he has proved himself needs be. He
sometimes comes to talk and take coffee with us, and we like him much.
His wife is an amiable woman, and they have heaps of children from
thirteen downwards, all, except the eldest boy, Florentines, and the
sculptor has eyes like a wild Indian's, so black and full of light.
You would scarcely wonder if they clave the marble without the help of
his hands. We have seen besides the Hoppners, Lord Byron's friends at
Venice, you will remember. And Miss Boyle, the niece of the Earl
of Cork, and authoress and poetess on her own account, having been
introduced once to Robert in London at Lady Morgan's, has hunted
us out and paid us a visit. A very vivacious little person, with
sparkling talk enough. Lord Holland has lent her mother and herself
the famous Careggi Villa, where Lorenzo the Magnificent died, and they
have been living there among the vines these four months. These and a
few American visitors are all we have seen at Florence. We live a
far more solitary life than you do, in your village and with
the 'prestige' of the country wrapping you round. Pray give your
sympathies to our Pope, and call him a great man. For liberty
to spring from a throne is wonderful, but from a papal throne is
miraculous. That's my doxy. I suppose dear Mr. Kenyon and Mr. Chorley
are still abroad. French books I get at, but at scarcely a new one,
which is very provoking. At Rome it may be better. I have not read
'Martin' even, since the first volume in England, nor G. Sand's
'Lucretia.'

May God bless you. Think sometimes of your ever affectionate

E.B.B.

[Footnote 167: In Tennyson's _Princess_.]

[Footnote 168: A picture of the same scene in verse will be found in
_Casa Guidi Windows_, part i.:

'Shall I say
What made my heart beat with exulting love
A few weeks back,' &c.]

The 'month' lengthened itself out, and December found the Brownings
still in Florence, and definitely established there for the winter.
During this time, although there is no allusion to it in the letters,
Mrs. Browning must have been engaged in writing the first part of
'Casa Guidi Windows' with its hopeful aspirations for Italian liberty.
It was, indeed, a time when hope seemed justifiable. Pius IX. had
ascended the papal throne--then a temporal as well as a spiritual
sovereignty--in June 1846, with the reputation of being anxious