Lerici; passed through olive woods and vineyards,
and rested in "a sort of eagle's nest" at the highest habitable point of
the Baths of Lucca. Here the baby's great cheeks grew rosier; Browning
gained in spirits; and his wife was able "to climb the hills and help
him to lose himself in the forests." When they wandered at noon except
for some bare-footed peasant or some monk with the rope around his
waist, it was complete solitude; and on moonlit nights they sat by the
waterfalls in an atmosphere that had the lightness of mountain air
without its keenness. On one occasion they climbed by dry torrent
courses five miles into the mountains, baby and all, on horseback and
donkeyback--"such a congregation of mountains; looking alive in the
stormy light we saw them by." It was certainly a blessed transformation
of the prostrate invalid in the upper room at Wimpole Street. Setting
aside his own happiness, Browning could feel with regard to her and his
deep desire to serve her, that he had seen of the travail of his soul,
and in this matter was satisfied.

The weeks at Siena of the year 1850 were not quite so prosperous.
During that summer Mrs Browning had been seriously ill. When
sufficiently recovered she was carried by her husband to a villa in the
midst of vines and olives, a mile and a half or two miles outside Siena,
which commanded a noble prospect of hills and plain. At first she could
only remain seated in the easy-chair which he found for her in the city.
For a day there was much alarm on behalf of the boy, now able to run
about, who lay with heavy head and glassy eyes in a half-stupor; but
presently he was astir again, and his "singing voice" was heard in the
house and garden. Mrs Browning in the fresh yet warm September air
regained her strength. Before returning to Florence, they spent a week
in the city to see the churches and the pictures by Sodoma. Even little
Wiedemann screamed for church-interiors and developed remarkable
imitative pietisms of a theatrical kind. "It was as well," said
Browning, "to have the eyeteeth and the Puseyistical crisis over
together."

This comment, although no more than a passing word spoken in play, gives
a correct indication of Browning's feeling, fully shared in by his wife,
towards the religious movement in England which was altering the face of
the established Church. "Puseyism" was for them a kind of child's play
which unfortunately had religion for its play-ground; they viewed