were the chief attractions, prepared the way for many subsequent visits to what he afterwards called “the dearest place in the world.”  Everything in Venice, says Mrs Bronson, charmed him:  “He found grace and beauty in the popolo whom he paints so well in the Goldoni sonnet.  The poorest street children were pretty in his eyes.  He would admire a carpenter or a painter, who chanced to be at work in the house, and say to me ’See the fine poise of the head ... those well-cut features.  You might fancy that man in the crimson robe of a Senator as you see them in Tintoret’s canvas.’”

But these are reminiscences of later days.  It was in 1880 that Browning made the acquaintance of his American friend Mrs Arthur Bronson, whose kind hospitalities added to the happiness of his visits to Asolo and to Venice, who received, as if it were a farewell gift, the dedication of his last volume, and who, not long before her death in 1901, published interesting articles on “Browning in Asolo” and “Browning in Venice” in The Century Magazine.  The only years in which he did not revisit Venice were 1882, 1884 and 1886, and in each of these years his absence was occasioned by some unforeseen mis-adventure.  In 1882 the floods were out, and he proceeded no farther than Verona.  Could he have overcome the obstacles and reached Venice, he feared that he might have been incapable of enjoying it.  For the first time in his life he was lamed by what he took for an attack of rheumatism, “caught,” he says, “just before leaving St Pierre de Chartreuse, through my stupid inadvertence in sitting with a window open at my back—­reading the Iliad, all my excuse!—­while clad in a thin summer suit, and snow on the hills and bitterness every where."[129] In 1884 his sister’s illness at first forbade travel to so considerable a distance.  The two companions were received by another American friend, Mrs Bloomfield Moore, at the Villa Berry, St Moritz, and when she was summoned across the Atlantic, at her request they continued to occupy her villa.  The season was past; the place deserted; but the sun shone gloriously.  “We have walked every day,” Browning wrote at the end of September, “morning and evening—­afternoon I should say—­two or three hours each excursion, the delicious mountain air surpassing any I was ever privileged to breathe.  My sister is absolutely herself again, and something over:  I was hardly in want of such doctoring."[130] Two years later Miss Browning was ailing again, and they did not venture farther than Wales.  At the Hand Hotel, Llangollen, they were at no great distance from Brintysilio, the summer residence of their friends Sir Theodore and Lady Martin—­in earlier days the Lady Carlisle and Colombe of Browning’s plays.[131] Mrs Orr notices that Browning, Liberal as he declared himself, was now very favourably impressed by the services to society of the English country gentleman.  “Talk of abolishing that class of men!” he exclaimed, “they are the salt