“Rolling or sliding down the precipitous path” they returned to Florence in a morning glory, very merry, says Mrs Browning, for disappointed people.  Shelter from the glare of August being desirable, a suite of comparatively cool rooms in the Palazzo Guidi were taken; they were furnished in good taste, and opened upon a terrace—­“a sort of balcony terrace which ... swims over with moonlight in the evenings.”  From Casa Guidi windows—­and before long Mrs Browning was occupied with the first part of her poem—­something of the life of Italy at a moment of peculiar interest could be observed.  Europe in the years 1847 and 1848 was like a sea broken by wave after wave of Revolutionary passion.  Browning and his wife were ardently liberal in their political feeling; but there were differences in the colours of their respective creeds and sentiments; Mrs Browning gave away her imagination to popular movements; she was also naturally a hero-worshipper; she hoped more enthusiastically than he was wont to do; she was more readily depressed; the word “liberty” for her had an aureole or a nimbus which glorified all its humbler and more prosaic meanings.  Browning, although in this year 1847 he made a move towards an appointment as secretary to a mission to the Vatican, at heart cared little for men in groups or societies; he cared greatly for individuals, for the growth of individual character.  He had faith in a forward movement of society; but the law of social evolution, as he conceived it, is not in the hands of political leaders or ministers of state.  He valued liberty chiefly because each man here on earth is in process of being tested, in process of being formed, and liberty is the condition of a man’s true probation and development.  Late in life he was asked to give his answer to the question:  “Why am I a Liberal?” and he gave it succinctly in a sonnet which he did not reprint in any edition of his Works, although it received otherwise a wide circulation.  It may be cited here as a fragment of biography: 

    “Why?” Because all I haply can and do,
      All that I am now, all I hope to be,—­
      Whence comes it save from fortune setting free
    Body and soul the purpose to pursue,
    God traced for both?  If fetters, not a few,
      Of prejudice, convention, fall from me,
      These shall I bid men—­each in his degree
    Also God-guided—­bear, and gladly too?

    But little do or can the best of us: 
      That little is achieved through Liberty. 
    Who then dares hold—­emancipated thus—­
      His fellow shall continue bound?  Not I
    Who live, love, labour freely, nor discuss
      A brother’s right to freedom.  That is “Why."[40]