It was at Devonshire Street that Bayard Taylor, the distinguished American poet and critic, made the acquaintance of the Brownings, and the record of his visit gives a picture of Browning at the age of thirty-nine, so clearly and firmly drawn that it ought not to be omitted here:  “In a small drawing-room on the first floor I met Browning, who received me with great cordiality.  In his lively, cheerful manner, quick voice, and perfect self-possession, he made the impression of an American rather than an Englishman.  He was then, I should judge, about thirty-seven years of age, but his dark hair was already streaked with gray about the temples.  His complexion was fair, with perhaps the faintest olive tinge, eyes large, clear, and gray, nose strong and well cut, mouth full and rather broad, and chin pointed, though not prominent.  His forehead broadened rapidly upwards from the outer angle of the eyes, slightly retreating.  The strong individuality which marks his poetry was expressed not only in his face and head, but in his whole demeanour.  He was about the medium height, strong in the shoulders, but slender at the waist, and his movements expressed a combination of vigour and elasticity.”  Mrs Browning with her slight figure, pale face, shaded by chestnut curls, and grave eyes of bluish gray, is also described; and presently entered to the American visitor Pen, a blue-eyed, golden-haired boy, who babbled his little sentences in Italian.

When, towards the close of September, Browning and his wife left London for Paris, Carlyle by his own request was their companion on the journey.  Mrs Browning feared that his irritable nerves would suffer from the vivacities of little Pen, but it was not so; he accepted with good humour the fact that the small boy had not yet learned, like his own Teufelsdroeckh, the Eternal No:  “Why, sir,” exclaimed Carlyle, “you have as many aspirations as Napoleon!"[47] At Dieppe, Browning, as Carlyle records, “did everything, fought for us, and we—­that is, the woman, the child and I—­had only to wait and be silent.”  At Paris in the midst of “a crowding, jangling, vociferous tumult, the brave Browning fought for us, leaving me to sit beside the woman.”  An apartment was found on the sunny side of the Avenue des Champs-Elysees, “pretty, cheerful, carpeted rooms,” far brighter and better than those of Devonshire Street, and when, to Browning’s amusement, his wife had moved every chair and table into the new and absolutely right position, they could rest and be thankful.  Carlyle spent several evenings with them, and repaid the assistance which he received in various difficulties from Browning’s command of the language, by picturesque conversations in his native speech:  “You come to understand perfectly,” wrote Mrs Browning, “when you know him, that his bitterness is only melancholy, and his scorn sensibility.”  A little later Browning’s father and sister spent some weeks in Paris.  Here, at all events, were perfect relations between the members of a family group; the daughter here was her father’s comrade with something even of a maternal instinct; and the grandfather discovered to his great satisfaction that his own talent for drawing had descended to his grandchild.