[25] Senatore Villari.

[26] Mr. George Barrett.  The omitted passage describes an act of generosity by him to one of his younger brothers.

[27] Hardly a successful horoscope of the future Ambassador at Paris and Viceroy of India.

[28] Afterwards wife of Signor Carlo Botta, an Italian man of letters, with whom she returned to America and lived in New York.

[29] This refers to the death of the infant child of the Storys, with whom Mr. and Mrs. Browning were on intimate terms of friendship, as the previous letters show.

[30] According to Mr. R.B.  Browning, this is practically what has happened with Page’s portrait of Robert Browning (now in Venice).  The surface has become thick and waxy, and the portrait has almost disappeared.

[31] Author of ‘IX.  Poems, by V.’ (1840).

[32] This portrait is now in the possession of Mr. R.B.  Browning at Venice.

[33] I.e. ‘grandfather,’ a name by which Mr. Browning, senior, is frequently referred to in these letters.

[34] ‘Hush, hush!’

[35] For the subsequent fate of this picture, see note on p. 148, above. [Transcriber’s note:  Reference is to Footnote [30].]

[36] To Mr. Barrett.

[37] This letter is written in very faint ink.

[38] The news of Inkerman had come only a few days before.

[39] Mrs. Browning’s ‘Song for the Ragged Schools of London’ (Poetical Works, iv. 270) and her husband’s ‘The Twins’ were printed together as a small pamphlet for sale at Miss Arabella Barrett’s bazaar.  Mrs. Browning’s poem had been written before they left Rome.

[40] The horrors of the Crimean winter were now becoming known, which fully accounts for this outburst.

[41] The death of Mrs. Jameson’s husband in 1854 had left her in very straitened circumstances, which were ultimately relieved, in part, by a subscription among her friends and the admirers of her works.

[42] Dr. Braun’s Ruins and Museums of Rome (1854).

[43] The late Lord Leighton, P.R.A.

[44] The picture of Cimabue’s Madonna carried in procession through the streets of Florence.  It was exhibited in the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1855, and was bought by the Queen.

[45] In 1852.

CHAPTER IX

1855-1859

About a month after the date of the last letter, Mr. and Mrs. Browning left Italy for the second time.  As on the previous occasion (1851-2), their absence extended over two summers and a winter, the latter being spent in Paris, while portions of each summer were given up to visits to England.  Each of them was bringing home an important work for publication, Mr. Browning’s ‘Men and Women,’ containing much of his very greatest poetry, being passed through the press in 1855, while Mrs. Browning’s ‘Aurora Leigh,’ although more than half of it had been