1879). Of a truth, after his own race and country--readers will at once
think of "Home Thoughts from the Sea," or the thrilling lines in "Home
Thoughts from Abroad," beginning--

"Oh, to be in England,
Now that April's there!"--

or perhaps, those lines in his earliest work--

"I cherish most
My love of England--how, her name, a word
Of hers in a strange tongue makes my heart beat!"

--it was of the mystic Orient or of the glowing South that he oftenest
thought and dreamed. With Heine he might have cried: "O Firdusi! O
Ischami! O Saadi! How do I long after the roses of Schiraz!" As for
Italy, who of all our truest poets has not loved her: but who has
worshipped her with so manly a passion, so loyal a love, as Browning?
One alone indeed may be mated with him here, she who had his heart of
hearts, and who lies at rest in the old Florentine cemetery within sound
of the loved waters of Arno. Who can forget his lines in "De Gustibus,"
"Open my heart and you will see, graved inside of it, Italy."

It would be no difficult task to devote a volume larger than the present
one to the descriptive analysis of none but the poems inspired by Italy,
Italian personages and history, Italian Painting, Sculpture,
Architecture, and Music. From Porphyria and her lover to Pompilia and
all the direful Roman tragedy wherein she is as a moon of beauty above
conflicting savage tides of passion, what an unparalleled gallery of
portraits, what a brilliant phantasmagoria, what a movement of intensest