is unspoken. I should have been most happy to see you if but for a
minute--and if next Wednesday, I might take your hand for a moment.--

But you would concede that, if it were right, remembering what is now
very old friendship. May God bless you for ever (The signature has been
cut off.)


In the autumn of 1844 Mr. Browning set forth for Italy, taking ship, it
is believed, direct to Naples. Here he made the acquaintance of a young
Neapolitan gentleman who had spent most of his life in Paris; and they
became such good friends that they proceeded to Rome together. Mr.
Scotti was an invaluable travelling companion, for he engaged their
conveyance, and did all such bargaining in their joint interest as the
habits of his country required. 'As I write,' Mr. Browning said in a
letter to his sister, 'I hear him disputing our bill in the next room.
He does not see why we should pay for six wax candles when we have
used only two.' At Rome they spent most of their evenings with an
old acquaintance of Mr. Browning's, then Countess Carducci, and she
pronounced Mr. Scotti the handsomest man she had ever seen. He certainly
bore no appearance of being the least prosperous. But he blew out his
brains soon after he and his new friend had parted; and I do not think
the act was ever fully accounted for.

It must have been on his return journey that Mr. Browning went to
Leghorn to see Edward John Trelawney, to whom he carried a letter of
introduction. He described the interview long afterwards to Mr. Val
Prinsep, but chiefly in his impressions of the cool courage which Mr.
Trelawney had displayed during its course. A surgeon was occupied all
the time in probing his leg for a bullet which had been lodged there