warmth to his claims on her gratitude and regard. More than one joint
letter from herself and her husband commemorates this new phase of the
intimacy; one especially interesting was written from Florence in 1858,
in answer to the announcement by Mr. Fox of his election for Oldham; and
Mr. Browning's contribution, which is very characteristic, will appear
in due course.

Either this or the preceding summer brought Mr. Browning for the first
time into personal contact with an early lover of his works: Mr. D.
G. Rossetti. They had exchanged letters a year or two before, on the
subject of 'Pauline', which Rossetti (as I have already mentioned) had
read in ignorance of its origin, but with the conviction that only the
author of 'Paracelsus' could have produced it. He wrote to Mr. Browning
to ascertain the fact, and to tell him he had admired the poem so much
as to transcribe it whole from the British Museum copy. He now called
on him with Mr. William Allingham; and doubly recommended himself to the
poet's interest by telling him that he was a painter. When Mr. Browning
was again in London, in 1855, Rossetti began painting his portrait,
which he finished in Paris in the ensuing winter.

The winter of 1852-3 saw the family once more in Florence, and at Casa
Guidi, where the routine of quiet days was resumed. Mrs. Browning
has spoken in more than one of her letters of the comparative social
seclusion in which she and her husband had elected to live. This
seclusion was much modified in later years, and many well-known English
and American names become associated with their daily life. It referred
indeed almost entirely to their residence in Florence, where they found
less inducement to enter into society than in London, Paris, and Rome.
But it is on record that during the fifteen years of his married life,
Mr. Browning never dined away from home, except on one occasion--an