judge by the photographs meanwhile. You know, Sarianna, how I used to
forbid the moustache. I insisted as long as I could, but all artists
were against me, and I suppose that the bare upper lip does not
harmonise with the beard. He keeps the hair now closer, and the beard is
pointed. . . . As to the moony whiteness of the beard, it is beautiful,
_I_ think, but then I think him all beautiful, and always. . . .'


Mr. Browning's old friend, Madame du Quaire,* came to Rome in December.
She had visited Florence three years before, and I am indebted to her
for some details of the spiritualist controversy by which its English
colony was at that time divided. She was now a widow, travelling with
her brother; and Mr. Browning came whenever he could, to comfort her in
her sorrow, and, as she says, discourse of nature, art, the beautiful,
and all that 'conquers death'. He little knew how soon he would need the
same comfort for himself. He would also declaim passages from his wife's
poems; and when, on one of these occasions, Madame du Quaire had said,
as so many persons now say, that she much preferred his poetry to hers,
he made this characteristic answer, to be repeated in substance some
years afterwards to another friend: 'You are wrong--quite wrong--she has
genius; I am only a painstaking fellow. Can't you imagine a clever sort
of angel who plots and plans, and tries to build up something--he wants
to make you see it as he sees it--shows you one point of view, carries
you off to another, hammering into your head the thing he wants you to
understand; and whilst this bother is going on God Almighty turns you
off a little star--that's the difference between us. The true creative
power is hers, not mine.'

* Formerly Miss Blackett, and sister of the member for New
Castle.