attracted thither by the invitation of a friend. The country interested him,
but does not seem to have deeply or permanently engaged his attention.
That, however, his Russian experiences were not fruitless is manifest
from the remarkably picturesque and technically very interesting poem,
"Ivan Ivanovitch" (the fourth of the `Dramatic Idyls', 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