Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/141

Rh her across the shallow, curling water, seated her on a rock that rose throne-like in the middle of the stream. Thus love and poetry took a new possession of the spot immortalised by Petrarch's loving fancy." Mrs. Browning herself alluded to the pilgrimage to Vaucluse, "where the living water gushes up," she says, "into the face of the everlasting rock, and there is no green thing except Petrarch's memory. Yes there is, the water itself—that is brightly green—and there are one or two little cypresses."

Three weeks were spent by Mrs. Jameson and her niece travelling with the Brownings, and another three weeks with them in Pisa, where, says Mrs. Macpherson, "the poet pair, who were our closest associates, added all that was wanted to the happiness of this time." Well may Mrs. Macpherson, who was only sixteen then, have recalled those times and their associated memories as a golden oasis in her existence.

The Brownings settled in Pisa for several months, intending to winter there, it having been recommended as a mild, suitable residence for Mrs. Browning. In a letter to Horne, dated December 4th, she says:—"We are left to ourselves in a house built by Vasari, and within sight of the Leaning Tower and the Duomo, to enjoy a most absolute seclusion and plan the work fit for it. I am very happy and very well. . . . We have heard a mass (a musical mass for the dead) in the Campo Santo, and achieved a due pilgrimage to the Lanfranchi Palace to walk in the footsteps of Byron and Shelley. . . . A statue of your Cosmo looks down from one of the great piazzas we often pass through on purpose to remind us of you. This city is very beautiful and full of repose—'asleep in the sun,' as