Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/200

184 dilettante artistic love, but a deep personal attachment for the land of her home and her affections. All who had written or spoken or worked in behalf of Italy were as welcome to her as friends of long standing; while for those who had exerted their powers against Italy, as open enemies or false friends, she felt as personal an enmity as it was possible for that gentle nature to feel against any living being. One who knew her towards the end of her life has told me that her last words to him, at their parting, were to thank him, with thanks that were little merited, because he had done something for the cause of Italy. Higher thanks, however undeserved, she knew none to give.

"This being so, it would have been strange had she not shared the common Italian feeling about the Emperor of the French. . . . In this world men, after all, look to the facts, not to motives, and . . . you cannot escape the broad fact that, in the hour of Italy's need (before, mind you, not after the victory) it was the Emperor Napoleon alone who came forward to rescue Italy, who overthrew the tyranny of Austria, and who, willingly or unwillingly, thereby created the Italian kingdom. . . . This is the one simple fact which the Italians have not forgotten and cannot forget; and of this fact Mrs. Browning's mind took hold with all the ardour of her love for Italy, and all the intensity of her poet's feelings."

Sick at heart and bodily ill, Mrs. Browning spent a weary, suffering summer. In July she removed with her husband to Siena, and spent the autumn there. Both in Siena and in Florence, whither they returned for a few days' rest before proceeding to Rome for the winter, the Brownings were much interested in the troubles and eccentricities of Walter Savage Landor.