might have been transferred to England, to lie with his among the great company of English poets in which they had earned their places.  But it was thought better, on the whole, to leave them undisturbed in the land and in the city which she had loved so well, and which had been her home so long.  In life and in death she had been made welcome in Florence.  The Italians, as her husband said, seemed to have understood her by an instinct; and upon the walls of Casa Guidi is a marble slab, placed there by the municipality of Florence, and bearing an inscription from the pen of the Italian poet, Tommaseo:—­

QUI SCRISSE E MORI ELISABETTA BARRETT BROWNING CHE IN CUORE DI DONNA CONCILIAVA SCIENZA DI DOTTO E SPIRITO DI POETA E FECE DEL SUO VERSO AUREO ANELLO FRA ITALIA E INGHILTERRA.  PONE QUESTA LAPIDE FIRENZE GRATA 1861.

It is with words adapted from this memorial that her husband, seven years later, closed his own great poem, praying that the ‘ring,’ to which he likens it, might but—­

               ’Lie outside thine, Lyric Love,
    Thy rare gold ring of verse (the poet praised),
    Linking our England to his Italy.’

FOOTNOTES: 

[77] This refers to the ‘Curse for a Nation.’

[78] See note on p. 387. [Transcriber’s note:  Reference is to Footnote [87].]

[79] Mrs. Jameson died on March 17, 1860.

[80] The surrender to France of Savoy and Nice, which, though propounded by Napoleon to Cavour before the war, was only definitely demanded at the end of February 1860.

[81] Rome, it will be remembered, was still under Papal government.

[82] The French general appointed by the Pope in April, 1860, to command the Papal army.

[83] The Italian poet.

[84] So in the original, but probably a slip for ‘goes abroad.’

[85] The Cornhill Magazine, the first number of which was published, under Thackeray’s editorship, in December 1859.  Mrs. Browning’s poem, ’A Musical Instrument’ (Poetical Works, v. 10), was published in the number for July 1860.

[86] His ‘Framley Parsonage’ was then appearing in the Cornhill.

[87] The championship trophy of the prize ring.  The great fight between Sayers and Heenan had just taken place (April 17, 1860), and had engrossed the interest of all England, to say nothing of America.

[88] It is not clear what this can be.  Browning published nothing between 1855 (’Men and Women’) and 1864 (’Dramatis Personae’), and there is no long poem in the latter, unless ‘A Death in the Desert’ and ‘Sludge the Medium’ may be so described.  The latter is not unlikely to have been written now, when Home’s performances were rampant.  His next really long poem was ‘The Ring and the Book,’ which certainly had not yet been begun.

[89] A novel by Miss Blagden.

[90] Garibaldi was now engaged in his Neapolitan campaign.  Sicily (except Messina) had been cleared of the Neapolitan troops by the end of July, and on August 19 Garibaldi had landed in Calabria.