[47] This refers to a note from Mrs. Browning to Miss Haworth, inquiring whether it was true that she was engaged to be married.

[48] The notorious medium, prototype of Mr. Browning’s ‘Sludge.’  He subsequently changed his name to Home.

[49] An attempted revision of the poem, subsequently abandoned, as explained in the preface addressed to M. Milsand in 1863.

[50] Mr. Browning and the boy had been suffering from sore throats.

[51] For the substance of this information I am indebted to Mr. Charles Aldrich, to whom the letter was presented by Mrs. Kinney, and through whose kindness it is here printed.  The original now forms part of the Aldrich collection in the Historical Department of Iowa, U.S.A.

[52] The husband of Wilson, Mrs. Browning’s maid.

[53] An odd commentary on this ‘poem’ may be found in Mrs. Orr’s Life of Robert Browning, p. 219.

[54] See Aurora Leigh, p. 276: 

    ’I found a house at Florence on the hill
    Of Bellosguardo.  ’Tis a tower which keeps
    A post of double observation o’er
    That valley of Arno (holding as a hand
    The outspread city) straight toward Fiesole
    And Mount Morello and the setting sun,
    The Vallombrosan mountains opposite,
    Which sunrise fills as full as crystal cups
    Turned red to the brim because their wine is red. 
    No sun could die nor yet be born unseen
    By dwellers at my villa:  morn and eve
    Were magnified before us in the pure
    Illimitable space and pause of sky,
    Intense as angels’ garments blanched with God,
    Less blue than radiant.  From the outer wall
    Of the garden drops the mystic floating grey
    Of olive trees (with interruptions green
    From maize and vine), until ’tis caught and torn
    Upon the abrupt black line of cypresses
    Which signs the way to Florence.  Beautiful
    The city lies along the ample vale,
    Cathedral, tower and palace, piazza and street,
    The river trailing like a silver cord
    Through all, and curling loosely, both before
    And after, over the whole stretch of land
    Sown whitely up and down its opposite slopes
    With farms and villas.’

Miss Blagden’s villa was the Villa Bricchieri, which is alluded to elsewhere in the letters.

[55] A line or two has been cut off the bottom of the sheet at this place.

[56] The Elements of Drawing.

[57] Orsini’s attempt on the life of the Emperor Napoleon on January 14, 1858.

[58] Referring to the Conspiracy Bill introduced by Lord Palmerston after the Orsini conspiracy against Napoleon in January 1858, and to the outcry against it, as an act of subservience to France, which led to Palmerston’s fall.  Count Walewski was the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, and his despatch, alluded to below, called the attention of the English Government to the shelter afforded by England to conspirators of the type of Orsini.