第88章 Chapter 18(5)

'This is the fifth magnificent day --like magnificence,unfit for turning to much account --for we cannot walk till sunset.

I had two hours'walk,or nearly,before breakfast,however:

It is the loveliest country I ever had experience of,and we shall prolong our stay perhaps --apart from the concern for poor Cholmondeley and his friends,I should be glad to apprehend no long journey --besides the annoyance of having to pass Florence and Rome unvisited,for S.'s sake,I mean:

even Naples would have been with its wonderful environs a tantalizing impracticability.

'Your "Academy"came and was welcomed.The newspaper is like an electric eel,as one touches it and expects a shock.I am very anxious about the Archbishop who has always been strangely kind to me.'

He and his sister had accepted an invitation to spend the month of October with Mr.Cholmondeley at his villa in Ischia;but the party assembled there was broken up by the death of one of Mr.Cholmondeley's guests,a young lady who had imprudently attempted the ascent of a dangerous mountain without a guide,and who lost her life in the experiment.

A short extract from a letter to Mrs.Charles Skirrow will show that even in this complete seclusion Mr.Browning's patriotism did not go to sleep.There had been already sufficient evidence that his friendship did not;but it was not in the nature of his mental activities that they should be largely absorbed by politics,though he followed the course of his country's history as a necessary part of his own life.It needed a crisis like that of our Egyptian campaign,or the subsequent Irish struggle,to arouse him to a full emotional participation in current events.

How deeply he could be thus aroused remained yet to be seen.

'If the George Smiths are still with you,give them my love,and tell them we shall expect to see them at Venice,--which was not so likely to be the case when we were bound for Ischia.

As for Lady Wolseley --one dares not pretend to vie with her in anxiety just now;but my own pulses beat pretty strongly when I open the day's newspaper --which,by some new arrangement,reaches us,oftener than not,on the day after publication.Where is your Bertie?

I had an impassioned letter,a fortnight ago,from a nephew of mine,who is in the second division [battalion?]of the Black Watch;he was ordered to Edinburgh,and the regiment not dispatched,after all,--it having just returned from India;the poor fellow wrote in his despair "to know if I could do anything!"He may be wanted yet:though nothing seems wanted in Egypt,so capital appears to be the management.'

In 1879Mr.Browning published the first series of his 'Dramatic Idyls';and their appearance sent a thrill of surprised admiration through the public mind.In 'La Saisiaz'and the accompanying poems he had accomplished what was virtually a life's work.