[24:1] Asolo, in the Trevisan, is a very picturesque mediaeval fortified town, the ancient Acelum. It lies at the foot of a hill which is surrounded by the ruins of an old castle; before it stretches the great plain of the rivers Brenta and Piave, where Treviso, Vicenza, and Padua may be clearly recognised. The Alps encircle it, and in the distance rise the Euganean Hills. Venice can be discerned on the extreme eastern horizon, which ends in the blue line of the Adriatic. The village of Asolo is surrounded by a wall with mediaeval turrets.--BERDOE, _Browning Cyclopaedia_, p. 50. [26:1] Another line that I should like to omit, for the following words, wholly in character, say all that the ugly ones have boomed at us so incredibly. But here the rhyme-scheme provides a sort of unpardonable excuse. [49:1] Dr. Berdoe and Mrs. Orr. [52:1] All the talk between the students is in prose. [52:2] The long shoaly island in the Lagoon, immediately opposite Venice. [64:1] This song refers to Catherine of Cornaro, the last Queen of Cyprus, who came to her castle at Asolo when forced to resign her kingdom to the Venetians in 1489. "She lived for her people's welfare, and won their love by her goodness and grace." [68:1] "The name means _Blue-Fox_, and is a skit on the _Edinburgh Review_, which is bound in blue and fox" (Dr. Furnivall). [77:1] The dialogue between Monsignor and the steward is in prose. [77:2] Having made her Monsignor's niece, observes Mr. Chesterton, "Browning might just as well have made Sebald her long-lost brother, and Luigi a husband to whom she was secretly married." III MILDRED TRESHAM IN "A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON" I have said that, to my perception, the most characteristic mark in Browning's portrayal of women is his admiration for dauntlessness and individuality; and this makes explicable to me the failure which I constantly perceive in his dramatic presentment of her whose "innocence" (as the term is conventionally accepted) is her salient quality. The type, immortal and essential, is one which a poet must needs essay to show; and Browning, when he showed it through others, or in his own person hymned it, found words for its delineation which lift the soul as it were to morning skies. But when words are further called upon for its _expression_, when such a woman, in short, has to speak for herself, he rarely makes her do so without a certain consciousness of that especial trait in her--and hence her speech must of necessity ring false, for innocence knows nothing of itself.