'Robert, after sharing the ecstasy, grows uncomfortable and nervous, unable to eat or sleep, and poor Wilson still worse, in a miserable condition of sickness and headache. Alas for these mortal Venices, so exquisite and so bilious. Therefore I am constrained away from my joys by sympathy, and am forced to be glad that we are going away on Friday. For myself, it did not affect me at all. Take the mild, soft, relaxing climate--even the scirocco does not touch me. And the baby grows gloriously fatter in spite of everything. . . . As for Venice, you can't get even a "Times", much less an "Athenaeum". We comfort ourselves by taking a box at the opera (a whole box on the grand tier, mind) for two shillings and eightpence, English. Also, every evening at half-past eight, Robert and I are sitting under the moon in the great piazza of St. Mark, taking excellent coffee and reading the French papers.' If it were possible to draw more largely on Mrs. Browning's correspondence for this year, it would certainly supply the record of her intimacy, and that of her husband, with Margaret Fuller Ossoli. A warm attachment sprang up between them during that lady's residence in Florence. Its last evenings were all spent at their house; and, soon after she had bidden them farewell, she availed herself of a two days' delay in the departure of the ship to return from Leghorn and be with them one evening more. She had what seemed a prophetic dread of the voyage to America, though she attached no superstitious importance to the prediction once made to her husband that he would be drowned; and learned when it was too late to change her plans that her presence there was, after all, unnecessary. Mr. Browning was deeply affected by the news of her death by shipwreck, which took place on July 16, 1850; and wrote an account of his acquaintance with her, for publication by her friends. This also, unfortunately, was lost. Her son was of the same age as his, little more than a year old; but she left a token of the friendship which might some day have united them, in a small Bible inscribed to the baby Robert, 'In memory of Angelo Ossoli.' The intended journey to England was delayed for Mr. Browning by the painful associations connected with his mother's death; but in the summer of 1851 he found courage to go there: and then, as on each succeeding visit paid to London with his wife, he commemorated his marriage in a manner all his own. He went to the church in which it had been solemnized, and kissed the paving-stones in front of the door. It needed all this love to comfort Mrs. Browning in the estrangement from her father which was henceforth to be accepted as final. He had held no communication with her since her marriage, and she knew that it was not forgiven; but she had cherished a hope that he would so far relent towards her as to kiss her child, even if he would not see her. Her prayer to this effect remained, however, unanswered.