Mr. W. W. Story writes to me that he spent three days with the poet at this time, and that the latter seemed, except for a slight asthma, to be as vigorous in mind and body as ever. Thence, later in the autumn, he went to Venice, to join his son and daughter-in-law at the home where he was "to have a corner for his old age," the beautiful Palazzo Rezzonico, on the Grand Canal. He was never happier, more sanguine, more joyous, than here. He worked for three or four hours each morning, walked daily for about two hours, crossed occasionally to the Lido with his sister, and in the evenings visited friends or went to the opera. But for some time past, his heart -- always phenomenally slow in its action, and of late ominously intermittent -- had been noticeably weaker. As he suffered no pain and little inconvenience, he paid no particular attention to the matter. Browning had as little fear of death as doubt in God. In a controlling Providence he did indeed profoundly believe. He felt, with Joubert, that "it is not difficult to believe in God, if one does not worry oneself to define Him."* -- * "Browning's `orthodoxy' brought him into many a combat with his rationalistic friends, some of whom could hardly believe that he took his doctrine seriously. Such was the fact, however; indeed, I have heard that he once stopped near an open-air assembly which an atheist was haranguing, and, in the freedom of his `incognito', gave strenuous battle to the opinions uttered. To one who had spoken of an expected `Judgment Day' as a superstition, I heard him say: `I don't see that. Why should there not be a settling day in the universe, as when a master settles with his workmen at the end of the week?' There was something in his tone and manner which suggested his dramatic conception of religious ideas and ideals." -- Moncure D. Conway. -- "How should externals satisfy my soul?" was his cry in "Sordello", and it was the fundamental strain of all his poetry, as the fundamental motive is expressible in "-- a loving worm within its sod Were diviner than a loveless god Amid his worlds" -- love being with him the golden key wherewith to unlock the world of the universe, of the soul, of all nature. He is as convinced of the two absolute facts of God and Soul as Cardinal Newman in writing of "Two and two only, supreme and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator." Most fervently he believes that "Haply for us the ideal dawn shall break . . . And set our pulse in tune with moods divine" --