The summer of 1900 Mrs. Moulton passed abroad, going before her London visit for the spring in Italy. She revisited familiar haunts in Rome and Florence, and again was steeped in the enchantment of Italy. In Rome she loved especially the gardens of the Villa Ludovisi; and indeed, something in the solemn spell she felt in the Eternal City appealed especially to her nature. The roses and the ruins, the antique and the modern; churches and altars and temples, and modern studios and society,--each, in turn, attracted her. She passed hours in the Vatican galleries; she was fond of driving on the Pincian in the late afternoon; she took a child's joy in the _festas_; she found delight in the works growing under the hand of artists. Of a visit to the studio of Mr. Story she related: "I was looking at a noble statue of Saul, and this, recalling to me the 'Saul' of Browning, led me to speak of the dead poet. Mr. Story then told me of his own last meeting with Browning, which was at Asolo. It was but a short time before Browning's death, and the two old friends were talking over all sorts of intimate things, and finally Mr. Story entered his carriage to drive away. Browning, who had bade him good-bye and turned away, suddenly came back, and reached his hand into the carriage, grasping that of Story, and looking into the sculptor's eyes exclaimed, 'Friends for forty years! Forty years without a break.' Then with a last good-bye he turned away, and the two friends never met again." * * * * * After the London visit, Mrs. Moulton went for the cure at Aix-les-Bains, perhaps as much for the delightful excursions of the neighborhood as in any hope of help for her almost constant ill-health. Thence she went in September to Paris, still in the full glory of its Exposition year. While in Paris she received from Professor Meiklejohn the comments upon her latest volume, "At the Wind's Will." He had fallen into the custom of going over her poems carefully, and of sending her his notes of admiration. "I still maintain," he wrote her on this occasion, "that your brothers are the Elizabethan lyrists, Shakespeare, Fletcher, Vaughan." Some of the comments were these: "In 'When Love is Young,' the line "Time has his will of every man, is in the strong style of the sixteenth century. "I think the 'Dead Men's Holiday' martial and glorious. "And the keen air stung all their lips like wine, is the kind of line when Nature has taken the pen into her own hand. "What an exquisite stanza is this in 'The Summer's Queen': "You sow the fields with lilies--wake the choir Of summer birds to chorus of delight; Yours is the year's deep rapture--yours the fire That burns the West, and ushers in the night. "The line "Yet done with striving, and foreclosed of care,