In 1885 Browning's son for the first time since his childhood was in Italy. With Venice he was in his father's phrase "simply infatuated." For his son's sake, but also with the thought of a place of retreat when perhaps years should bring with them feebleness of body, Browning entered into treaty with the owner, an Austrian and an absentee, for the purchase of the Manzoni Palazzo on the Grand Canal. He considered it the most beautiful house in Venice. Ruskin had described it in the "Stones of Venice" as "a perfect and very rich example of Byzantine Renaissance." It wholly captured the imagination of Browning. He not only already possessed it in his dream, but was busy opening new windows to admit the morning sunshine, and throwing out balconies, while leaving undisturbed the rich façade with its medallions in coloured marble. The dream was never realised. The vendor, Marchese Montecucculi, hoping to secure a higher price, drew back. Browning was about to force him by legal proceedings to fulfil his bargain, when it was discovered that the walls were cracked and the foundations were untrustworthy. To his great mortification the whole scheme had to be abandoned. It was not until his son in 1888, the year after his marriage, acquired possession of the Palazzo Rezzonico--"a stately temple of the rococo" is Mr Henry James's best word for it--that Browning ceased to think with regret of the lost Manzoni. At no time, however, did he design a voluntary abandonment of his life in England. When in full expectation of becoming the owner of the Palazzo Manzoni he wrote to Dr Furnivall: "Don't think I mean to give up London till it warns me away; when the hospitalities and innumerable delights grow a burden.... Pen will have sunshine and beauty about him, and every help to profit by these, while I and my sister have secured a shelter when the fogs of life grow too troublesome." FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 119: Some parts of what follows on _La Saisiaz_ have already appeared in print in a forgotten article of mine on that poem.] [Footnote 120: "An Artist's Reminiscences," by R. Lehmann (1894), p. 231.] [Footnote 121: Thus he declaimed to Robert Buchanan against Walt Whitman's writings, with which, according to Buchanan, he had little acquaintance.] [Footnote 122: "Autobiography of a Journalist," ii. 210.] [Footnote 123: From the first of three valuable articles by Mr Rossetti in _The Magazine of Art_ (1890) on "Portraits of Robert Browning."] [Footnote 124: Robert Browning, "Personalia," by Edmund Gosse, pp. 81, 82.] [Footnote 125: Vol. ii. pp. 88, 89.] [Footnote 126: Anna Swanwick, "A Memoir by Mary L. Bruce," pp. 130, 131. To Dr Furnivall he often spoke of Mrs Browning.] [Footnote 127: From Mrs Bronson's article in _The Century Magazine_, "Browning in Venice."] [Footnote 128: Related more fully in Mrs Bronson's article "Browning in Asolo" in _The Century Magazine_.] [Footnote 129: Mrs Bronson's "Browning in Venice" in _The Century Magazine_.]