stories. A few steps brought me to the house in which, as the tablet on the wall says, lived the "Somma Poeta," who here wrote his last work, "Asolando."

"What a curious place to select," was my first thought, as I stood at the door of the queer old house. I walked up twelve or fifteen hard stone steps, grasping the banister to guide myself in the dark, and was soon warmly welcomed by Signora Nina Tabacchi, as, passing through the kitchen, I was ushered into

sibly screen the mysteries of culinary processes from the poet's eye, but his ear must have been caught by occasional sounds of hacking and chopping, and certainly no kettle could have boiled, no wood could crackle, or incense arise from that adjacent hearth, without making itself distinctly noticeable. Such was his study and his drawing-room, a multum in parvo, about twelve feet square.

The furniture is of the good old lodg

ings type, that is, as regards the style only, for Signora Tabacchi would not tolerate a flaw, a spot, or a tarnish, as do some of the older school of landladies. There is a large round pedestal table with a red cloth table-cover, inoffensive in its pattern; one-half was devoted to his papers; on the other luncheon was served for his sister and himself. A full-length sofa, uncompromisingly hard, takes up the greater part of one wall; a kind of sideboard stands opposite. On the chiffonnier, between the two windows, rests the lookingglass, and half a dozen mahogany chairs, cane-bottomed and severe-backed, but of a good old design, complete the arrangements. On the flesh-colored walls hang a series of prints, illustrating events in the history of Venice. Doges are disporting themselves in most conventional attitudes, the vanquished are kneeling before the victors, and one has a general impression that history involves a great amount of bowing and scraping. In pleasant contrast with these are the domestic joys, as depicted by the photographer. As he looked up from his papers, Browning's eye must have rested on that shell-adorned frame that encircles the usual specimens of family portraits. There is the young man pressing into the focus to meet the clever dog seated on the table by his side; there are several aunts and cousins and a typical presentment of the mother and child, as conceived by the camera and lens.

I have plenty of time to notice it all, for I am now the occupant of these rooms. The thunder-storm that has been threatening since yesterday has come at last, I have closed sketch-book and paint-box, and, sitting at the round table, have taken up the pen, prompted, I suppose, by the desire to share with friends the memories that crowd around

me.

When Browning made himself a temporary home here to write his last work, he sallied forth with Luigi, the landlady's son, in quest of an inkstand, and brought home the plain glass article now before me, a few penholders, common wooden ones, such as a child might use at school, and a pencil. There they are on a blue-patterned china plate, just as

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he left them. I have reverently put them aside, but I might just as well use them, sacrilegious as it would seem, for he would never allow me to make the slightest fuss about him, his comings and his goings, his doings and his sayings; so why stand on ceremony with the inanimate objects that have outlived him? He is gone, and now a pen is just a pen, as "a flower is just a flower.”

With Luigi he at once made friends, and would, I feel sure, have done him many a good turn, had he lived. "You must get some schooling here," he had said, "and then you shall go to England with me; there is the stuff to make an engineer of you." Luigi is as pleasant and good-looking a youth of seventeen as one can see, bright and steady. Now he is at home for the holidays, helping his mother in her queer little draper's shop, two doors off. The idea of studying for an engineer he has given up as being too expensive a career, and is fitting himself for a clerkship in the civil service. How this lad, ever on the alert to make himself useful, could have kept any length of time in Browning's good graces, is a mystery to me. He owns that on one or two occasions the sturdy master sent him flying when he would imprudently insist on opening the door for him or lighting him down the dark staircase.

From begin

Asolo boasts of a theatre, and the troupe acting there last September must have been none of the worst, for out of the twenty performances Browning missed but two or three. ning to end did he sit in Mrs. Bronson's box and follow the actors as they told the story of Hamlet, Othello, or Mary, Queen of Scots, or as they played Goldoni's comedies. The performance mostly wound up with a short farce; from that he escaped, leaving Gigi (that is Luigi), who was his frequent companion, to do the screaming laughter. About half-past eleven or twelve he got home, and by five or six in the morning he was up again.

Of his bedroom there is little to say. It is about sixteen feet by nine and ten feet high. A really good rococo design, speaking of an artistic past, embossed and picked out in gray, decorates the whitewashed walls. whitewashed walls. Irregular rafters

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separate you from the room above. The floor is paved with bricks, very much wrinkled and worn with age. Signora Tabacchi's offer to procure a carpet was energetically refused. The pieces of furniture are few and far between. There is a funny little toilet looking-glass. A towel neatly nailed over the glass door insures privacy; the washing-basin is only visible to the practised eye, but the bath-tub, the redeeming feature, is truly Anglo-Saxon. A cheap print of the Madonna della Seggiola hangs over the bed, and a few views of Venice give local color to the room.

And what, in this land of vistas, greet

Market Place in Asolo.

ed the poet's eye as he opened his unpainted shutters? A blank wall and somebody else's shutters. The same in the other rooms; a world inside-no need to seek inspiration from beyond!

To be sure, when the sun has left that neighbor's wall his shutters are opened and a flood of light bursts into the cen

tre corridor of the house; the reflections from the marble floor seem to carry it on to the opposite window, that frames a lovely glimpse of the hills and verdure beyond. In that glimpse Browning delighted. When his son, leaving his newly-acquired Palazzo Rezzonico in Venice, came to Asolo and visited his father's rooms, he was struck, as I was later, with the uncongenial outlook.

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Wait, Pen, till they open those shutters," Browning had said. Pen waited, and was duly impressed and pleased. It was well so, for had it been otherwise his father's pleasure would have been incomplete.

The owner of the house is the Signore Dottore Avvocato Bolson. You will recognize him at once by the fact that he is the only man in Asolo who wears a tall hat; the kindly face beneath the hat wears as engaging an expression as any in the place, and, in response to it you will do well to let him show you the view from his balconies; he knows he is a favored mortal, stepping as he does from each room on to Nature's paradeground, and he is so genuinely appreciative, so proud of all he surveys, that he thirsts for a sympathizer with whom to share his treasures.

The people here are all of the kindliest nature, simple, peaceful folk, a hard-working farming community. Perched on high in their picturesque dwellings, they seem raised above at least some of our terrestrial troubles. They live sheltered by solid masses of mediæval stone, and surrounded by the gardens they cultivate; the vine is here, there, and everywhere, zigzagging along rough stone terraces and gliding down the slopes, or creeping into the windows. A tangle of massive foliage springs from one knows not where, large leaves that dwarf all else elbow their way to the front, and here and there in their midst a big yellow gourd is resting comfortably on a stone cornice or an artificial prop.

The fig-leaves, though certainly over

shadowed by the size of their bulky neighbors, hold their own, and are by no means beaten in the universal struggle for air and space. And somewhere, not quite near, is a little graceful figure stretching upward to train the vine in the way it should go; and straightway you come to the conclusion, if you are an artist, that that figure belongs to a beautiful girl. No matter if you meet her afterward and find you were mistaken.

The children are out of doors; so are the pigs. While the latter always seem grumbling and dissatisfied, the former are as happy as sunshine and polenta can make a child. The sight of an approaching stranger at once suggests to a sturdy urchin the idea to rush for a chair, and to the whole family the simple offer of a welcome.

No wonder if some of these good people were destined to entertain an angel or a poet unawares. In neither of these capacities may our friend have manifested himself to them, but something certainly there must have been about him that endeared him to all he met. Faces brighten as I speak of him ; voices deepen as they answer: "Ah, poveretto! how kind he was, proprio buono!" Here he used to sit and chat with us; or, "I showed him the way up to the Belvedere." This last remark, not from one of the humbler denizens of Asolo, but from no less a personage than the postmaster. Some days back, as he was watching me painting a view of the market-place, I imprudently mentioned that this might possibly be reproduced in some illustrated paper. He at once expressed deep regret that in my picture the entrance to the post-office was obstructed by a market-stall. I apologized as best I could, but to no purpose, and finally, to soothe his wounded feelings, I introduced the shield above the door of the Uffizio Postale. Now, however, nothing would satisfy him

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short of two conscientious, accurate drawings, one giving the exterior, the other the interior, of the office over which he presides. "Surely, signor," he says, "you will not leave Asolo with

View of Street. The "Belvedere."

out having painted these? Time? You will find time; if it fails you will make a careful drawing and note down the color of the panels." "But," I mildly interpose, "you see there is nothing very picturesque in the subject." "Picturesque? Why, my dear sir, you must think only of the historical interest attached to the place, which, if you