I visited Italy six times between the above dates. The reader need not be wearied by reminiscences of such familiar journeyings, which, in my case, were always made quickly through France, (a country which I intensely dislike) and extended pretty evenly over the most beautiful cities of Italy. I spent several seasons in Rome and Florence, and a winter in Pisa; and I visited once, twice or three times, Venice, Bologna, Naples, Perugia, Assisi, Verona, Padua, Genoa, Milan and Turin. The only interest which these wanderings can claim belongs to the people with whom they brought me into contact, and these include a somewhat remarkable list: Mr. and Mrs. Browning, Mrs. Somerville, Theodore Parker, Walter Savage Landor, Massimo d’ Azeglio, John Gibson, Charlotte Cushman, Count Guido Usedom, Adolphus Trollope and his first wife, Mr. W. W. Story, and Mrs. Beecher Stowe. Of many of these I gave slight sketches in my book, Italics; and must refer to them very briefly here. That book, I may mention, was written principally at Villa Gnecco, a beautiful villa at Nervi on the Riviera di Levante, then rented by my kind friend Count Usedom, the Prussian Ambassador and his English wife. Count Guido Usedom,—now alas! gone over to the majority,—was an extremely cultivated man, who had been at one time Secretary to Bunsen’s Embassy in Rome. He was so good as to undertake what I may call my (Italian) Political Education; instructing me not only of the facts of recent history, but of the dessous des cartes of each event as they were known to the initiated. He placed all his despatches for many years in my hands, and explained the policy of each nation concerned; and even taught me the cryptographs then in diplomatic use. His own letters to his King, the late Emperor Wilhelm I., were lively and delightful sketches of Italian affairs; for, as he said, he had discovered that to induce the King to read them they must be both amusing and beautifully transcribed. From him and the Prefects and other influential men who came to visit him at Villa Gnecco, I gained some views of politics not perhaps unworthy of record.

One day I asked him, “Whether it were exactly true that Cavour had told a distinct falsehood in the Chambers about Garibaldi’s invasion of Naples?” Count Usedom replied, “He did; and I do not believe there is a statesman in Europe who would not have done the same when a kingdom was in question.” He obviously thought, (scrupulously conscientious as he was himself) that, to diplomatists in general and their sovereigns, the laws of morality and honour were like ladies’ bracelets, highly ornamental and to be worn habitually, but to be slipped off when any serious work was to be done which required free hands. He said: “People (especially women) often asked me is such a King a good man? Is Napoleon III. a good man? This is nonsense. They are all good men, in so far that they will not do a cruel, or treacherous, or unjust thing without strong reasons for it. That would be not only a crime but a blunder. But when great dynastic interests are concerned, Kings and Emperors and their ministers are neither guided by moral considerations or deterred from following their interests because a life, or many lives, stand in the way.” He adduced Napoleon III.’s Coup d’état as an example. Napoleon was not a man to indulge in any cruel or vindictive sentiment; but neither was he one to forego a step needed for his policy.

The year following these studies under Count Usedom I was living in London, and met Mazzini one evening by special invitation alone at the house of Mr. and Mrs. James Stansfeld (I speak of Mr. Stansfeld’s first wife, sister of Madame Venturi). After dinner our hosts left us alone, and Mazzini, whom I had often met before and who was always very good to me, asked me if I would listen to his version of the recent history of Italy, since he thought I had been much misinformed on the subject? Of course I could only express my sense of the honour he did me by the proposal; and then, somewhat to my amazement and amusement, Mazzini descended from his armchair, seated himself opposite me cross-legged on the magnificent white rug before Mrs. Stansfeld’s blazing fire, and proceeded to pour out,—I believe for quite two hours,—the entire story of all that went before and after the siege of Rome, his Triumvirate, and the subsequent risings, plots and battles. If any one could have taken down that wonderful story in shorthand it would possess immense value, and I regret profoundly that I did not at least attempt, when I went home, to write my recollections of it. But I was merely bewildered. Each event which Mazzini named,—sitting so coolly there on the rug at my feet:—“I sent an army here, I ordered a rising there,” appeared under an aspect so entirely different from that which it had borne as represented to me by my political friends in Italy, that I was continually mystified, and asked: “But Signor Mazzini, are you talking of such and such an event?”—“Ma sì, Signora”—and off he would go again with vivid and eloquent explanations and descriptions, which fairly took my breath away. At last (I believe it was near midnight), Mrs. Stansfeld, who had, of course, arranged this effort for my conversion to Italian Republicanism, returned to the drawing-room; and I fear that the truly noble-hearted man who had done me so high a favour, rose disappointed from his lowly rug! He said to me at another time: “You English, who are blessed with loyal sovereigns, cannot understand that one of our reasons for being Republicans is, that we cannot trust our Kings and Grand Dukes an inch. They are each one of them a Rè Traditore!” One could quite concede that a constitutional government under a traitor-prince would not hold out any prospect of success; but at all events Victor Emanuel and Umberto have completely exonerated themselves from such suspicions.

To return to Italy and the men I know there. Count Usedom’s reference to Napoleon’s Coup d’état reminds me of the clever saying which I have quoted elsewhere, of a greater diplomatist than he; Cavaliere Massimo d’ Azeglio. Talking with him, as I had the privilege of doing every day for many months at the table d’hôte in the hotel where we both spent a winter in Pisa, I made some remark about the mistake of founding Religion on histories of Miracles. “Ah, les miracles!” exclaimed D’ Azeglio; “je n’en crois rien! Ce sont des coups d’état célestes!” Could the strongest argument against them have been more neatly packed in one simile? A coup d’état is a practical confession that the regular and orderly methods of Government have failed in the hands of the Governor, and that he is driven to have recourse to irregular and lawless methods to compass his ends and vindicate his sovereignty. A coup d’état is like the act of an impatient chess player who, finding himself losing the game while playing fairly, sweeps some pieces from the board to recover his advantage. Is this to be believed of Divine rule of the universe?

D’ Azeglio was one of those men, of whom I have met about a dozen in life, who impressed me as having in their characters elements of real greatness; not being merely clever or gifted, but large-souled. When I knew him he was a fallen Statesman, an almost forgotten Author, a General on the shelf, a Prime Minister reduced to living in a single room at an hotel, without a secretary or even a valet; yet he was the cheeriest Italian I ever knew. His spirits never seemed to falter. He was the life of our table every day, and I used to hear him singing continually over his watercolour drawing in his room adjoining mine at the Gran’ Bretagna, on the dull Lung-Arno of Pisa. The fate of Italy, which still hung in suspense, was, however, ever near his heart. One day it was talked over at the table d’hôte, and D’ Azeglio looked grave, and said: “We speak of this man and the other; but it is God who is making Italy!” It was so unusual a sentiment for an Italian gentleman to utter, that it impressed the listeners almost with awe. Another day, talking of Thackeray and the ugliness of his school of novelists, he observed: “It is all right to seek to express Truth. But why do these people always seem to think qu’il n’y a rien de vrai excepté le laid?” The reason,—I might have replied,—is, that it is extremely difficult to depict Beauty, and extremely easy to create Ugliness! Beauty means Proportion, Refinement, Elevation, Simplicity. How much harder it is to convey these truly, than Disproportion, Coarseness, Baseness, Duplicity? Since D’ Azeglio spoke we have gone on creating Ugliness and calling it Truth, till M. Zola has originated a literature in honour of Le Laid, and given us books like L’Assommoir in which it is perfected, almost as Beauty was of old in a statue of Praxiteles or in the Dresden Madonna.

One day that M. d’ Azeglio was doing me the honour of paying me a visit in my room, he narrated to me the following singular little bit of history. It seems that when he was Premier of Sardinia and Lord John Russell of England, the latter sent him through Lord Minto a distinct message,—“that he might safely undertake a certain line of policy, since, if a given contingency arose, England would afford him armed support.” The contingency did occur; but Lord Russell was unable to give the armed support which he had promised; “and this,” said D’ Azeglio, “caused my fiasco.” He resigned office, and, I think, then retired from public life; but some years later, being in England, he was invited to Windsor. There he happened to be laid up with a cold, and Lord Russell and Lord Minto, who were also guests at the castle, paid him a visit in his apartments. “Then,” said D’ Azeglio, “I turned on them both, and challenged them to say whether Lord Minto had not conveyed that message to me from Lord Russell, and whether he had not failed to keep his engagement? They did not attempt to deny that it was so.” D’ Azeglio (I understood him to say) had himself sent the Sardinian contingent to fight with our troops and the French in the Crimea, for the express and sole purpose of making Europe recognise that there was a Question d’Italie; (or possibly he spoke of this being the motive of the Minister who did so). Another remark which this charming old man made has remained very clearly on my memory for a reason to be presently explained. He observed, laughing: “People seem to think that Ministers have indefinite time at their disposal, but they have only 24 hours like other men, and they must eat and sleep and rest like the remainder of the human race. When I was Premier I calculated that dividing the subjects which demanded attention and the time I had to bestow on them, there were just three minutes and a-half on an average for ordinary subjects, and eight minutes for important ones! And if that be so in a little State like Piedmont, what must it be in the case of a Prime Minister of England? I cannot think how mortal man can bear the office!”

Many years afterwards I told this to an English Statesman, and he replied—with rather startling gaieté de cœur, considering the responsibilities for Irish murders then resting on his shoulders:—“Quite true, it is all a scuffle and a scramble from morning to night. If you had seen me two hours ago you would have found me listening to a very important dispatch read to me by one of my secretaries while I was dictating another, equally important; to another. All a scuffle and a scramble from morning to night!” Count Usedom told me that at one time he had been Minister of War in Prussia, and that he knew a great battle was imminent next day, the Prussian army having just come up with the enemy. He lay awake all night reflecting on the horrors of the ensuing fight; remembering that he had the power to telegraph to the General in command to stop it, and longing with all his soul to do so, but knowing that the act would be treachery to his country. Of this sort of anxiety I strongly suspect some statesmen have never felt a twinge.

It was at Florence in 1860 that I met Theodore Parker for the first time. After the letters of deep sympathy and agreement on religious matters which had passed between us, it was a strange turn of fate which brought him to die in Florence, and me to stand beside his death-bed and his grave. The world has, as is natural, passed on over the road which he did much to open, and his name is scarcely known to the younger generation; but looking back at his work and at his books again after thirty years, and when early enthusiasm has given place to the calm judgment of age, I still feel that Theodore Parker was a very great religious teacher and Confessor,—as Albert Reville wrote of him: “Cet homme fût un Prophète.” That is, he received the truths of what he called “Absolute Religion” at first hand in his own faithful soul, and spoke them out, fearless of consequences, with unequalled straightforwardness. He was not subtle-minded. He did not at all see obliquely round corners, as men like Cardinal Newman always seem to have done; nor estimate the limitations which his broad statements sometimes required. It would have been scarcely possible to have been both the man he was, and also a fine critic and metaphysician. But his was a clear, trumpet voice, to which many a freed and rejoicing spirit responded; and if he founded no sect or school, he did better. He infused into the religious life of England and America an element, hardly present before, of natural confidence in the absolute goodness of God independent of theologies. No man did more than he to awaken the Protestant nations from the hideous nightmare of an Eternal Hell, which within my own recollection, hovered over the piety of England. As he was wont himself to say, laughingly, he had “knocked the bottom out of hell!”

I will copy here some Notes of my only interviews with this honoured friend and teacher, to whom I owed so much:

“28th April. Saw Mr. Parker for the first time. He was lying in bed with his back to the light. Mrs. Parker brought me into the room. He took my hand tenderly and said in a low, hurried voice, holding it: ‘After all our wishes to meet, Miss Cobbe, how strange it is we should meet thus.’ I pressed his hand and he turned his eyes, which were trembling painfully and evidently seeing nothing, towards me and said, ‘You must not think you have seen me. This is not me, only the wreck of the man I was.’ Then, after a pause he added: ‘Those who love me most can only wish me a quick passage to the other world. Of course I am not afraid to die (he smiled as he spoke) but there was so much to be done!’ I said: ‘You have given your life to God and His truth as truly as any martyr of old.’ He replied: ‘I do not know; I had great powers committed to me, I have but half used them.’ I gave him a nosegay of roses and lily-of-the-valley. He smiled and touched the lily-of-the-valley, saying it was the sweetest of all flowers. I begged him, if his lodgings were not all he desired, to come to villa Brichieri” [a villa on Bellosguardo, which I then shared with Miss Blagden], “but he said he was most comfortable where he was. Then his mind wandered a little about a bad dream which haunted him, and I left him.”

“April 29th. I was told on arriving that Mr. Parker had spoken very tenderly of my visit of the day before, but had said, ‘I must not see her often. It makes my heart swell too high. But you (to his wife) must see her every day. Remember there is but one Miss Cobbe in the world.’ Afterwards he told Dr. Appleton that he wanted him to get an inkstand for me as a last gift. [This inkstand I have used ever since.] He received me very kindly, but almost at once his mind wandered, and he spoke of ‘going home immediately.’ He asked what day of the week it was? I said: ‘This is the blessed day; it is Sunday.’ ‘Ah yes!’ he said, ‘It is a blessed day when one has got over the superstition of it. I will try to go to you to-morrow.’ (Of course this was utterly out of the question.) Then he looked at the lily of Florence which I had brought, and told him how I had got it down from one of the old walls for him, and he smiled the same sweet smile as yesterday, and touched the beautiful blue Iris, and soon seemed to sleep.”

I called after this every day, generally twice a day, at the Pension Molini where he lay; but rarely could interchange a word. Parker’s friend, Dr. Appleton of Boston, who was faithfully attending him, sent for another friend, Prof. Desor, and they and the three ladies of the party nursed him, of course, devotedly. On the 10th May I saw him lying breathing quietly, while life ebbed gently. I returned to Bellosguardo and at eight o’clock in the evening Prof. Desor and Dr. Appleton came up to tell me he had passed peacefully away.

Parker had, long before his death, desired that the first eleven verses of the Sermon on the Mount should be read at his funeral. Whether he intended that they should form the only service was not known; but Desor and Appleton arranged that so it should be, and that they should be read by Rev. W. Cunningham, an American Unitarian clergyman who was fortunately at the time living near us on Bellosguardo, and who was a man of much feeling and dignity of aspect. The funeral took place on Sunday, the 13th May, at the beautiful old Campo Santo Inglese, outside the walls of Florence, which contains the dust of Mrs. Browning, of Arthur Hugh Clough, and many others dear to English memories. It was the first funeral I had ever attended. The coffin when I arrived, was already lying in the mortuary chapel. My companions placed a wreath of laurels on it, and I added a large bunch of the lily-of-the-valley which he had loved. Then eight Italian pall-bearers took up the coffin and carried it on a side-walk to the grave. When it had been lowered with some difficulty to the last resting-place, my notes say:—

“Dr. Appleton then handed a Bible to Mr. Cunningham. I was standing close to him and heard his voice falter. He read like a man who felt all the holy words he said, and those sacred Blessings came with unspeakable rest to my heart. Then Desor, who had been pale as death, threw in one handful of clay.... The burial ground is exquisitely lovely, a very wilderness of flowers and perfume. Only a few cypresses give it grandeur, not gloom. All Florence was decorated with flags in honour of the anniversary of Piedmontese Constitution. We said to one another: ‘It is a festival for us also—the solemn feast of an Ascension.’”

Of course I visited this grave when I returned to Florence several years afterwards. The cypresses had grown large and dark and somewhat shadowed it. I had the violets, &c., renewed upon it more than once, but I heard later that it had become somewhat dilapidated, and I was glad to join a subscription got up by an American gentleman to erect a new tombstone. I hope it has been done, as he would have desired, with simplicity. I shall never see that grave again.

Two or three years later I edited all the twelve vols. of Parker’s Works for Messrs. Trübner, and wrote a somewhat lengthy Preface for them; afterwards reprinted as a separate pamphlet entitled the Religious Demands of the Age. Three Biographies of Parker have appeared; the shortest, published in England by Rev. Peter Dean, being in my opinion the best. The letters which I received from Parker in the years before I saw him are all printed by my permission in Mr. Weiss’ Life, and therefore will not be reproduced here.

That venerable old man, Rev. John J. Tayler, writing to me a few years later, summed up Parker’s character I think as justly as did Mr. Jowett in calling him a “religious Titan.”

“I read lately with much pleasure your Preface to the forthcoming edition of Theodore Parker’s works. I agree cordially with your estimate of his character. His virtues were of the highest type of the hero and the martyr. His faults, such as they were, were such as are incident to every ardent and earnest soul fighting against wickedness and hypocrisy; faults which colder and more worldly natures easily avoid, faults which he shared with some of the best and noblest of our race—a Milton, a Luther, and a Paul. When freedom and justice have achieved some conquests yet to come, his memory will be cherished with deeper reverence and affection than it is, except by a small number, now.

At the time of Parker’s death I was sharing the apartment of my clever and charming friend, Isa Blagden, in Villa Brichieri on Bellosguardo. It was a delightful house with a small podere off the road, and with a broad balcony (accommodating any number of chairs) opening from the airy drawing-room, and commanding a splendid view of Florence backed by Fiesole and the Apennines. On the balcony, and in our drawing-rooms, assembled regularly every week and often on other occasions, an interesting and varied company. We were both of us poor, but in those days poverty in Florence permitted us to rent 14 well-furnished rooms in a charming villa, and to keep a maid and a man-servant. The latter bought our meals every morning in Florence, cooked and served them; being always clean and respectably dressed. He swept our floors and he opened our doors and announced our company and served our ices and tea with uniform quietness and success. A treasure, indeed, was good old Ansano! Also we were able to engage an open carriage with a pair of horses to do our shopping and pay our visits in Florence as often as we needed. And what does the reader think it cost us to live like this, fire and candles and food for four included? In those halcyon days under the old régime, it was precisely £20 a month! We divided everything exactly and it never exceeded £10 apiece.

Among our most frequent visitors was Mr. Browning. Mrs. Browning was never able to drive so far, but her warm friendship for Miss Blagden was heartily shared by her husband and we saw a great deal of him. Always full of spirits, full of interest in everything from politics to hedge-flowers, cordial and utterly unaffected, he was at all times a charming member of society; but I confess that in those days I had no adequate sense of his greatness as a poet. I could not read his poetry, though he had not then written his most difficult pieces, and his conversation was so playful and light that it never occurred to me that I was wasting precious time chatting frivolously with him when I might have been gaining high thoughts and instruction. There was always a ripple of laughter round the sofa where he used to seat himself, generally beside some lady of the company, towards whom, in his eagerness, he would push nearer and nearer till she frequently rose to avoid falling off at the end! When we drove out in parties he would discuss every tree and weed, and get excited about the difference between eglantine and eglatere (if there be any), and between either of them and honeysuckle. He and Isa were always wrangling in an affectionate way over some book or music; (he was a fine performer himself on the piano), and one night when I had left Villa Brichieri and was living at Villa Niccolini at least half-a-mile off, the air, being in some singular condition of sonority, carried their voices between the walls of the two villas so clearly across to me that I actually heard some of the words of their quarrel, and closed my window lest I should be an eavesdropper. I believe it was about Spirit-rapping they were fighting, for which, and the professors of the art, Browning had a horror. I have seen him stamping on the floor in a frenzy of rage at the way some believers and mediums were deceiving Mrs. Browning.

Thirty years afterwards, the last time I ever had the privilege of talking with Robert Browning (it was in Surrey House in London), I referred to these old days and to our friend, long laid in that Campo Santo at Florence. His voice fell and softened, and he said: “Ah, poor, dear Isa!” with deep feeling.

At that time I do not think that any one, certainly no one of the society which surrounded him, thought of Mr. Browning as a great poet, or as an equal one to his wife, whose Aurora Leigh was then a new book. The utter unselfishness and generosity wherewith he gloried in his wife’s fame,—bringing us up constantly good reviews of her poems and eagerly recounting how many editions had been called for,—perhaps helped to blind us, stupid that we were! to his own claims. Never, certainly did the proverb about the “irritabile genus” of Poets prove less true. All through his life, even when the world had found him out, and societies existed for what Mr. Frederic Harrison might justly have called a “culte” of Browning, if not a “latria,” he remained the same absolutely unaffected, unassuming, genial English gentleman.

Of Mrs. Browning I never saw much. Sundry visits we paid to each other missed, and when I did find her at home in Casa Guidi we did not fall on congenial themes. I was bubbling over with enthusiasm for her poetry, but had not the audacity to express my admiration, (which, in truth, had been my special reason for visiting Florence;) and she entangled me in erudite discussions about Tuscan and Bolognese schools of painting, concerning which I knew little and, perhaps, cared less. But I am glad I looked into the splendid eyes which lived like coals, in her pain-worn face, and revealed the soul which Robert Browning trusted to meet again on the threshold of eternity.^[18] Was there ever such a testimony as their perfect marriage,—living on as it did in the survivor’s heart for a quarter of a century,—to the possibility of the eternal union of Genius and Love?

I received in later years from Mr. Browning several letters which I may as well insert in this place.

“I return the Petition, for the one good reason, that I have just signed its fellow forwarded to me by Mr. Leslie Stephen. You have heard ‘I take an equal interest with yourself in the effort to suppress Vivisection.’ I dare not so honour my mere wishes and prayers as to put them for a moment beside your noble acts, but this I know, I would rather submit to the worst of deaths, so far as pain goes, than have a single dog or cat tortured on the pretence of sparing me a twinge or two. I return the paper, because I shall be probably shut up here for the next week or two, and prevented from seeing my friends, whoever would refuse to sign would certainly not be of the number.”

“I wish I were not irretrievably engaged on Monday afternoon, twice over, as it prevents me from accepting your invitation. By all I hear, Mr. Bishop’s performance must be instructive to those who need it, and amusing to everybody.^[19]

“It is about a week ago since I had to write to the new Editor of the ‘Fortnightly,’ Mr. Escott—and assure him that I was so tied and bound by old promises ‘to give something to this and that Magazine if I gave at all’—that it became impossible I could oblige anybody in even so trifling a matter. It comes of making rash resolutions—but, once made, there is no escape from the consequence—though I rarely have felt this so much of a hardship as now when I am forced to leave a request of yours uncomplied with. For the rest, I shall indeed rejoice if that abominable and stupid cruelty of pigeon-shooting is put a stop to. The other detestable practice, Vivisection, strikes deeper root, I fear; but God bless whoever tugs at it!

Another of our most frequent visitors at Villa Brichieri was Mr. T. Adolphus Trollope, author of the Girlhood of Catherine de’ Medici, “A Decade of Italian Women” and other books. Though not so successful an author as his brilliant brother Anthony, he was an interesting man, whom we much liked. One day he came up and pressed us to go back with him and pay a visit to a guest at his Villino Trollope in the Piazza Maria Antonia,—a lovely house he had built, with a broad verandah behind it, opening on a garden of cypresses and oranges backed by the old crenelated and Iris-decked walls of Florence. He had, he told us, a most interesting person staying with him and Mrs. Trollope;—Mrs. Lewes—who had written Adam Bede, and was then writing Romola. Miss Blagden alone went with him, and was enchanted, like all the world, with George Eliot.

Mr. Trollope told me many curious facts concerning Italian society which, from his long residence, he knew more intimately than almost any other foreigner. He described the marriage settlement of a nobleman which had actually passed through his hands, wherein the intending husband, with wondrous foresight and precaution, deliberately named three or four gentlemen, amongst whom his future wife might choose her cavaliere servente!

We had several other habitués at our villas; Dall’ Ongaro, a poet and ex-priest; Romanelli, the sculptor; and Miss Linda White, now Madame Villari, the charming authoress and hostess of a brilliant salon, wife of the eminent historian who was recently Minister of Education.

Perhaps the most interesting of our visitors, after Mr. Browning, was Mrs. Beecher Stowe. She impressed me much, and the criticisms I have read of her “Sunny Memories” and other books have failed to diminish my admiration for her. She was one of the few women, I suppose, who have actually felt Fame, as heroes do who receive national Triumphs; and she seemed to be as simple and unpretentious, as little elated as it was possible to be. She had even a trick of looking down as if she had been stared out of countenance; but this was perhaps a part of that singular habit which most Evangelicals of her class exhibited thirty years ago, of shyness in society and inability to converse except with the person seated next them in company. It was the verification after eighteen centuries of the old heathen taunt against the Christians, recorded in the dialogues of Minucius Felix, “In publicam muta, in angulis garrula!” I have recorded elsewhere Mrs. Stowe’s remark when I spoke with grief of the end of Theodore Parker’s work. “Do you think,” she said, suddenly looking up at me with flashing eyes, “that Theodore Parker has no work to do for God now?” I must not repeat again her interesting conversation as we sat on our balcony watching the sun go down over the Val d’ Arno. After much serious talk as to the nearness of the next life, Mrs. Stowe narrated a saying of her boy on which, (as I told her), a good heterodox sermon in my sense might be preached. She taught the child that Anger was sinful, whereupon he asked: “Then why, Mama, does the Bible say so often that God was angry?” She replied motherlike: “You will understand it when you are older.” The boy pondered seriously for awhile and then burst out: “O Mama, I have found it out! God is angry, because God is not a Christian!”

Another of our habitués on my first visit to Florence was Walter Savage Landor. At that time he was, with his dear Pomeranian dog, Giallo, living alone in very ordinary lodgings in Florence, having quarrelled with his family and left his villa in their possession. He had a grand, leonine head with long white hair and beard, and to hear him denouncing his children was to witness a performance of Lear never matched on any stage! He was very kind to me, and we often walked about odd nooks of Florence together, while he poured out reminiscences of Byron and Shelley, some of which I have recorded (Chap. IX., p. 257), and of others of the older generation whom he had known, so that I seemed in touch with them all. He was then about 88 years of age, and perhaps his great and cultivated intellect was already failing. Much that he said in wrath and even fury seemed like raving, but he was gentle as a child to us women, and to his dog whom he passionately loved. When I wrote the first Memorial against Prof. Schiff which started the anti-vivisection crusade, Mr. Landor’s name was one of the first appended to it. He added some words to his signature so fierce and contemptuous that I never dared to publish them!

We also saw much of Dr. Grisanowski, a very clever Pole, who afterwards became a prominent advocate of the science-tortured brutes. When I discussed the matter with him he was entirely on the side of Science. After some years he sent me his deeply thought-out pamphlet, with the endorsement “For Miss Cobbe,—who was right when I was wrong;” a very generous retractation. We also received Mr. Frederick Tennyson, (Lord Tennyson’s brother), Madame Venturi, Madame Alberto Mario, the late Lord Justice Bowen, (then a brilliant young man from Oxford,) and many more.

By far the best and dearest of my friends in Florence however, was one who never came up our hill, and who was already then an aged woman—Mrs. Somerville. I had brought a letter of introduction to her, being anxious to see one who had been such an honour to womanhood; but I expected to find her an incarnation of Science, having very little affinity with such a person as I. Instead of this, I found in her the dearest old lady in all the world, who took me to her heart as if I had been a newly-found daughter, and for whom I soon felt such tender affection that sitting beside her on her sofa, (as I mostly did on account of her deafness) I could hardly keep myself from caressing her. In a letter to Harriet St. Leger I wrote of her: “She is the very ideal of an old lady, so gentle, cordial and dignified, like my mother; and as fresh, eager and intelligent now, as she can ever have been.” Her religious ideas proved to be exactly like my own; and being no doubt somewhat a-thirst for sympathy on a subject on which she felt profoundly, (her daughters differing from her), she opened her heart to me entirely. Here are a few notes I made after talks with her:—

“Mrs. Somerville thinks no one can be eloquent who has not studied the Bible. We discussed the character of Christ. She agreed to all I said, adding she thought it clear the Apostles never thought he was God, only the image of the perfection of God. She kissed me tenderly when I rose to go and bade me come back at any hour—at three in the morning if I liked!—May 18th. Mrs. Somerville gave me her photograph. She says she always feels a regret thinking of the next life that we shall see no more the flowers of this world. I said we should no doubt see others still fairer. “Ah! yes,” she said, “but our own roses and mignonette! I shall miss them. The dear animals I believe we shall meet. They suffer so often here, they must live again.”—June 3rd. Wished farewell to Mrs. Somerville. She said kissing me with many tears, “We shall meet in Heaven! I shall claim you there.”

I saw Mrs. Somerville again on my other visits to Italy, at Genoa, Spezzia and Naples; of course making it a great object of my plans to be for some weeks near her. In my last journey, in 1879, I saw at Naples the noble monument erected over her grave by her daughter. It represents her (heroic size) reclining on a classic chair,—in somewhat the attitude of the statue of Agrippina in the Vatican.

Mrs. Somerville ought to have been buried in Westminster Abbey. When I saw her death announced on the posters of the newspapers in the streets in London, I hurried as soon as I could recover myself, to ask Dean Stanley to arrange for her interment in the Abbey. The Dean consented freely and with hearty approval to my proposition, and Mrs. Somerville’s nephew, Sir William Fairfax, promised at once to defray all expenses. There was only one thing further needed, and that was the usual formal request from some public body or official persons to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster. Dean Stanley had immediately written to the Astronomer Royal to suggest that he and the President of the Royal Society, as the representatives of the sciences with which Mrs. Somerville’s fame was connected, should address to him the demand which would authorize his proceeding with the matter. But that gentleman refused to do it—on the ground that he had never read Mrs. Somerville’s books! Whether he had read one in which she took the opposite side from his in the sharp and angry Adams-Le Verrier controversy, it is not for me to say. Any way, jealousy, either scientific or masculine, declined to admit Mary Somerville’s claims to a place in the national Valhalla, wherein so many men neither intellectually nor morally her equals have been welcomed.

From the time of our first meeting till her death in 1872, Mrs. Somerville maintained a close correspondence with me. I have had all her beautifully-written letters bound together, and they form a considerable volume. Of course it was a delight to me to send her everything which might interest her, and among other things I sent her a volume of Theodore Parker’s Prayers; edited by myself. In October, 1863, I spent a long time at Spezzia to enjoy the immense pleasure of her society. I was then a cripple and unable to walk to her house, and wrote of her visits as follows to Miss Elliot:

“Mrs. Somerville comes to me every day. She is looking younger than three years ago and she talked to me for three hours yesterday, pouring out such stores of recent science as I never heard before. Then we talked a little heresy, and she thanked me with tears in her eyes for Parker’s Prayers, saying she had found them the greatest comfort and the most perfect expression of religious feeling of any prayers she has known.”

Another time I sent her my Hopes of the Human Race. She wrote, three weeks before her death, “God bless you dearest friend for your irresistible argument for our Immortality! Not that I ever doubted of it, but as I shall soon enter my ninety-third year, your words are an inexpressible comfort.”

Mary Somerville was the living refutation of all the idle, foolish things which have been said of intellectual women. There never existed a more womanly woman. Her Life, edited by her eldest daughter Martha Somerville (her son by her first marriage, Mr. Woronzow Greig, died long before her), has been much read and liked. I reviewed it in the Quarterly (January, 1874), and am tempted to enclose a letter which Martha Somerville (then and always my good friend) wrote about it:

“From Miss Somerville to F. P. C.

“I have this morning received the Quarterly Review and some slips from newspapers. What can I say to express my gratitude to you for the article,—so admirably written; and giving so touching a picture of my Mother,—as you, her best friend (notwithstanding the great difference of age) knew her? Also I received lately the Academy which pleased me much, too. The Memoir has been received far more favourably than I ventured to expect.”

A long time after this, I paid a visit to friends at St. Andrews and stopped from Saturday to Monday, on my way, at Burntisland. Writing from thence to Miss Elliot about her own country, and countrymen, I said:—

“I came here to look up the scene of Mrs. Somerville’s childhood, and I have found everything just as she described it;—the Links; the pretty hills and woods full of wild flowers; the rocky bit of shore with boulders full of fossil shells which excited her childish wonder when she wandered about, a beautiful little girl, as she must have been. If ever there were a case of—

it was surely hers. Very naturally I was thinking of her all day and wondering whether she is now studying the flora of Heaven, of which she used to speak, and pursuing Astronomy among the stars; or whether it can be possible these things pass away for ever! I wanted very much to make out where Sir William Fairfax’ house had been, and finally was directed to the schoolmaster who, it was said, knew all about it. I found the good man in a large schoolhouse where he has 600 pupils; and as soon as he learned my name he seized my hand and made great demonstrations; and straightway proceeded to constitute himself my guide to the localities in question. The joke however was this. Hardly were we out of the house before he said, ‘I’ll send you a pamphlet of mine—not about Science, I don’t care for Science, I care for Morals;—and I’ve found out there is only a very little thing to be done, to stop all pauperism and all crime! You are just the person to understand me!’ The idea of this poor schoolmaster in Burntisland compressing that modest programme into a ‘pamphlet’ seems to me deliciously characteristic of Scotland.”

A college for Ladies was opened some years ago at Oxford and named after Mrs. Somerville. I greatly rejoiced at the time at this very fitting tribute to her memory; and induced my brother to send his daughter, my dear niece, Frances Conway Cobbe, to the Hall. I ceased to rejoice, however, when I found that a lady bearing a name identified with Vivisection in England was nominated for election as a member of the Council of the College. I entered, (as a Subscriber,) the most vigorous protest I could make against the proposed choice, but, alas! in vain.

One of our visitors at Villa Brichieri was a very pious French lady, who came up to us one day to dinner straight from her devotions in the Duomo, where a Triduo was going on against Renan; and, as it chanced, she began to praise somewhat excessively a lady of rank whose reputation had suffered more than one serious injury. My English friend remarked, smiling, in mitigation of the eulogy:—

“Elle a eue ses petits délassements!”

the answer was deliciously XVIII. Century—

“C’est ce qui m’occupe le moins. Pourvu que cela soit fait avec du bon goût! D’ailleurs on ne parle sérieusement que de deux ou trois. Le Prince de S., par exemple. Encore est il mort celui-là!”

It was during one of my visits to Florence that I saw King Victor Emanuel’s public entry into the city, which had just elected him King. This is how I described the scene to Harriet St. Leger:—

“Happily we had a fine day for the king’s entry on Monday last. It was a glorious sight! The beautiful old city blossomed out in flowers, flags, garlands, hangings and gonfalons beyond all English imagination. In every street there was a triumphal arch, while boulevards of artificial trees loaded with camelias, ran from the railway to the gate and down the via Calzaiuoli. Even the mean little sdrucciolo de’ Pitti was made into one long arbour by twenty green arches sustaining hanging baskets of flowers. The Pitti itself had its rugged old face decked with wreaths. I had the good fortune to stand on a balcony commanding a view of the whole procession. Victor Emanuel, riding his charger of Solferino, looked—coarse and fat as he is,—a man and a soldier, and more sympathetic than Kings in general. Cavour has a Luther-like face, which wore a gleam of natural pleasure at his reception. The people were quite mad with joy. They did not cheer as we do, but uttered a sort of deep roar of ecstacy, flinging clouds of flowers under the King’s horse’s feet, and seeming as if they would fling themselves also from their balconies. Our hostess, an Italian lady, went directly into hysterics, and all the party, men and women cried and kissed and laughed in the wildest way. At night there was a marvellous illumination, extending as far as the eye could reach, in every palazzo and cottage down the Val d’ Arno and up the slopes of the Apennines, where bonfires blazed on all the heights.”

In Florence my friends had been principally literary men and women. In Rome they were chiefly artists. Harriet Hosmer, to whom I had letters, was the first I knew. She was in those days the most bewitching sprite the world ever saw. Never have I laughed so helplessly as at the infinite fun of this bright Yankee girl. Even in later years when we perforce grew a little graver, she needed only to begin one of her descriptive stories to make us all young again. I have not seen her now for many years since she has returned to America, nor yet any one in the least like her; and it is vain to hope to convey to any reader the contagion of her merriment. O! what a gift,—beyond rubies, are such spirits! And what fools, what cruel fools, are those who damp them down in children possessed of them!

Of Miss Hosmer’s sculpture I hoped, and every one hoped, great things. Her Zenobia, her Puck, her Sleeping Faun were beautiful creations in a very pure style of art. But she was lured away from sculpture by some invention of her own of a mechanical kind, over which many years of her life have been lost. Now I believe she has achieved a fine statue of Isabella of Spain, which has been erected in San Francisco.

Jealous rivals in Rome spread abroad at one time a slanderous story that Harriet Hosmer did not make her own statues. I have in my possession an autograph by her master, Gibson, which he wrote at the time to rebut this falsehood, and which bears all the marks of his quaint style of English composition.

“Finding that my pupil Miss Hosmer’s progress in her art begins to agitate some rivals of the male sex, as proved by the following malicious words printed in the Art journal;—

“‘Zenobia—said to be by Miss Hosmer, but really executed by an Italian workman at Rome’;—

“I feel it is but justice on my part to state that Miss Hosmer became my pupil on her arrival at Rome from America. I soon found that she had uncommon talent. She studied under my own eyes for seven years, modelling from the antique and her own original works from the living models.

“The first report of her Zenobia was that it was the work of Mr. Gibson. Afterwards that it is by a Roman workman. So far it is true that it was built up by my man from her own original small model, according to the practice of our profession; the long study and finishing is by herself, like every other sculptor.

“If Miss Hosmer’s works were the productions of other artists and not her own there would be in my studio two impostors—Miss Hosmer and Myself.