In Gibson's he saw the tinted Venus--"rather a grisette than a goddess," pronounced Mrs Browning.

Harriet Hosmer, the young American sculptress, working with true independence, high aims and right woman's manliness, was both admired and loved.

Thackeray, with his daughters, called at the apartment in the Bocca di Leone, bringing small-talk in "handfuls of glittering dust swept out of salons." Lockhart, snow-white in aspect, snow-cold in manner, gave Browning emphatic commendation, though of a negative kind--"He isn't at all," declared Lockhart, "like a damned literary man." But of many interesting acquaintances perhaps the most highly valued were Fanny Kemble and her sister Adelaide Sartoris--Fanny Kemble magnificent, "with her black hair and radiant smile," her sympathetic voice, "her eyes and eyelids full of utterance"-- a very noble creature indeed; Mrs Sartoris, genial and generous, more tolerant than Fanny of Mrs Browning's wayward enthusiasms, eloquent in talk and passionate in song.

"The Kembles," writes Mrs Browning, "were our gain in Rome." Towards the end of May 1854 farewells were said, and the Brownings returned from Rome, to Florence by vettura.

They had hoped to visit England, or if this should prove impracticable, to take shelter among the mountains from the summer heat.