The heaven of it is ineffable.

Never had I touched the skirts of so celestial a place.
The beauty of the architecture, the silver trails of water up between all that gorgeous colour and carving, the enchanting silence, the moonlight, the music, the gondolas--I mix it all up together, and maintain that nothing is like it, nothing equal to it, not a second Venice in the world." Browning left Florence for ever after his wife's death, and to Venice he came again in 1878, with his sister, and thereafter for some years they returned regularly.

Until 1881 their home was at the Brandolin Rota.
After that they stayed with Mrs.Arthur Bronson, to whom he dedicated _Asolando_, his last book, and who has written a record of his habits in the city of the sea.

She tells us that he delighted in walking and was a great frequenter of old curiosity shops.

His especial triumph was to discover a calle so narrow that he could not put up an umbrella in it.
Every morning he visited the Giardini Pubblici to feed certain of the animals; and on every disengaged afternoon he went over to the Lido, to walk there, or, as Byron had done, to ride.