Not the least of Mrs. Browning's enjoyment of that winter was the pleasure that Rome gave to her little son. "Penini is overwhelmed with attentions and gifts of all kinds," she wrote, and she described a children's party given for him by Mrs. Page, who decorated the table with a huge cake, bearing "Penini" in sugar letters, where he sat at the head and did the honors. Browning all this time was writing, although the social allurements made sad havoc on his time. They wandered under the great ilex trees of the Pincio, and gazed at the Monte Mario pine. Then, as now, every one drove in that circular route on the Pincian hill, where carriages meet each other in passing every five minutes. With the Storys and other friends they often went for long drives and frequent picnics on the wonderful Campagna, that vast green sea that surrounds Rome, the Campagna Mystica. On one day Mr. Browning met "Hatty" Hosmer on the Spanish Steps, and said to her: "Next Saturday Ba and I are going to Albano on a picnic till Monday, and you and Leighton are to go with us." "Why this extravagance?" laughingly questioned Miss Hosmer. "On account of a cheque, a _buona grazia_, that Ticknor and Fields of Boston have sent--one they were not in the least obliged to send," replied the poet.
In those days there was no international copyright, but Mr. Browning's Boston publishers needed no legal constraint to act with ideal honor. So on the appointed morning, a _partie carré_ of artists--two poets, one sculptor, one painter--drove gayly through the Porta San Giovanni, on that road to Albano, with its wonderful views of the Claudian aqueducts in the distance, through whose arches the blue sky is bluer, and beyond which are the violet-hued Alban hills. Then, as now, the road led by the Casa dei Spirite, with its haunting associations, and its strange mural decorations of specters and wraiths. Past that overhanging cliff, with its tragic legend, they drove, encountering the long procession of wine carts, with their tinkling bells, and the dogs guarding the sleeping padrones. Passing the night in Albano, the next day they mounted donkeys for their excursion into the Alban hills, past lonely monasteries, up the heights of Rocca di Papa, where the traveler comes on the ancient camping-ground of Hannibal, and where they see the padres and acolytes sunning themselves on the slopes of Monte Cavo; on again, to the rocky terraces from which one looks down on Alba Longa and the depths of Lago di Nemi, beneath whose waters is still supposed to be the barque of Caligula, and across the expanse of the green Campagna to where Æneas landed.