This mean, commonplace, ugly kind of subject had a strange attraction for Browning, as we see in _The Inn Album_, in _Red Cotton Nightcap Country_, and elsewhere.

I may add that it is curious to find him, in 1841, writing exactly like a modern realist, nearly fifty years before realism of this kind had begun.

And this illustrates what I have said of the way in which he anticipated by so many years the kind of work to which the literary world should come.

The whole scene between Sebald and Ottima might have been written by a powerful, relentless modern novelist.
We have more of this realism, but done with great skill, humanity, even tenderness, in the meeting and talk of the young harlotry on the steps of the Duomo near the fountain.

When we think of this piece of bold, clear, impressionist reality cast into the midst of the proprieties of literature in 1841, it is impossible not to wonder and smile.