CHAPTER IX.
1855-1859 About a month after the date of the last letter, Mr.and Mrs.Browning left Italy for the second time.

As on the previous occasion (1851-2), their absence extended over two summers and a winter, the latter being spent in Paris, while portions of each summer were given up to visits to England.

Each of them was bringing home an important work for publication, Mr.Browning's 'Men and Women,' containing much of his very greatest poetry, being passed through the press in 1855, while Mrs.
Browning's 'Aurora Leigh,' although more than half of it had been written before she left Florence, was not ready for printing until the following year.

They travelled direct from Florence to London, arriving there apparently in the course of July, and taking up their quarters at 13 Dorset Street.

Their stay there was made memorable, as Mrs.Browning records below, by a visit from Tennyson, who read to them, on September 27, his new poem of 'Maud;' and it was while he was thus employed that Rossetti drew a well-known portrait of the Laureate in pen and ink.