sions, and of exercising the power of self-control. Now, the first principle of Mr. Browning's philosophy of life precludes this ideal; for it seems to him that the greatness and glory of man lie not in submission, but in aspiration; not in self-repression, but in the passions which scorn the limitations of time and space, and in the bright endeavours towards results that are unattainable on earth. It is the tendencies which manifest themselves in this belief that make Mr. Browning an enthusiastic admirer of Shelley. Of Shelley he has written in the eloquent prose of the preface to the forged letters which were once supposed to be by Shelley. When he looks upon one who has seen Shelley with his bodily eyes, he is lost in a trance of wonder and awe, in which the man appears glorified before him :—

"Ah! did you once see Shelley plain,

And did he stop and speak to you?

And did you speak to him again?

How strange it seems and new!

But you were living before that,
And you are living after,

And the memory I started at

My starting moves your laughter !”

And it is when the pure spirit of Shelley presents itself amongst the spectral auditory who listen to the story of Sordello, that the poet ceases to speak, unable to utter a word :

:

"The thunder-phrase of the Athenian, grown

Up out of memories of Marathon,

Would echo like his own sword's grinding screech
Braying a Persian shield,—the silver speech

Of Sidney's self, the starry paladin,
Turn intense as a trumpet sounding in
The knights to tilt,-wert thou to hear!"

If I were asked-What is the central and controlling idea in Mr. Browning's system of thought? (and let it be remembered when I speak of an idea and a system of thought, that the content of an idea or system in the mind of an artist can commonly be refunded into his emotional nature from whence it originated) my answer would be this-That man here on earth, in a state of preparation for other lives, and surrounded by wondrous spiritual influences, is too great for the sphere that contains him, while, at the same time, he can exist only by submitting for the present to the conditions it imposes, never without fatal loss becoming content with such submission, or regarding those conditions as final. Our nature here is unfinished, imperfect, but its glory, its peculiarity, that which makes us men-not God and not brutes lies in this very character of imperfection, giving scope, as it does, for indefinite growth and progress:

"Progress, man's distinctive mark alone,

Not God's and not the beasts'; God is, they are,
Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be."

And it is by a succession of failures, stimulating higher aspirations and endeavours, that we may reach at last

"The ultimate angels' law

Indulging every instinct of the soul,

There where law, life, joy, impulse, are one thing!"*

* Dramatis Persona-A Death in the Desert, p. 116.

One of two lives must be chosen by each of usa worldly or a spiritual life. The former begins and ends in limited joys and griefs, hopes and fears-it is conditioned by time and space-it does not reveal God, but rather conceals Him; it need not be sensual or devilish, but it is earthly. Success in it is. possible here below, and even a high success when material, intellectual, and æsthetical pleasures are organised for the delight of a prudent man, who will enjoy them temperately. The spiritual life, on the contrary, begins and ends in hopes and fears, in joys and sorrows, which in their very nature are infinite; for it time and space have no existence; it lives in God, it is heavenly and divine; but on earth it may seem no better than a succession of failures-failures, however, which are in truth the highest glory of a human being.

Now a man may commit either of two irretrievable errors he may renounce (through temptations of sense, or other causes, but most frequently through supineness of heart, or brain, or hand, or else through prudential motives,) his spiritual, his infinite life, and its concerns. That is one error. Or he may try to force those concerns and corresponding states of thought, and feeling, and endeavour into the material life-the life of humiliation and of inadequate resources. He may deny his higher nature, which is ever yearning upward to God through all noble forms of human thought, emotion, and action; he may weary of failure, which (as generating a higher tendency) is his glory; or else he may deny the con

ditions of existence, and endeavour to realize in this life what is work for eternity.

It is not then obedience, it is not even obedience to the law of duty, which leads us to our true life, but rather infinite desire, and endless aspiration. Mr. Browning's ideal of manhood in this life always includes the fact that it is the ideal of a creature whose development can never be perfect on earthalways includes the fact that there is a hereafter for each individual soul when the earth shall have passed away. Consider two extremes then which are both destructive to our nature, and thence learn the true position and the true life of a man. To deny heaven and the infinite life-that is one extreme. To deny earth and the finite life-that is the other extreme. If we are content with the limited and perishable joys, and gifts, and faculties of the world, we shall never see God,

"Nor all that chivalry of His,

The soldier-saints, who, row on row,

Burn upward each to his point of bliss—

Since, the end of life being manifest,

He had burned his way thro' the world to this."

If, on the contrary, we aim at accomplishing under all the restrictions of this life the work of eternity— if we desire absolute knowledge or none at all, infinite love, or no love, a boundless exercise of our will, the manifestation of our total power, or no exercise of our will, then we shall either destroy ourselves, dash ourselves to pieces against the walls of time and space, or else seeing that our objects are unattainable, sink into a state of hopeless enerva

tion. But between these two extremes lies a middle course, and in it will be found the true life of man. He must not rest content with earth and the gifts of earth; he must not aim at "thrusting in time eternity's concern;" but he must perpetually grasp at things which are just within or almost without his reach, and having attained them find that they are unsatisfying, so that by an endless series of aspirations, and endeavours which generate new aspirations and new endeavours, he may be sent on to God, and Christ, and Heaven.

These ideas lead us to the central point from which we can perceive the peculiarity and origin of Mr. Browning's feeling with regard to nature, art, religion, love, beauty, knowledge: around them we observe, as we read through his works, one poem after another falling into position, each bringing in addition something of its own.

Is it of external nature that Mr. Browning speaks? The preciousness of external nature lies in its being the manifest power and love of God to which our heart springs as fire. In that Easter Dream of the last judgment, what is the doom of God upon the condemned soul? It is to take all that the soul desires, and since the soul of the lost man loved the world-the world with its beauty, and wonder, and delight-but never yearned upward to God who dwelt in them, the decree is pronounced,

"Thou art shut

Out of the heaven of spirit; glut

Thy sense upon the world."