With the same idea in mind respecting the competency of the Committee on the Judiciary to render an authoritative decision concerning the famous paragraph under consideration, we submitted to the last General Conference, early in its session, the following memorial:

Whereas, The fifth restrictive rule provides that the General Conference shall not do away the privileges of our ministers or preachers of trial by a committee, and of an appeal; and

Whereas, Paragraph 188 provides for the location of certain preachers "without formal trial," therefore,

Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary be requested to consider and report to this body whether paragraph 188 is not an infringement upon the rights of our traveling preachers under the constitution of the Church.

At the twelfth session (see Daily Christian Advocate, May 15, 1888), the committee, through its chairman, Dr. S. F. Upham, presented the following report:

REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY.—NO. IV.

We have carefully considered a paper signed by James H. Potts, of the Michigan Conference, asking us to consider whether paragraph 188 of the Discipline, which provides for the locating of unacceptable, inefficient, or secular preachers without formal trial, is not an infringement upon the rights of our traveling preachers under the constitution of the Church," and report that, in our opinion, the said paragraph is unconstitutional.

S. F. UPHAM, Chairman,
C. W. SMITH, Secretary.

Dr. Upham moved the adoption of the report.

Dr. Buckley held that the finding of the committee was erroneous, and contrary to the judgment of a number of General Conferences, and asked that the report be referred back to the committee for more explicit statement.

Dr. Queal, as a member of the Judiciary Committee, stated that the question had been fully discussed in the committee, and that the opinion was practically unanimous that the said paragraph was an infringement upon the rights of preachers under the constitution of the Church. He said:

We considered this paragraph 188, enacted by the General Conference in 1880, in connection with the organic law under which the Church from 1836 to 1880 held and administered that no one should be deprived of his rights as a member of the itin erant ministry without trial and appeal; and because we found

that before 1836 there were several cases of location and appeal taken to the General Conference, and the General Conference in each instance directed the return of the brother to his Conference; in the presence of these facts, and in connection with what seemed to us a plain infraction of the law of the right of trial and appeal, we decided that this was an unconstitutional paragraph.

After some further discussion Dr. Buckley's motion was carried, and the report was referred back. Within a day or two afterward the committee was relieved of the consideration of all abstract questions of law, and therefore did not again report upon this question. As a consequence, it was not brought before the General Conference for final action. But the case is clear, and practically settled. The General Conference of 1880 violated the constitution in enacting the law of location without form of trial. The ablest committee of the General Conference of 1888 went carefully through the whole question step by step, and reached this practically unanimous conclusion; yet because of the disposition of some delegates (who had previously been very solicitous for the inviolacy of the constitution) to question every thing, it was again covered up in the committee. The result is, our present Discipline still contains the unconstitutional paragraph (193), and under it, for aught we know, some of our traveling ministers who submitted themselves to two years' probation, passed all the required examinations, and then upon the vote of their Conferences were incorporated into the itinerancy, and thereby acquired rights which no mere show of hands can lawfully deprive them of, are being thrust out of their constitutionally guarded relations without a chance to defend themselves in formal trial. It is too bad. If any man in Methodism can prove the paragraph aforesaid (however convenient and useful it may be regarded) not to be a gross encroachment upon the rights provided for in the fifth restrictive rule, we should be glad to have him do so.

James

James #4. Potts.

ART. IV.-ROBERT BROWNING.

In the latter part of 1883 Richard Watson Gilder wrote:

Men marked in fond regret that, with Tennyson and Whittier and Holmes, Browning had passed the golden line of three-score years and ten; and yet they rejoiced that, with eye undimmed. and mental force unabated, he was still singing "from under the thatch of his gray hair;" tender-hearted, wise, alert, and persistently bent on testing to the full the possibilities of each added year of grace.

But even to such rare souls God's good time must come, when the silver cord shall be loosed, and the golden bowl be broken. We were, therefore, not surprised when, on the twelfth of September, 1889, the mournful words were flashed from beautiful Venice to the ends of the earth: "Browning is dead!" and our rare poet again took up his pen and wrote:

"On this day Browning died?

Say, rather: On the tide

That throbs against those glorious palace walls;

That rises-pauses-falls,

With melody, and myriad-tinted gleams;

On that enchanted tide,

Half real, and half poured from lovely dreams,

A soul of beauty-a white rhythmic flame

Passed singing forth into the eternal beauty whence it came."

Browning remarked one day to James Russell Lowell that he regarded foreign opinion upon literary works as the opinion of posterity. "You get proof of your theory from America,” said Mr. Lowell. "O no," exclaimed Browning, "I don't consider American opinion foreign opinion."

That is a sentiment common enough with Englishmen now, and many of them utter it with a sneer; but when it fell from Browning's lips, it undoubtedly was pronounced with a gener

ous meaning which will make glad the heart of every American man of letters.

The poet did not forget that the English language is one the world over, and while, with him, our historic Declaration of Independence covered our literature as well as our government, he rejoiced in America's distinctive realm of letters as a mother rejoices in the stature, vigor, and beauty of her daughter.

But he had a personal reason for this opinion, for, as Mr. Curtis has recently reminded us, Margaret Fuller's review of his early dramas, and the "Bells and Pomegranates," written more than forty years ago, was the first important tribute to his genius, in which this country welcomed him sooner and more warmly than his native land. And, by the way, a French critic, Larousse, has recently expressed the opinion that Browning was himself more an American than an Englishman in temperament. From that day until now his influence among us has strengthened and widened. Here are his most loving disciples, his most appreciative critics, his most numerous, as well as most attentive, audience.

The purely biographical facts of Browning's life are soon set down. He was born at Camberwell, a suburb of London, on the 7th of May, 1812. His father was a scholarly man of refined tastes, by occupation a clerk in the Bank of England. He enjoyed a reputation for some skill as a poet, especially in the use of the heroic couplet, and his famous son frequently declared that his father had more true poetic genius than himself.

Of a loving and sympathetic nature, the father took great pleasure in the development of his son, and at the proper time asked the lad what he intended to be. Robert knew that on coming to manhood he would have enough to keep him in comfort, and he did not care to be rich, so he frankly expressed his choice of a literary career; and as he had already written some very respectable verses, and his only sister-he had no brother-was enthusiastically on his side, the conclusion was at last reached in the family councils that he should be trained to be a poet. From that time all his studies were in that direction.

His education proceeded at the school in Dulwich, then with a tutor at home, and finally, his family being dissenters, was completed at the London University. He wrote verses at a very early age, and also manifested an aptitude for painting.

His earliest poems show the influence of Byron, and an imitative reaching after mere melody and gorgeousness of language at the expense of thought; but through the kind advice of literary friends, which the boy had sense enough to heed, he gradually corrected that tendency. When about thirteen years old, by a happy accident, and the good taste of his mother, he came into the possession of the works of Shelley and Keats, neither of whom was much known in literary circles, although Shelley had been dead three years, and the result was a complete revolution in his conceptions of poetic art. "The dust of the dead Keats and Shelley turned to flower-seed in the brain of the young poet, and very soon wrought a change in the whole of his ambition." In his maturity Browning was unlike either of these great poets; but, at the right moment, he was aroused and turned in the right direction by their combined healthful influence.

Like a fledgeling he now began to try his power of wing in song by short flights of lyrical composition; after which, growing more confident, he planned a series of monodramatic epics, audacious, to be sure, and fore-ordained to failure, but clearly revealing the germs of power which were beginning to quicken in the heart and brain of the future master.

Only one of these, "Pauline," survives. It was greatly admired by the family and friends, and was published anony mously at the expense of an indulgent aunt; but it attracted no public attention, and went unacknowledged by its author until as late as 1867, when, to save it from the ravages of literary pirates, he reluctantly gave it its right place, as the first of his literary children, in an edition of his collected works. Some of his friends were, however, quite enthusiastic over it, and, curiously enough, with a knowledge of the author's name, it fell into the hands of John Stuart Mill-who was only six years the senior of Browning-who was highly delighted with it, reading it over and over again, and covering the blank leaves and margins of his copy with annotations and remarks. At the death of Mill this identical copy came into Browning's possession, who prized it highly. We are told that the late John Forster took such an interest in this volume that he borrowed it, and when he died it passed, with his library, into the possession of the South Kensington Museum, where the curious relic of the youth of two eminent men has at last found a resting place.