lates with pride, and in sentences terse but full of meaning, and terrible in their suggestiveness, while displaying the portrait of his dead wife, and commenting on it and other works of art in his gallery with all the pride and skill of a virtuoso. It is a masterly sketch, introducing a method of soul-analysis and revelation more subtle and effective than any before known to literature. Striking examples of this art-form are found elsewhere in Browning's works. Among them are "Paracelsus," "Bishop Blougram," "By the Fireside," and "Andrea del Sarto."

The monologue, as an habitual method, has its serious drawbacks. It often must begin with an abruptness which is startling and unpleasant, as well as difficult to understand. It also encourages a compactness of expression and closeness of texture which wearies the general reader, and is only agreeable to the initiated, who alone learn to prefer it to a more transparent and copious diction.

Just at this point the question of Browning's eccentricities and alleged obscurity presents itself. It has long been the fashion with those who do not fancy Browning-and, perhaps, have never read him-to dismiss him with the supercilious charge that he is obscure; as though that were his regular habit, and therefore fatal to his claims as a great poet. It is true there are many poetic and verbal riddles scattered through his pages, and some "poetry that neither gods nor men can endure or understand;" but that fact by no means represents the general character of his work, a large proportion of which is unsurpassed for clearness, exquisite exactness of expression, and charm of manner. Browning is the most intellectual of modern poets, with a constant tendency toward philosophical discussion, and a deeprooted fondness for psychological investigation. His knowledge is vast, and his material almost limitless. As Emerson said, "he is always a teacher." He has so much to say, and his sense of its importance is so great, that he has no use for rhetorical tinsel, and no space for unnecessary amplification of ideas. He would leave something to be understood by the intelligent reader. Starting the reader in the right direction, he is fond of leaving him abruptly to arrive at a full comprehension by his own mental force and acuteness. To trained and active minds this is very agreeable, permitting them to taste some of the de

lights of discovery. But to the uncultivated or indolent it is tiresome business; the page is meaningless, and their animosity is sometimes aroused, for they more than suspect that the poet is trifling with them, and laughing in his sleeve at their discomfiture. It is quite true that much of Browning's verse is not easy reading. It is too thoughtful for that. He puts the thing in a nutshell when he says in a letter to a friend, “I never pretended to offer such literature as should be the substitute for a cigar or a game at dominoes to an idle man."

us.

Usually the difficulties all vanish when we are willing to bestow a little labor upon Browning, and the result is ample compensation for the effort. His own mind was seldom or never obscure. No man ever surpassed him in vigor and keen-sightedness. It is his short-hand style that plays the mischief with Whether he was wise or otherwise in adopting such a style is a matter about which there will always be two opinions, even among the most intelligent men. He deliberately sacrifices much to strength, and has a mortal antipathy to the commonplace and smooth. His habitual fear of over-refinement has often betrayed him into a ruggedness which is not always agreeable. But that is his way, and, to say the least, his jolting verse is forcible, and acts as a sort of mental tonic when the softer, sweeter lines of inferior singers pall upon our taste. Variety is essential to our thorough instruction and enjoyment. Every true poet has his place, and Browning is just as necessary to us as Tennyson with his "faultily faultless" verse, or Whittier with his wild-wood notes. Each in his appointed place is as great

and good as the other.

With few exceptions the great poets sing sweetest when they sing of love; and as a poet of love Browning is second to none. In his contributions to that branch of the divine art there is a charining combination of vigor, enthusiasm, variety, and volume. Every mood of the passion is faultlessly voiced. "The Last Ride Together," "In a Gondola," "Love Among the Ruins," "Love's Immortalities," and many others, in all essential qualities come as near perfection as any verses ever written on this subject. Their charm consists partly, however, in the skillful admixture of other attractive things with the love-verses. This gives variety and strength, and forestalls insipidity. Even here the head claims full equality with the heart; while wisdom and

emotion, sentiment and logic, are happily blended. For the most part he has, in his emotional poems, given us that true passion which ennobles art; although it is easy to see that, under other conditions, he might have become a mere poet of passion a ready prey to the doctrine of "elective affinities," and the prurient heresy that, "Love is the only good in the world."

Of Browning's philosophy it may be said that the scientific and metaphysical bent of his mind always led him beyond the mere external beauty and emotional interest of human life to the great and general truths which they illuminate. To him even the ordinary events of life are rich. in abstract teaching; and while he faithfully depicts scenes and characters, he is constantly seeking after the underlying, far-reaching, universal truth, the discovery and teaching of which can alone make his effort successful. One of his disciples has said: "The philosophy of Browning, if it may be so called, consists in the sense of a discord in life, and in faith in an ideal in which this discord shall be solved." Nowhere has the poet been more faithful to this philosophy, more clear in his vision, or more inspiring in his teaching, than in what may be called his religious poetry. I hazard nothing in saying that he is one of the most Christian of recent poets, in the sense of having apprehended and taught the true spirit of Christianity. He is not dogmatic; he is not sectarian; he is Christian. He preaches with great effect the fundamental truth of Christianity in the form that appeals most directly and forcibly to common needs-as the light "which lighteth every man that cometh into the world"-as the kingdom of heaven which is within men. His Christianity is of the healthful sort. He would have men religiously active and brave. To distrust God's goodness, wisdom, and love is almost the worst sin. God is all in all to him. His belief is strong, his trust child-like. The Father is always near and always helpful. The world of matter is a means through which God's power and wisdom and love are revealed to men.

Browning finds great delight and comfort in the personality of Christ, as the living soul of Christianity. Witness the poem entitled "Christmas Eve." As a practical illustration of the power of Christian faith when strongly tested, and its triumph in God as Father, nothing can be more inspiring

than his "Unanswered Prayer," the last lines of which are as follows:

"Unanswered yet! Faith cannot be unanswered;

Her feet are firmly planted on the rock;
Amidst the wildest storms she stands undaunted,

Nor quails before the loudest thunder shock;
She knows Omnipotence has heard the prayer,

And cries: It shall be done l'-some time-somewhere."

Browning is with the dead. Italy and England join hands to mourn his departure, and all the world honors his memory. His body rests in Westminster Abbey, with the great poets and great men of the past, but he lives in the heart of all lovers of truth and genuine manhood in all lands. He sleeps, but the truths he uttered, the beautiful life he led, the inspired songs he sung, will ever remain a sweet influence, an active force, a sacred impulse among men. He was granted a long and peaceful life, and he made the most of his gifts. Like all royal souls, he felt the restraints and limitations of the earthly life. Some of his work "seems that of a grand intellect painfully striving for adequate use and expression, and never quite attaining either." But in much of his song there is sustained strength, a penetrating sympathy which reaches and satisfies every true heart; a jubilant and triumphant sentiment which makes him close of kin to all noble souls. Like a rich mine, his work will be judged by the ore, not by the dross. In the higher realm of human thought and feeling, Browning's fame will never fade. He loved this world, and sweetly did he sing of it; but he be lieved in another and better world, and toward it were his loftiest aspirations and purest desires. He too might say, in the characteristic words of Tennyson:

"Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell,

When I embark;

"For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place

The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar."

C

Ross & Houghton

ART. V.-THE PHILOSOPHY OF IDEALISM.

WE use the term idealism as the antithesis of realism, and both as representative of antagonistic interpretations of the universe. Practically the philosophers which compose these schools of thought live and move and have their being in the same world, act upon the same principles, have the same experience, and yet the one class holds that the universe-the ground, the oceans, and the stars-are real, composed of different substances, aggregated into masses, or "lumps," or afloat as gases, but none the less real; whereas the other class denies all these things, and claims that, external to the mind and apart from it, there is no known created existence. If the every-day and every-hour consciousness of the idealist corresponded with his philosophy, he would be to himself either a part of the world or a disembodied spirit, and exist independently of time and space, needing neither shelter nor home. His own body, the earth, the sun, and all masses of matter are held up to ridicule as crass "lumps," and their existence as realities independent of mind is denied. Such things are real only as they are "forms of thought," and they "exist only for, and in relation to, mind and consciousness."

Idealism involves a psychological problem of the first importance, and its chief interest is derived from this source. How the human mind can reason itself into a consciousness of being per se as nearly as possible a non-intelligence, is the mental process now to be explored. What is mind? Not mind in general-for there is no such thing any more than there was the universal goose of the ancient school-men-the individual mind is what we are in quest of. What is it? It is the man-the spirit-intelligence dwelling in a "house of clay." Such is the conception of man held by Socrates, Plato, St. Paul, Bishop Butler, and the Christian Church in general. The real question before us then is this: Is man such an intelligence that he can know that a world exists, and that it exists external to and independent of himself?

To render impossible a knowledge of the external world the idealist limits the action of perception as follows: "To have perceptions, all that is needed is the appropriate stimulus; and