osition which Paracelsus attains and
which is followed by the same ruin. It is also, so far as its results
are concerned, the position of the Soul described by Tennyson in _The
Palace of Art_.

Love, emotion, God are shut out. Intellect and knowledge of the world's
work take their place. And the result is the slow corrosion of the soul
by pride. "I have nursed up energies," says Browning, "they will prey on
me." He feels this and breaks away from its death. "My heart must
worship," he cries. The "shadows" know this feeling is against them, and
they shout in answer:

"Thyself, thou art our king!"

But the end of that is misery. Therefore he begins to aspire again, but
still, not for the infinite of perfection beyond, but for a finite
perfection on, the earth.

"I will make every joy here my own," he cries, "and then I will die." "I
will have one rapture to fill all the soul." "All knowledge shall be
mine." It is the aspiration of Paracelsus. "I will live in the whole of
Beauty, and here it shall be mine." It is the aspiration of Aprile.
"Then, having this perfect human soul, master of all powers, I shall
break forth, at some great crisis in history, and lead the world." It is
the very aspiration of Sordello.

But when he tries for this, he finds failure at every point. Everywhere
he is limited; his soul demands what his body refuses to fulfil; he is
always baffled, falling short, chained down and maddened by
restrictions; unable to use what he conceives, to grasp as a tool what
he can reach in Thought; hating himself; imagining what might be, and
driven back from it in despair.

Even in his love for Pauline, in which he has skirted the infinite and
known that his soul cannot accept finality--he finds that in him which
is still unsatisfied.

What does this puzzle mean? "It means," he answers, "that this earth's
life is not my only sphere,

Can I so narrow sense but that in life
Soul still exceeds it?"

Yet, he will try again. He has lived in all human life, and his craving
is still athirst. He has not yet tried Nature herself. She seems to
have undying beauty, and his feeling for her is now, of course, doubled
by his love for Pauline. "Come with me," he cries to her, "come out of
the world into natural beauty"; and there follows a noble description of
a lovely country into which he passes from a mountain glen--morning,
noon, afternoon and evening all described--and the emotion of the whole
rises t