nd which is
religious to the best work in art. His own faith has been earnest and
strong in the reality of the spiritual. Realist as he is in art, he
believes in the original and creative power of the mind, and his work has
all taken on a higher spirit and a finer expression because of his
religious convictions. Writing in _Modern Painters_ of man as made in the
image of God, he answers the objection which is raised to the idea that all
the revelation man has is contained in a being so imperfect.

"No other book, nor fragment of book, than that, will you ever
find,--nothing in the clouds above, nor in the earth beneath. The
flesh-bound volume is the only revelation that is, that was, or that can
be. In that is the image of God painted; in that is the law of God written;
in that is the promise of God revealed. Know thyself; for through thyself
only thou canst know God. Through the glass, darkly; but except through the
glass, in no wise. A tremulous crystal, waved as water, poured out upon the
ground;--you may defile it, despise it, pollute it at your pleasure and at
your peril; for on the peace of those weak waves must all the heaven you
shall ever gain be first seen; and through such purity as you can win for
those dark waves must all the light of the risen Sun of Righteousness be
bent down by faint refraction. Cleanse them, and calm them, as you love
your life. Therefore it is that all the power of nature depends on
subjection to the human soul. Man is the Sun of the world; more than the
real sun. The fire of his wonderful heart is the only light and heat worth
gauge or measure. Where he is, are the tropics; where he is not, the
ice-world."

Such words may not be scientific, but they convey real meaning. Their
assertion that the world is to be tested and understood by man, not man by
the world, is one worthy of attention. The conviction of this truth has a
literary power and incentive not to be found in "the scientific method" or
any of its corollaries.

To this group of writers may be added Mrs. Browning, who, as a poet, did
great and lasting work. Its value, in large measure, rests on its depth of
spiritual conviction, and on its idealism in purpose and spirit. Her
conception of love is finer and truer than George Eliot's, because she gave
it an ideal as well as an altruistic meaning; because she thought it has an
eternal as well as a social significance. As a poet she lost nothing of
charm or of power or of inspir