ing not, hating not, just choosing so."

The materialist who believes in Forces is brother to the Calvinist who
preaches Sovereignty and the Divine Decrees. The preacher lets loose
upon the imagination of mankind a Setebos, who after death will plague
his enemies and feast his friends. The materialist believes, with
Caliban, that

"He doth his worst in this our life,
Giving just respite lest we die through pain,
Saving last pain for worst,--with which, an end."

The grave irony of this poem so bespatters the theologian's God with his
own mud that we dread the image and recoil. From the unsparing vigor of
these lines we turn for relief to "Rabbi Ben Ezra" and "Prospice." In
both of these we have glimpses of Mr. Browning's true theology, which is
the faith of his whole soul in the excellence of that world whose beauty
he interprets, of the human nature whose capacity he does so much to
"keep in repute," and of the Infinite Love.

"Praise be Thine!
I see the whole design,
I, who saw Power, shall see Love perfect too:
Perfect I call thy plan:
Thanks that I was a man!
Maker, remake, complete,--I trust what Thou shalt do!"

We find in this new volume more distinct and tranquil expressions of Mr.
Browning's thought upon the relation of the finite to the infinite than
he has given us before. And his pen has turned with freedom and
satisfaction towards these things, as if the imagination had broken new
outlets for itself through the world's beautiful horizon into the great
sea. How "like one entire and perfect chrysolite" is the little piece
called "Prospice"! But we are all the more surprised to see occasionally
a touch of the genuine British denseness, whenever he recollects that
there are such people as Strauss, Bishop Colenso, and the men of the
"Essays and Reviews" prowling around the preserve where the ill-kept
Thirty-Nine Articles still find a little short grass to nibble. When we
read the last three verses of "Gold Hair," we set him down for a
High-Church bigot: the English discussions upon points of exegesis and
theology appear to him threatening to prove the Christian faith false,
but for his part he still sees reasons to suppose it true, and this,
among others, that it taught Original Sin, the Corruption of Man's
Heart! We escape from this to "Rabbi Ben Ezra" for reassurance, not
greatly minding the inconsistency that then appears, but confirmed in an
old opinion o