ast, can accuse him of touching with a rash hand the sanctity
of the family; rather he places it on the basis of its own principle,
and thereby makes for it the strongest defence. Such love as he speaks
of, however irregular its manifestation or sensuous its setting, can
never be confounded with lust--"hell's own blue tint." It is further
removed from lust even than asceticism. It has not even a negative
attitude towards the flesh; but finds the flesh to be "stuff for
transmuting," and reduces it to the uses of the spirit. The love which
is sung by Browning is more pure and free, and is set in a higher
altitude than anything that can be reached by the way of negation. It is
a consecration of the undivided self, so that "soul helps not flesh
more, than flesh helps soul." It is not only a spiritual and divine
emotion, but it also "shows a heart within blood-tinctured with a veined
humanity."

"Be a God and hold me
With a charm!
Be a man and hold me
With thine arm!

"Teach me, only teach, Love!
As I ought
I will speak thy speech, Love!
Think thy thought--

"Meet, if thou require it,
Both demands,
Laying flesh and spirit
In thy hands."[A]

[Footnote A: _A Woman's Last Word_.]

True love is always an infinite giving, which holds nothing back. It is
a spendthrift, magnificent in its recklessness, squandering the very
essence of the self upon its object, and by doing so, in the end
enriching the self beyond all counting. For in loving, the individual
becomes re-impersonated in another; the distinction of Me and Thee is
swept away, and there pulses in two individuals one warm life.

"If two lives join, there is oft a scar
They are one and one with a shadowy third;
One near one is too far.

"A moment after, and hands unseen
Were hanging the night around us fast;
But we knew that a bar was broken between
Life and life: we were mixed at last
In spite of the mortal screen."[B]

[Footnote B: _By the Fireside_.]

The throwing down of the limits that wall a man within himself, the
mingling of his own deepest interests with those of others, always marks
love; be it love of man for maid, parent for child, or patriot for his
country. It opens an outlet into the pure air of the world of objects,
and enables man to escape from the stuffed and poisonous atmosphere of
his narrow self. It is a streaming outwards of the inmost treasures of
the spirit, a consecration