prophecies and prognostics of us; but she is only connected with us as
the road is with the goal it reaches in the end. She exists
independently of us, but yet she exists to suggest to us what we may
become, to awaken in us dim longings and desires, to surprise us into
confession of our inadequacy, to startle us with perceptions of an
infinitude we do not possess as yet but may possess; to make us feel our
ignorance, weakness, want of finish; and by partly exhibiting the
variety, knowledge, love, power and finish of God, to urge us forward in
humble pursuit to the infinite in him. The day Browning climbs Mont
Saleve, at the beginning of his poem _La Saisiaz_, after a description
of his climb in which he notes a host of minute quaintnesses in rock and
flower, and especially little flares of colour, all of them
unsentimentalised, he suddenly stands on the mountain-top, and is
smitten with the glory of the view. What does he see? Himself in Nature?
or Nature herself, like a living being? Not at all. He sees what he
thinks Nature is there to teach us--not herself, but what is beyond
herself. "I was stationed," he cries, deliberately making this point,
"face to face with--Nature?--rather with Infinitude." We are not in
Nature: a part of God aspiring to the whole is there, but not the all of
God. And Nature shows forth her glory, not to keep us with herself, but
to send us on to her Source, of whom the universe is but a shred.

The universe of what we call matter in all its forms, which is the
definition of Nature as I speak of it here, is one form to Browning of
the creative joy of God: we are another form of the same joy. Nor does
Browning conceive, as Wordsworth conceived, of any pre-established
harmony between us and the natural world, so that Humanity and Nature
can easily converse and live together; so that we can express our
thoughts and emotions in terms of Nature; or so that Nature can have, as
it were, a human soul. This is not Browning's conception. If he had such
a conception he would frequently use in his descriptions what Ruskin
calls the "pathetic fallacy," the use of which is excessively common in
Tennyson. I can scarcely recall more than a very few instances of this
in all the poetry of Browning. Even where it seems to occur, where
Nature is spoken of in human terms, it does not really occur. Take this
passage from _James Lee's Wife_:

Oh, good gigantic smile o' the brown old earth,
This autumn m