the heavens, not looked upon by
any other eyes. Each one of them wore some expression, some blend of
eternal joy and eternal sorrow, not to be found in any other
countenance. The sense of the absolute sanctity of human difference
was the deepest of all his senses. He was hungrily interested in all
human things, but it would have been quite impossible to have said of
him that he loved humanity. He did not love humanity but men. His
sense of the difference between one man and another would have made
the thought of melting them into a lump called humanity simply
loathsome and prosaic. It would have been to him like playing four
hundred beautiful airs at once. The mixture would not combine all, it
would lose all. Browning believed that to every man that ever lived
upon this earth had been given a definite and peculiar confidence of
God. Each one of us was engaged on secret service; each one of us had
a peculiar message; each one of us was the founder of a religion. Of
that religion our thoughts, our faces, our bodies, our hats, our
boots, our tastes, our virtues, and even our vices, were more or less
fragmentary and inadequate expressions.

In the delightful memoirs of that very remarkable man Sir Charles
Gavan Duffy, there is an extremely significant and interesting
anecdote about Browning, the point of which appears to have attracted
very little attention. Duffy was dining with Browning and John
Forster, and happened to make some chance allusion to his own
adherence to the Roman Catholic faith, when Forster remarked, half
jestingly, that he did not suppose that Browning would like him any
the better for that. Browning would seem to have opened his eyes with
some astonishment. He immediately asked why Forster should suppose
him hostile to the Roman Church. Forster and Duffy replied almost
simultaneously, by referring to "Bishop Blougram's Apology," which had
just appeared, and asking whether the portrait of the sophistical and
self-indulgent priest had not been intended for a satire on Cardinal
Wiseman. "Certainly," replied Browning cheerfully, "I intended it for
Cardinal Wiseman, but I don't consider it a satire, there is nothing
hostile about it." This is the real truth which lies at the heart of
what may be called the great sophistical monologues which Browning
wrote in later years. They are not satires or attacks upon their
subjects, they are not even harsh and unfeeling exposures of them.
They are defences; they say