vividly
portrayed in the epistle of Karshish. Paracelsus learns it, and makes it
clear to Festus at the end.

The natural result of Browning's theory of evil, and his sense of the
value of limitation, is that he should welcome for man the experience of
doubt, difficulty, temptation, pain; and this we find is the case.

Life is probation and the earth no goal
But starting point of man ...
To try man's foot, if it will creep or climb
'Mid obstacles in seeming, points that prove
Advantage for who vaults from low to high
And makes the stumbling-block a stepping-stone.

_The Ring and the Book_: The Pope, 1436-7, 410-13.

It is this trust in unending progress, based on the consciousness of
present failure, which is peculiarly inspiriting in Browning's thought,
and it is essentially mystical. Instead of shrinking from pain, the
mystic prays for it, for, properly met, it means growth.

Was the trial sore?
Temptation sharp? Thank God a second time!
Why comes temptation but for man to meet
And master and make crouch beneath his foot,
And so be pedestaled in triumph?

_The Ring and the Book_: The Pope, 1182-02.

Rossetti's mysticism is perhaps a more salient feature in his art than
is the case with Browning, and the lines of it, and its place in his
work, have been well described by Mr Theodore Watts-Dutton.[10] We can
only here indicate wherein it lies, and how it differs from and falls
short of the mysticism of Shelley and Browning. Rossetti, unlike
Browning, is not the least metaphysical; he is not devoured by
philosophical curiosity; he has no desire to solve the riddle of the
universe. All his life he was dominated and fascinated by beauty, one
form of which in especial so appealed to him as at times almost to
overpower him--the beauty of the face of woman.[11] But this beauty is
not an end in itself; it is not the desire of possession that so stirs
him, but rather an absolute thirst for the knowledge of the mystery
which he feels is hiding beneath and beyond it. Here lies his
mysticism. It is this haunting passion which is the greatest thing in
Rossetti, which inspires all that is best in him as artist, the belief
that beauty is but the expression or symbol of something far greater and
higher, and that it has kinship with immortal things. For beauty, which,
as Plato has told us, is of all the divine ideas at once most manifest
and most lovab