ound half made and to continue
it. In other words, he has been a sustainer or "saviour," not a reformer
of society.

Many pages are devoted to the statement and vindication of this fact,
and they contain everything that can be said, from a religious or
practical point of view, in favour of taking the world as we find it.
Prince Hohenstiel's first argument is: that he has not the genius of a
reformer, and it is a man's first duty to his Creator to do that only
which he can do best; his second: that sweeping reforms are in
themselves opposed to the creative plan, because they sacrifice
everything to one leading idea, and aim at reducing to one pattern those
human activities which God has intended to be multiform; the third and
strongest: that the scheme of existence with all its apparent evils is
God's work, and no man can improve upon it. There have been, he admits,
revolutions in the moral as well as the physical world; and inspired
reformers, who were born to carry them on; but these men are rare and
portentous as the physical agencies to which they correspond, and
whether "dervish (desert-spectre), swordsman, saint, lawgiver," or
"lyrist," appear only when the time is ripe for them. Meanwhile, the
great machine advances by means of the minute springs, the revolving
wheel-work, of individual lives. Let each of these be content with its
limited sphere. God is with each and all.

And Prince Hohenstiel has another and still stronger reason for not
desiring to tamper with the existing order of things. He finds it good.
He loves existence as he knows it, with its mysteries and its beauties;
its complex causes and incalculable effects; the good it extracts from
evil; the virtue it evolves from suffering. He reveres that Temple of
God's own building, from which deploys the ever varying procession of
human life. If the temple be intricate in its internal construction, if
its architectural fancies impede our passage; if they make us stumble or
even fall; his invariable advice is this: "Throw light on the
stumbling-blocks; fix your torch above them at such points as the
architect approves. But do not burn them away." He considers himself
therefore, not a very great man, but a useful one: one possessing on a
small scale the patience of an Atlas, if not the showy courage of a
Hercules: one whose small achievements pave the way for the great ones.

Thus far the imaginary speaker so resembles Mr. Browning himself, that
we forget