greater than they. For what has come to perfection perishes, and we are
imperfect because eternity is before us; because we were made to
_grow_." The soul which has eternity within its grasp cannot express
itself in a single glance; nor can its consciousness be petrified into
an unchanging sorrow or joy. The painters who set aside Greek art
undertook to vindicate the activity of the soul. They made its hopes and
fears shine through the flesh, though the flesh they shone through were
frayed and torn by the process. This was the work which they had to do;
and which remains undone, while men speak of them as "Old Master" this,
and "Early" the other, and do not dream that "Old" and "New" are
fellows: "that all are links in the chain of the one progressive art
life; the one spiritual revelation."

The speaker now relapses into the playful mood which his more serious
reflections have scarcely interrupted. He thinks of the removable
paintings which lie hidden in cloister or church, and which a
sympathizing purchaser might rescue from decay; and he reproaches those
melancholy ghosts for not guiding such purchasers to them. He, for
instance, does not aspire to the works of the very great; but a number
of lesser lights, whose name and quality he recites, might, he thinks,
have lent themselves to the fulfilment of his artistic desires;[64] and
he declares himself particularly hurt by the conduct of his old friend
Giotto, who has allowed some picture he had been hunting through every
church in Florence to fall into other hands. He concludes with an
invocation to a future time when the Grand Duke will have been pitched
across the Alps, when art and the Republic will revive together, and
when Giotto's Campanile will be completed--which glorious consummation,
though he may not live to see, he considers himself the first to
predict.

Mr. Browning alludes, in the course of this monologue, to the two
opposite theories of human probation: one confining it to this life, the
other extending it through a series of future existences; and without
pronouncing on their relative truth, he owns himself in sympathy with
the former. He is tired and likes to think of rest. The sentiment is,
however, not in harmony with his general views, and belongs to the
dramatic aspect of the poem.[65]

MASTER HUGUES OF SAXE GOTHA, also a monologue, is christened after an
imaginary composer; and consists of a running comment on one of his
fugues, as performed