t proceed,
as liberators generally do, by railing and pulling down. He builds up;
he is positive, not negative. He is less bitter than Christianity
itself.

While there is no more doubt as to the permanent value of the content of
Browning than of the value of the spiritual truths of the New Testament,
there is very little likelihood that his poems will be understood in the
remote future. At present, they are following the waves of influence of
the education which they correct. They are built like Palladio's Theatre
at Vicenza, where the perspective converges toward a single seat. In
order to be subject to the illusion, the spectator must occupy the
duke's place. The colors are dropping from the poems already. The
feeblest of them lose it first. There was a steady falling off in power
accompanied by a constant increase in his peculiarities during the last
twenty years of his life, and we may make some surmise as to how
Balaustion's Adventure will strike posterity by reading Parleyings with
Certain People.

The distinctions between Browning's characters--which to us are so
vivid--will to others seem less so. Paracelsus and Rabbi Ben Ezra, Lippo
Lippi, Karshish, Caponsacchi, and Ferishtah will all appear to be run in
the same mould. They will seem to be the thinnest disguises which a poet
ever assumed. The lack of the dramatic element in Browning--a lack
which is concealed from us by our intense sympathy for him and by his
fondness for the trappings of the drama--will be apparent to the
after-comers. They will say that all the characters in The Blot on the
'Scutcheon take essentially the same view of the catastrophe of the
play; that Pippa and Pompilia and Phene are the same person in the same
state of mind. In fact, the family likeness is great. They will say that
the philosophic monologues are repetitions of each other. It cannot be
denied that there is much repetition,--much threshing out of old straw.
Those who have read Browning for years and are used to the monologues
are better pleased to find the old ideas than new ones, which they could
not understand so readily. When the later Browning takes us on one of
those long afternoon rambles through his mind,--over moor and fen,
through jungle, down precipice, past cataract,--we know just where we
are coming out in the end. We know the place better than he did himself.
Nor will posterity like Browning's manners,--the dig in the ribs, the
personal application, and _de te