completely right; and how, on that account, it
is the actual working in the man of the ideal of all perfection. This
doctrine of love is, in my opinion, the richest vein of pure ore in
Browning's poetry.

But it remains to follow briefly our poet's treatment of love in another
direction--as a principle present, not only in God as creative and
redeeming Power, and in man as the highest motive and energy of the
moral life, but also in the outer world, in the "material" universe. In
the view of the poet, the whole creation is nothing but love incarnate,
a pulsation from the divine heart. Love is the source of all law and of
all beauty. "Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night speaketh
knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not
heard." And our poet speaks as if he had caught the meaning of the
language, and believes that all things speak of love--the love of God.

"I think," says the heroine of the _Inn Album_,

"Womanliness means only motherhood;
All love begins and ends there,--roams enough,
But, having run the circle, rests at home."[A]

[Footnote A: _The Inn Album_.]

And Browning detects something of this motherhood everywhere. He finds
it as

"Some cause
Such as is put into a tree, which turns
Away from the north wind with what nest it holds."[B]

[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book_--_Canon Caponsacchi_, 1374-1376.]

The Pope--who, if any one, speaks for Browning--declares that

"Brute and bird, reptile and the fly,
Ay and, I nothing doubt, even tree, shrub, plant
And flower o' the field, are all in a common pact
To worthily defend the trust of trusts,
Life from the Ever Living."[C]

[Footnote C: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1076-1081.]

"Because of motherhood," said the minor pope in _Ivan Ivanovitch_,

"each male
Yields to his partner place, sinks proudly in the scale:
His strength owned weakness, wit--folly, and courage--fear,
Beside the female proved males's mistress--only here
The fox-dam, hunger-pined, will slay the felon sire
Who dares assault her whelp."

The betrayal of the mother's trust is the "unexampled sin," which scares
the world and shames God.

"I hold that, failing human sense,
The very earth had oped, sky fallen, to efface
Humanity's new wrong, motherhood's first disgrace."[A]

[Footnote A: _Ivan Ivanovitch_.]

This instinct of love, wh