pating the future is granted him, all has become clear. Instead of
trying to solve the riddle he accepts it. He sees from his Pisgah how
life, with all its confusions and contrarieties, is the school which
educates the soul and fits it for further wayfaring. The ultimate faith
of Jochanan the Saint had been already expressed by Browning:

Over the ball of it,
Peering and prying,
How I see all of it,
Life there, outlying!
Roughness and smoothness,
Shine and defilement,
Grace and uncouthness:
One reconcilement.

But even to his favourite disciple the sage is unable so to impart the
secret that Tsaddik's mind shall really embrace it.

The spirit of the saint of Israel is also the spirit of that wise
Dervish of Browning's invention (1884), the Persian Ferishtah. The
volume is frankly didactic, and Browning, as becomes a master who would
make his lessons easy to children, teaches by parables and pictures. In
reading _Ferishtah's Fancies_ we might suppose that we were in the
Interpreter's House, and that the Interpreter himself was pointing a
moral with the robin that has a spider in his mouth, or the hen walking
in a fourfold method towards her chickens. The discourses of the Dervish
are in the main theological or philosophical; the lyrics, which are
interposed between the discourses or discussions, are amatory. In
Persian Poetry much that at first sight might be taken for amatory has
in its inner meaning a mystical theological sense. Browning reverses the
order of such poetry; he gives us first his doctrine concerning life or
God, and gives it clothed in a parable; then in a lyric the subject is
retracted into the sphere of human affections, and the truth of theology
condenses itself into a corresponding truth respecting the love of man
and woman.

Throughout the series of poems it is not a Persian Dervish who is the
speaker and teacher; we hear the authentic voice of the Dervish born in
Camberwell in the year 1812--Ferishtah-Browning. The doctrine set forth
is the doctrine of Browning; the manner of speech is the manner of the
poet. The illustrations and imagery are often Oriental; the ideas are
those of a Western thinker; yet no sense of discordance is produced. The
parable of the starving ravens fed by an eagle serves happily as an
induction; let us become not waiters on providence, but workers with
providence; and to feed hungry souls is even more needful than to feed
hungry bodie