"On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a per

fect round."

"The In Memoriam utterances sound like the voice of Mr. "Little Faith, after listening to Mr. Greatheart in such a defiance "of evil as this," says Edward Berdoe. Browning "is the poet "of the Gothic-agony and harmony in unity, agony working "itself at last to a place in the great harmony of the whole," says E. Paxton Hood.

"Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should
"be prized?"1

Love is beneath all,

"as some implied chord subsists,

"Steadily underlies the accidental mists.

"Of music springing thence, that run their mazy race
around." "

"I have faith such end shall be;

"From the first, Power was-I knew.

"Life has made clear to me

"That, strive but for closer view,

"Love were as plain to see."

66 This world's no blot for us,

"Nor blank: it means intensely, and means good.
"To find its meaning is my meat and drink.” 8

"Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure."

In this age of doubt, when men are so proud of their uncertainty that they give a name to it and call themselves Agnostics, what a blessing there is in these utterances of a mind so gifted; of whom that other great mind of this generation, George Eliot, said:

1 Abt Vogler.

Fifine at the Fair. 3 Fra Lippo Lippi. • Rabbi Ben Ezra.

"To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel that discern"ment is but a hand playing with finely ordered variety on the "chord of emotion; a soul in which knowledge passes instantly "into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of "knowledge."

C. W. BARDEEN.

REMARKS BY REV. C. DEB. MILLS.

Mr. C. DeB. Mills, though not on the programme, was called upon by the Chairman, and spoke substantially as follows:

We have been hearing, here to-night, Mr. Chairman, the testimony drawn in careful statement of students, critics, in their several lines of research, of this poet and philosopher. These have all spent years in the reading and study of the various and many things he has given to the public. They have furnished us their thoughtful, deliberate estimate, and pointed out to us so clearly, so instructively the grounds they base it on. We have been enriched, enlarged, and quickened exceedingly.

What can I say now? What have I any right to attempt to say? I am not, have never been a student of this poet, as I am sorry to own. My acquaintance with his writings is very superficial. I can give you at best but my rough impression, a judgment crude, partial doubtless, certainly far inadequate, of this venerated and now sainted name.

I readily believe that Browning was a great lyric and dramatic poet. The strong statements of his cotemporaries, men themselves of great eminence in their respective fields of letters, some of which were kindred with his, such men as Carlyle, Landor, Ruskin, Dickens, Lowell, etc., suffice for testimony that should be conclusive to us, that there was eminent merit in this man. It is related of Carlyle by his most recent biographer, Dr. Garnett, that sincerely wishing to compliment Browning on his signal performance in writing The Ring and the Book, he said to him:

"It is a wonderful book, one of the most wonderful poems "ever written. I re-read it all through-all made out of an Old

Bailey story that might have been told in ten lines, and only "wants forgetting."

This was the highest tribute the brusque Scotsman knew to pay his honored friend, however equivocal the quality of a portion of it may seem to us. Landor spoke of him as "a great poet, a very great poet indeed, as the world will "have to agree "with us in thinking.”

A rare fortune has befallen this man, without precedent in modern times,-and these are the only times in which there could have been a precedent,-in that during his own life time, numerous Societies have been formed, devoted supreme and sole to the study of this writer, the attempt to penetrate, to interpret, to apprehend his often difficult, sometimes enigmatic poems. Wherever the English-speaking peoples are, there are the Browning Societies, composed of the brightest, most intelligent and thoughtful in their several communities, religiously dedicated to these studies, and feeling themselves, I doubt not, well rewarded for all the labor they bestow. Never, so far as I know, has such fortune come to any author before. It shows that Browning has already spoken to his own time and age, has delivered a message that a multitude are eager to hear.

I have frankly to own that some things I have found in the reading of this poet, have not met my own thought, and have had the effect to reduce rather than heighten the attraction I have felt to him. He seems to rest in an optimism, which to some of us would seem disproportionate, excessive, verging towards if not touching indifferentism, and which would bear to a tame sleepy acquiescence in all things about us as they are, irrespective of the agency of man to amend and to save. He appears

at times to break down, to obliterate all distinction of character, and essentially to say to us that the broad way and the narrow both bring up at the same goal. I suppose it is what we have in Emerson, as he expresses himself sometimes in very bold statement, “Man though in brothels, or jails, or on gibbets, is on his way to all that is good and true." If I understand Browning in some of his utterances, he seems to carry as far.

I am well aware that there is a side of truth in all this declaration of an exceeding optimism. "God," says Plutarch, "is the brave man's hope, and not the coward's excuse." There are hours when we must rest sole, final, in the absolute assurance that there is a Rule supreme, far higher, wholly beyond all we can see, which is doing all things to infinite ends of excellence, bringing accord out of discord, order out of chaos, good out of evil, drawing nourishment from very poison, making all the sin, wickedness we see, subserve finally the highest and best. I know of no act of worship more genuine, more pure, than is done when the soul in midst of its severe stress and trial, sorrow, suffering, breavement, darkness of solitude that knows no ray of light, discerns no solace, no providence, or good or justice at all, lays itself naked on the bosom of the infinite Truth and Love, and feels, ejaculates from deepest depths within, "All things are well, "and shall be well."

But that lazy optimism, and sleepy indifferentism, which confounds all moral distinction, abolishes the ideal, which makes Jesus and Judas essentially one, which sees all conduct the same, all types of character identical in their quality, all men alike hastening forward with best endeavor to the goal of their being, nothing left for human effort to do to mend, correct, meliorate,-is pusillanimous, treasonable, false to nature and to man. It makes God the coward's excuse, is relaxing to tone, and demoralizing to the energies of the being within. I have been in communities where such optimists and dreamers dwell, and have heard them described as among the most characterless, invincibly renunciant, inert, and worthless of mortals. So far as any endeavor in slightest degree for improvement of their neighborhood, or of society, was concerned in any respect whatever, they might have been just as well in Dahomey, or on another planet. They have drunken deep of that cup which Browning sometimes pours. "A too rapid unification, and an excessive appliance to parts and particulars," says Emerson, "are the twin dangers of specula❝tion."

A too rapid unification it is in sphere of the practical,