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The second is some rhymed rhetoric from Holy Cross Day '-the testimony of the dying Jew in Rome:

'This world has been harsh and strange, Something is wrong: there needeth a change. But what or where? at the last or first? In one point only we sinned at worst.

'The Lord will have mercy on Jacob yet, And again in his border see Israel set. When Judah beholds Jerusalem,

The stranger seed shall be joined to them:
To Jacob's house shall the Gentiles cleave:
So the prophet saith, and his sons believe.

Ay, the children of the chosen race

Shall carry and bring them to their place;
In the land of the Lord shall lead the same,
Bondsmen and handmaids. Who shall blame
When the slaves enslave, the oppressed ones o'er
The oppressor triumph for evermore?

'God spoke, and gave us the word to keep:
Bade never fold the hands, nor sleep
'Mid a faithless world, at watch and ward,
Till the Christ at the end relieve our guard.
By His servant Moses the watch was set :
Though near upon cockcrow, we keep it yet.

'Thou! if Thou wast He, who at mid-watch came,
By the starlight naming a dubious Name;
And if we were too heavy with sleep, too rash
With fear-O Thcu, if that martyr-gash
Fell on Thee, coming to take Thine own,
And we gave the Cross, when we owed the
throne;

'Thou art the Judge. We are bruised thus. But, the Judgment over, join sides with us! Thine, too, is the cause! and not more Thine Than ours is the work of these dogs and swine, Whose life laughs through and spits at their creed, Who maintain Thee in word, and defy Thee in deed.

'We withstood Christ then? Be mindful how
At least we withstand Barabbas now!

Was our outrage sore? But the worst we spared
To have called these-Christians-had we dared
Let defiance to them pay mistrust of Thee,
And Rome make amends for Calvary!

'By the torture, prolonged from age to age;
By the infamy, Israel's heritage;

By the Ghetto's plague, by the garb's disgrace,
By the badge of shame, by the felon's place,
By the branding-tool, the bloody whip,
And the summons to Christian fellowship,

'We boast our proof, that at least the Jew
Would wrest Christ's name from the devil's crew.

The last quotation shall be from the veritable Browning-of one of those poetical audacities none ever dared but the Danton of modern poetry. Audacious in its familiar realism, in its total disregard of poetical environment, in its rugged abruptness: but supremely successful, and alive with emotion:

'What is he buzzing in my ears?

Now that I come to die,

Do I view the world as a vale of tears?

Ah, reverend sir, not I.

'What I viewed there once, what I view again, Where the physic bottles stand

On the table's edge, is a suburb lane,
With a wall to my bedside hand.

'That lane sloped, much as the bottles do,

From a house you could descry

O'er the garden-wall.

Is the curtain blue

Or green to a healthy eye?

'To mine, it serves for the old June weather,
Blue above lane and wall;

And that farthest bottle, labelled "Ether,"
Is the house o'ertopping all.

'At a terrace somewhat near its stopper,
There watched for me, one June,
A girl-I know, sir, it's improper :
My poor mind's out of tune.

Only there was a way-you crept
Close by the side, to dodge

Eyes in the house-two eyes except.

They styled their house "The Lodge."

'What right had a lounger up their lane?

But by creeping very close,

With the good wall's help their eyes might strain And stretch themselves to oes,

'Yet never catch her and me together,
As she left the attic-there,

By the rim of the bottle labelled "Ether
And stole from stair to stair,

And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas! We loved, sir; used to meet.

How sad and bad and mad it was!

But then, how it was sweet!'

The second period of Mr. Browning's poetry demands a different line of argument; for it is, in my judg ment, folly to deny that he has of late years written a great deal which makes very difficult reading indeed. No doubt you may meet people who tell you that they read the 'Ring and the Book' for the first time without much mental effort; but you will do well not to believe them. These poems are difficult-they cannot help being so. What is the 'Ring and the Book'? A huge novel in 20,000 lines-told after the method not of Scott but of Balzac; it tears the hearts out of a dozen characters; it tells the same story from ten different points of view. It is loaded with detail of every kind and description: you are let off nothing. As

with a schoolboy's life at a large school, if he is to enjoy it at all, he must fling himself into it, and care intensely about everything-so the reader of the Ring and the Book' must be interested in everybody and everything, down to the fact that the eldest daughter of the counsel for the prosecution of Guido is eight years old on the very day he is writing his speech, and that he is going to have fried liver and parsley for his

supper.

If you are prepared for this, you will have your reward; for the style, though rugged and involved, is throughout, with the exception of the speeches of counsel, eloquent, and at times superb; and as for the matter, if your interest in human nature is keen, curious, almost professional-if nothing man, woman, or child has been, done, or suffered, or conceivably can be, do, or suffer,