Human judgments differ. Whom shall my soul believe? One conclusion may, at least, be rested in: a man’s true success must not be estimated by things done, which had their price in the world; but by that which the world’s coarse thumb and finger failed to plumb; by his immature instincts and unsure purposes which weighed not as his work in the world’s estimation, yet went toward making up the main amount of his real worth; by thoughts which could not be contained in narrow acts, by fancies which would not submit to the bonds of language; by all that he strived after and could not attain, by all that was ignored by men with only finite and realizable aims: such are God’s standards of his worth. All the true acquisitions of the soul, all the reflected results of its energizing after the unattainable in this life, all that has truly BEEN, belong to the absolute, and are permanent amid all earth’s changes. It is, indeed, through these changes, through the dance of plastic circumstance, that the permanent is secured. They are the machinery, the Divine Potter’s wheel, which gives the soul its bent, tries it, and turns it forth a cup for the Master’s lips, sufficiently impressed. “So take and use Thy work! Amend what flaws may lurk, What strain o’ the stuff, what warpings past the aim! My times be in Thy hand! Perfect the cup as planned! Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same.” The following account of Rabbi Ben Ezra, I take from Dr. F. J. Furnivall’s ‘Bibliography of Rober Browning’ (‘Browning Soc. Papers’, Part II., p. 162):--