better fitted for life, as life now is, than he of the "artist nature." Later on (l. 763) the speaker again reverts to the same simile, passing to the further illustration of the traveller providing his equipment in advance, in each case adapting it to a climate to be subsequently reached, rather than to that in which he is at the moment living. As when a traveller, bound from North to South, Scouts fur in Russia: what's its use in France? In France spurns flannel: where's its need in Spain? In Spain drops cloth, too cumbrous for Algiers! (ll. 790-793.) The question not unreasonably follows, "When, through his journey, was the fool at ease?" Thus, according to the Bishop, he who can most completely accommodate himself to the exigencies of the present life, evinces his capability for adapting himself to that which is to come. A theory, in direct opposition, it would appear, to Browning's usual doctrine, repeated in so many of the familiar poems. It is difficult to imagine a figure affording more striking contrast to the prosperous prelate than that of the Grammarian, once the "Lyric Apollo, electing to live nameless," occupied with the pursuit of an abstract good; only paving the way for the attainment of his successors; and in death throwing on God the task of making "the heavenly period perfect the earthen," that incomplete phase of existence, full of unsatisfied aspirations, of unfinished attempts. Of him the poet gives us the assurance that he shall find the God whom he has sought: whilst for the worldling who Has the world here--should he need the next, Let the world mind him! In _Cleon_, in _A Death in the Desert_, in _Dîs Aliter Visum_, and perhaps above all in _Abt Vogler_ (to refer to only a few illustrations out of the many possible), the fact that man is incapable of accommodating himself to his environment is treated as a proof that this is not his true sphere of existence; that he was designed, and is still destined, for something higher. So asks the lover of Pauline: How should this earth's life prove my only sphere? Can I so narrow sense but that in life Soul still exceeds it? In _Dîs Aliter Visum_, the assertion What's whole, can increase no more, Is dwarfed and dies, since here's its sphere; has especial reference to love, The sole spark from God's life "at strife" With death, so, sure of range above The limits here. but there is a recognition of the general principle that that work alone is worth beginning here and now, which "cannot grow complete," and which "heaven (not earth) must finish." Even where, as in _Rabbi Ben Ezra_, Browning lays strongest emphasis upon "the unity of life"; where age is regarded as the completion of the physical life begun in youth, the question is put, and left unanswered: Thy body at its best, How far can it project thy soul on its lone way?