I stooped and picked a leaf of fern, And recollected I might learn From books, how many myriad sorts Of ferns exist (etc.). (ll. 738-741.) Will not the vistas of "earth's resources," thus opening out before the lover of nature, prove composed of "vast exhaustless beauty, endless change of wonder?" Yes: but the Judgment has taught that which the term of probation failed to teach--that a genuine appreciation of these beauties was even then a possibility. Absolute renunciation was not essential to spiritual development: for that alone was needed the insight capable of looking beyond "the gift to the giver," beyond "the finite to infinity." Which could recognize in All partial beauty--a pledge Of beauty in its plenitude. (ll. 769-770.) The cause of life's failure, justifying condemnation, lay in an acceptance of the means as the end, of the pledge in place of the ultimate fulfilment. Now, absolute satiety being attained, the soul's ambition being bounded by the limits of earth, the plenitude of "those who looked above" is not for it. (_b_) But if Nature refuses to yield the satisfaction demanded, the seeker for consolation would turn thence to a contemplation of _Art_, the works of which he holds as "supplanting," mainly giving worth to Nature: Art which bears upon it the impress of human labour. And here again recurs the teaching of _Andrea del Sarto_, of _A Toccata of Galuppi's_, of _Old Pictures in Florence_, of _Rabbi Ben Ezra_, of _Cleon_: in short, of almost any of the more characteristic poems. In so far as these artists, to whom the lover of earth looks for satisfaction in his search for the beautiful, refused to recognize as binding the limitations imposed upon their work by temporary conditions: in so far was a sphere of higher development prepared for and awaiting them elsewhere. Undesirous of contemporary appreciation, the true artist is represented as fearing lest judgment should be passed upon that which he realizes to be but the imperfection denoting "perfection hid, reserved in part to grace" that after-time of labour, the existence of which the world ignores. He was Afraid His fellow men should give him rank By mere tentatives which he shrank Smitten at heart from, all the more, That gazers pressed in to adore. (ll. 791-795.) And the speaker has been amongst the throng of spectators who accepted these "mere tentatives" as the consummation of the artist's powers. Thus with Art as with Nature, "the pledge sufficed his mood." Hence, in both relations--failure. Enjoyment, enjoyment to the full, of Art as of Nature was no impossibility, only, here too, with the sensuous gratification should have subsisted also the "spirit's hunger," Unsated--not unsatable. (ll. 860-861.) Unsated, until the soul's true sphere shall have been attained. Now is that judgment pronounced which we find Andrea del Sarto passing upon himself whilst life and its opportunities yet remained his.