IV. So far we have only treated of conclusions which, by comparison with other poems obviously dramatic, and with his more avowedly confessed opinions elsewhere, we have felt ourselves justified in accepting as Browning's own. Turning to the questions yet remaining for consideration, we are upon more debatable ground. But here, too, pursuing similar methods, we may expect the results to be also decisive in so far as our means of investigation will allow. To what extent did personal feeling influence the criticism of Roman Catholic ritual contained in _Christmas Eve_? In what degree may Browning be held to have sympathized with the final decision in favour of the creed of Zion Chapel? An answer to the first question involves at least a partial answer to the second. Browning's attitude, could it be accurately estimated, towards Roman Catholicism, might be decisive as to how far it was possible for him to concur in the conclusions attributed to the soliloquist as the result of his night's experience. With regard to external evidence touching Browning's opinions on any given question, it is usually of so conflicting a character as to leave us still in the condition of mental indecision in which we began the enquiry. In the present instance we have the report to which reference has been already made of the author's own assertion respecting _Bishop Blougram's Apology_; that he intended no hostility, and felt none towards the Roman Catholic Church. On the other side of the argument has to be reckoned the reply to Miss Barrett's wish, expressed in the early days of their acquaintance, that he would give direct utterance to his own opinions, not sheltering himself behind his various _dramatis personae_. Whilst promising to accede to the request, he adds, "I don't think I shall let _you_ hear, after all, the savage things about Popes and imaginative religions that I must say." This correspondence took place five years before _Christmas Eve and Easter Day_ was published. To the year of publication is to be referred the author's satirical observation on the premature proclivities evinced by his infant son, during a visit to Siena, towards church interiors and ritual. "It is as well," he remarked, "to have the eye-teeth and the Puseyistical crisis over together." Of this comment writes Professor Dowden, to whom we have been recently indebted for so much valuable light on Browning's life and work: "Although no more than a passing word spoken in play [it] gives a correct indication of Browning's feeling, fully shared by his wife, towards the religious movement in England, which was altering the face of the Established Church. 'Puseyism' was for them a kind of child's play, which unfortunately had religion for its playground; they viewed it with a superior smile, in which there was more of pity than of anger."[78] It was, indeed, as we have already had occasion to notice, in the nature of things unlikely that Browning should have remained uninfluenced by the