A survey of Browning's contributions to the theological differences of the mid-century would not be complete without some reference to "Caliban" and "Childe Roland." In the former, the absurdities of anthropomorphism, of the God conceived in the likeness of man, are presented with dramatic and ironical force, but, at the same time, is shown the aspiration to something beyond, which has carried dogma through all the centuries, forward to ever purer and more spiritual conceptions of the absolute. In the second, though it be a purely romantic ballad, there seems to be symbolized the scientific knight-errant of the century, who, with belief and faith completely annihilated by the science which allows for no realm of knowledge beyond its own experimental reach, yet considers life worth living. Despite the complex interpretations which have issued from the oracular tripods of Browning Societies, one cannot read the last lines of this poem-- "Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set, And blew, '_Childe Roland to the dark Tower came_'"-- without thinking of the splendid courage in the face of disillusionment of such men of the century as Huxley, Tyndall or Clifford. When we ask, where is Browning in all this diversity of theological opinion? we can only answer that beyond an ever-present undercurrent of religious aspiration there is no possibility of pinning the poet to any given dogmas. Everywhere we feel the dramatic artist. In "Paracelsus" the philosophy of life was that of the artist whose adoration finds its completion in beauty and joy; now the poet himself is the artist experiencing as Aprile did, this beauty and joy in a boundless sympathy with many forms of mystical religious ecstasy. Every one of these poems presents a conflict between the doubts born of some phase of theological controversy and the exaltation of moments or periods of ecstatic vision, and though nowhere is dogmatic truth asserted with positiveness, everywhere we feel a mystic sympathy with the moving power of religious aspiration, a sympathy which belongs to a form of consciousness perhaps more inclusive than the religious--namely, a poetic consciousness, able at once to sympathize with the content and to present the forms of mystic vision belonging to various phases of human consciousness. II THE CENTURY'S END: PROMISE OF PEACE