Lastly, "Confessions" is the story of passionate love, lavished by a soul so exclusively and so prodigally on men that it has, in the jealous priestly judgment, sucked away and sapped the natural love for the Father of men. The poor human soul under the weight of this accusation clings only to the thought of how utterly it has loved the brothers that it has seen. "And how," comes the terrible question, "have they requited it? God's love, you have rejected it--what have you got in its stead from man?" I saw God sitting above me, but I ... I sate among men, And I have loved these. The least touch of their hands in the morning, I keep it by day and by night; Their least step on the stair, at the door, still throbs through me, if ever so light: Their least gift, which they left to my childhood, far off in the long-ago years, Is turned from a toy to a relic, and seen through the crystal of tears. "Dig the snow," she said, "For my churchyard bed, Yet I, as I sleep, shall not fear to freeze, If one only of these my beloveds, shall love me with heart-warm tears As I have loved these!" "Go," I cried, "thou hast chosen the Human, and left the Divine! Then, at least, have the Human shared with thee their wild berry wine? Have they loved back thy love, and when strangers approached thee with blame Have they covered thy fault with their kisses, and loved thee the same?" But she shrunk and said, "God, over my head, Must sweep in the wrath of His judgment-seas, If He shall deal with me sinning, but only indeed the same And no gentler than these." We have been dealing with a poet as a poet; but we must not forget that she was a woman too. From Sappho and Sulpicia (whose reputations must be allowed to rest upon somewhat negative proof) to Eliza Cook and Joanna Baillie, and even Mrs. Hemans, sweet singer as she was--how Mrs. Browning distances them all! There was something after all in the quaint proposal of the _Athenæum_, upon the death of Wordsworth, that the Laureateship should be offered to Mrs. Browning, as typical of the realisation of a new possibility for women. That alone is something of an achievement, though in itself we do not rate it very high. But the truth is that we cannot do without our poets; the nation is even now pining for a new one, and every soul that comes among us bringing the _divinæ particulam auræ_, who finds his way to expression, is a possession to congratulate ourselves upon. If there is that shadowy something in a writer's work, coming we know not whence and going we know not whither, unseen, intangible, but making its presence felt and heard, we must welcome it and guard it and give it room to move. "My own best poets," writes Mrs. Browning, "am I one with you?"