The extemporising of _Abt Vogler_ fills the void which it has opened with the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen. Faith, victor over loss, in _Abt Vogler_, is victor over temporal decay in _Rabbi Ben Ezra_. The poem is the song of triumph of devout old age. Neither the shrunken sadness of Matthew Arnold's poem on old age, nor the wise moderation and acquiescence in the economy of force which an admirable poem by Emerson expresses, can be found here; and perhaps some stress and strain may be felt in Browning's effort to maintain his position. It is no "vale of years" of which _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ tells; old age is viewed as an apex, a pinnacle, from which in thin translucent air all the efforts and all the errors of the past can be reviewed; the gifts of youth, the gifts of the flesh are not depreciated; but the highest attainment is that of knowledge won by experience--knowledge which can divide good from evil and what is true from what merely seems, knowledge which can put a just valuation not only on deeds but on every faint desire and unaccomplished purpose, and not only on achievements but failures. Possessed of such knowledge, tried in the probation of life and not found wanting, accepting its own peculiar trials, old age can enter into the rest of a clear and solemn vision, confident of being qualified at last to start forth upon that "adventure brave and new" to which death is a summons, and assured through experience that the power which gives our life its law is equalled by a superintending love. Ardour, and not lethargy, progress and not decline, are here represented as the characteristics of extreme old age. An enthusiasm of effort and of strenuous endurance, an enthusiasm of rest in knowledge, an enthusiasm of self-abandonment to God and the divine purpose make up the poem. At no time did Browning write verse which soars with a more steadfast and impassioned libration of wing. Death in _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ is death as a friend. In the lines entitled _Prospice_ it is death the adversary that is confronted and conquered; the poem is an act of the faith which comes through love; it is ascribed to no imaginary speaker, and does not, indeed, veil its personal character. No lonely adventure is here to reward the victor over death; the transcendent joy is human love recovered, which being once recovered, let whatever God may please succeed. The verses are a confession which gives the reason of that gallant beating up against the wind, noticeable in many of Browning's later poems. He could not cease from hope; but hope and faith had much to encounter, and sometimes he would reduce the grounds of his hope to the lowest, as if to make sure against illusion and to test the fortitude of hope even at its weakest. The hope of immortality which was his own inevitably extended itself beyond himself, and became an interpreter of the mysteries of our earthly life. In