Then stand before that fact, that Life and Death, Stay there at gaze, till it dispart, dispread, As though a star should open out, all sides, Grow the world on you, as it is my world. [Footnote 92: Statements by Mrs Orr with respect to Browning's relations to Christianity will be found on p. 319 and p. 373 of her Life of Browning. She regarded "La Saisiaz" as conclusive proof of his "heterodox attitude." Robert Buchanan, in the Epistle dedicatory to "The Outcast," alleges that he questioned Browning as to whether he were a Christian, and that Browning "thundered No!" The statement embodied in my text above is substantially not mine but Browning's own. See on _Ferishtah's Fancies_ in chapter xvi.] Chapter XII The Ring and the Book The publication of _Dramatis Personae_ marks an advance in Browning's growing popularity; a second edition, in which some improvements were effected, was called for in 1864, the year of its first publication. "All my new cultivators," Browning wrote, "are young men"; many of them belonged to Oxford and Cambridge. But he was resolved to consult his own taste, to take his own way, and let popularity delay or hasten as it would--"pleasing myself," he says, "or aiming at doing so, and thereby, I hope, pleasing God." His life had ordered itself as seemed best to him--a life in London during the months in which the tide flows and sparkles; then summer and autumn quietude in some retreat upon the French coast. The years passed in such a uniformity of work and rest, with enjoyment accompanying each of these, that they may almost be grasped in bundles. In 1865, the holiday was again at Sainte-Marie, and the weather was golden; but he noticed with regret that the old church at Pornic, where the beautiful white girl of his poem had been buried, was disappearing to give space in front of a new and smart erection of brick and stucco. His Florence, as he learnt, was also altering, and he lamented the change. Every detail of the Italian days lived in his memory; the violets and ground ivy on a certain old wall; the fig tree behind the Siena villa, under which his wife would sit and read, and "poor old Landor's oak." "I never hear of any one going to Florence," he wrote in 1870, "but my heart is twitched." He would like to "glide for a long summer-day through the streets and between the old stone-walls--unseen come and unheard go." But he must guard himself against being overwhelmed by recollection: "Oh, me! to find myself some late sunshiny Sunday afternoon, with my face turned to Florence--'ten minutes to the gate, ten minutes _home_!' I think I should fairly end it all on the spot."[93]