"far from vanish, rather grows, Or decomposes but to recompose, Become my universe that feels and knows."[46] [Footnote 45: Quoted _Int. Journ. of Ethics_, April 1902.] [Footnote 46: The last line is pantheistic in expression, and has been so understood by some, particularly by Mr J.M. Robertson. But pantheism was at most a tendency, which the stubborn concreteness of his mind held effectually in check; a point, one might say, upon which his thinking converges, but which it never even proximately attains. God and the Soul never mingle, however intimate their communion. Cf. chap. x. below.] CHAPTER VI. _THE RING AND THE BOOK_. Tout passe.--L'art robuste Seul a l'éternité. Le buste Survit à la cité. Et la médaille austère Que trouve un laboureur Sous terre Révèle un empereur. --GAUTIER: _L'Art_. After four years of silence, the _Dramatis Personæ_ was followed by _The Ring and the Book_. This monumental poem, in some respects his culminating achievement, has its roots in an earlier stratum of his life than its predecessor. There is little here to recall the characteristic moods of his first years of desolate widowhood--the valiant Stoicism, the acceptance of the sombre present, the great forward gaze upon the world beyond. We are in Italy once more, our senses tingle with its glowing prodigality of day, we jostle the teeming throng of the Roman streets, and are drawn into the vortex of a vast debate which seems to occupy the entire community, and which turns, not upon immortality, or spiritualism, or the nature of God, or the fate of man, but on the guilt or innocence of the actors in one pitiful drama,--a priest, a noble, an illiterate girl.