poise, her bright steadiness of soul, carries us into a different and much more highly evolved world of thought and feeling. So we might go through the great assemblage of Browning's characters to find that each one stands out by himself as a person with his own qualities, possibilities, and problems. In all this portrayal of individuals the emphasis is on things of the mind and heart. In these realms Browning found nothing alien or uninteresting. From point to point his poetry illustrates what he said in his comment on _Sordello_, "My stress lay on the incidents in the development of a human soul; little else is worth study." In all his poetry environment is of importance only in so far as it is the stuff on which the soul works. It is "the subtle thing called spirit," it is "the soul's world" to which he devotes himself. It is only from a study of Browning's many characters that we may arrive at a statement of some of the distinguishing features of his philosophy of life. And any such statements must be made with extreme caution because of his dramatic method. He utters this caution himself when he says of his poems, "Their contents are always dramatic in principle, and so many utterances of so many imaginary people." Yet it is possible, by taking the general trend and scope of his work, to make justifiable deductions concerning the dominant ideas in the rich field of his poetry and drama. In Browning's philosophy of life, words of especial significance are "growth" and "progress." Domizia in _Luria_ says: How inexhaustibly the spirit grows! One object, she seemed erewhile born to reach With her whole energies and die content-- So like a wall at the world's edge is stood, With naught beyond to live for--is that reached?-- Already are new undreamed energies Outgrowing under, and extending farther To a new object. So, too, John in "A Death in the Desert" sums up his belief in the line, I say that man was made to grow, not stop.