In literature also I wish to bring these distinctions before you, these differences of standard; and perhaps I cannot accomplish this better than by exhibiting them as they are presented in a few verses from the poet of the imperfect. I suppose if we try to mark out with precision the work of Mr. Browning,--I mean not to mark it out as the Browning societies do, but to mark it out with precision,--we might say that its distinctive feature is that he has guided himself by the principle on which I have insisted: he has sought for beauty where there is seeming chaos; he has loved growth, has prized progress, has noted the advance of the spiritual, the pressing on of the finite soul through hindrance to its junction with the infinite. This it is which has inspired his somewhat crabbed verses, and has made men willing to undergo the labor of reading them, that they too may partake of his insight. In one of his poems--one which seems to me to contain some of his sublimest as well as some of his most commonplace lines, the poem on "Old Pictures in Florence,"--he discriminates between Greek and Christian art in much the same way I have done. In "Greek Art," Mr. Browning says:-- You saw yourself as you wished you were, As you might have been, as you cannot be; Earth here, rebuked by Olympus there; And grew content in your poor degree With your little power, by those statues' godhead, And your little scope, by their eyes' full sway, And your little grace, by their grace embodied, And your little date, by their forms that stay. You would fain be kinglier, say, than I am? Even so, you will not sit like Theseus. You would prove a model? The son of Priam Has yet the advantage in arms' and knees' use. You're wroth--can you slay your snake like Apollo? You're grieved--still Niobe's the grander! You live--there's the Racers' frieze to follow: You die--there's the dying Alexander. So, testing your weakness by their strength, Your meagre charms by their rounded beauty, Measured by Art in your breadth and length, You learned--to submit is a mortal's duty. Growth came when, looking your last on them all, You turned your eyes inwardly one fine day And cried with a start--What if we so small Be greater and grander the while than they! Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature? In both, of such lower types are we Precisely because of our wider nature; For time, theirs--ours, for eternity. To-day's brief passion limits their range; It seethes with the morrow for us and more. They are perfect--how else? they shall never change: We are faulty--why not? we have time in store. The Artificer's hand is not arrested With us; we are rough-hewn, no-wise polished: They stand for our copy, and once invested With all they can teach, we shall see them abolished.