nominal belief held as unassimilated material, not welded into the
living substance of character; and he makes his Easter-Day visionary
confound with withering irony the "faith" which seeks assurance in
outward "evidence,"--

"'Tis found,
No doubt: as is your sort of mind,
So is your sort of search: you'll find
What you desire."

Still less mercy has he for the dogmatic voluptuary who complacently
assumes the "all-stupendous tale" of Christianity to have been enacted

"to give our joys a zest,
And prove our sorrows for the best."

Upon these complacent materialisms and epicureanisms of the religious
character falls the scorching splendour of the Easter Vision, with its
ruthless condemnation of whatever is not glorified by Love, passing over
into the uplifting counter--affirmation, indispensable to Browning's
optimism, that--

"All thou dost enumerate
Of power and beauty in the world
The mightiness of Love was curled
Inextricably round about."

With all their nobility of feeling, and frequent splendour of
description, these twin poems cannot claim a place in Browning's work at
all corresponding to the seriousness with which he put them forward, and