waters from the more resonant roll of the shifting tides.




CHAPTER X.

THE INTERPRETER OF LIFE.

His voice sounds loudest and also clearest for the things that as a
race we like best; ... the fascination of faith, the acceptance of
life, the respect for its mysteries, the endurance of its charges,
the vitality of the will, the validity of character, the beauty of
action, the seriousness, above all, of great human passion.

--HENRY JAMES.



I.


The trend of speculative thought in Europe during the century which
preceded the emergence of Browning may be described as a progressive
integration along several distinct lines of the great regions of
existence which common beliefs, resting on a still vigorous medievalism,
thrust apart. Nature was brought into nearer relation with Man, and Man
with God, and God with Nature and with Man. In one aspect, not the least
striking, it was a "return to Nature"; economists from Adam Smith to
Malthus worked out the laws of man's dependence upon the material world;