most of our lives are set.

"We return, however, strengthened and refreshed, braced to endure
the wrongs which we know shall be one day righted, to acquiesce
in the limited and imperfect conditions of earth, which we know
shall be merged at last in heaven's perfect round, and to accept
with patience the renunciation demanded of us here, knowing

"`All we have willed, or hoped, or dreamed of good shall exist.'"


In his `Introductory Address to the Browning Society',
the Rev. J. Kirkman, of Queen's College, Cambridge, says of
`Abt Volger': --


"The spiritual transcendentalism of music, the inscrutable relation
between the seen and the eternal, of which music alone unlocks the gate
by inarticulate expression, has never had an articulate utterance
from a poet before `Abt Vogler'. This is of a higher order
of composition, quite nobler, than the merely fretful rebellion
against the earthly condition imposed here below upon heavenly things,
seen in `Master Hughes' [of Saxe-Gotha]. In that and other places,
I am not sure that persons of musical ATTAINMENT,
as distinguished from musical SOUL AND SYMPATHY, do not rather find
a professional gratification at the technicalities. . .than get
conducted to `the law within the law'. But in `Abt Vogler',
the understanding is spell-bound, and carried on the wings
of the emotions, as Ganymede in the soft down of the eagle,
into the world of spirit. . . .