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And this struggle to realise our best self is only the prelude to 
the state where we shall 
Reach the ultimate angel’s lair, 
There, where law, life, joy, impulse, are one thing. 
His message is against speculating upon what might have been, 
had other conditions prevailed; not to grumble at the facts, but 
look at them, accept them, and then strive to make the best of 
them. Hence we find him saying :— 
The common problem, yours, mine, everyone’s, 
Is not to fancy what were fair in life, 
Provided it could be—but, finding first 
What may be, then find out how to make it fair, 
Up to our means. 
Again he says :—‘’Tis not what a man does which exalts him, 
but what he would do.” Though we cannot bring the sum right, 
Browning gives us credit for the working. Do we fail, he 
encourages us in these words :— 
That low man seeks a little thing to do, 
Sees it, and does it; 
This high man, with a great thing to persue, 
Dies ere he knows it. 
The same thought is expressed in the ‘‘ Inn Album ”’ :— 
Better have failed in the high aim, as I, 
Than, vulgarly, in the low aim succeed, 
As, God be thanked, I do not. 
Surely, such a message is the most encouraging and exalting 
that has been uttered for the last two thousand years. In these 
days are we not accustomed to judge men by results—by the 
shows of things, by appearances—to approve when successful, 
without enquiry into the means by which success has been 
attained, and to condemn when they seem to fail, little dreaming 
that ‘‘ there shall never be one lost good.’”’ We ask, How much 
has a man made, what is he worth, or what has he done? 
Browning asks, What would that man do, to what did he aspire, 
has he striven? Then he knows he must have accomplished 
something. 
Mr. Hill entered into an examination of ‘ Paracelsus”? and 
‘« Sordello,”’ and said : Here we have the continuity of Browning’s 
message, namely, hope and love. We have it on the greatest 
authority that ‘love is the fulfilling of the law,” and the summing 
up of the teaching of Tennyson is that “there is nothing we can 
call our own, but love.”” And Browning says :— 
All’s love, but all’s law. 
And again :— 
' A loving worm, within its clod, 
Were diviner than a loveless God, 
Amidst His worlds, I dare to say. 
