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of retrogression. Not until we reach the Nineteenth Century do 
we find that whole combination of Englishmen of all phases of 
thought, of science, of art, of literature, striving to uplift the 
nation, as in the case of Huxley, Carlyle, Wordsworth, Ruskin, 
Tenuyson, and Browning, and seeking to express by example 
and precept the geod, the beautiful, and the true in their lives, 
which has done more to raise life to a higher standard and an 
exalted destiny than in any period of our history. After a review 
of the life in the medieval castle of the Twelfth Century, as 
seen in France, Germany, and Italy (where there was no pretence 
to love), and of the school of German romanticism, which since 
the death of Goethe had ceased to exist because it lacked the 
two essentials of immortality—truth and beauty—the Lecturer 
proceeded: Henceforth the world possesses a new kind of love 
through the teaching of its poets—the love of Romeo, of Hamlet, 
of Bassanio, of Viola, and of Juliet ; the love of the love poems 
of Shelley, of Tennyson, of Browning and of Browning’s wife ; a 
love that leads no longer to folly and sin, but to an intenser 
activity of men’s imagination in the pursuit of the good, the 
beautiful and the true, and applicable to the realities of life. 
The intense love of nature shared by both Shelley and Byron, 
led to their intenser love for humanity, which caused them to 
storm with fierce denunciation the strongholds of oppression, 
cruelty, priestcraft, and hypocrisy, whether found on the thrones 
of Europe—and especially the so-called Holy Alliance—amongst 
her statesmen, or tha relentless orthodoxy of the Church, and 
helped to bring about a larger conception of what was meant by 
liberty for man. 
Browning’s early work, and especially ‘‘ Pauline.” seems 
saturated with the ethereal spirit of Shelley, strikes the same 
note in a higher key, and traces the love for nature and love for 
humanity to its source Divine. 
The story of Browning’s first adventure, as to how he captured 
his goddess of love, how he loved to madness the ideal long 
before he saw the real, that the very spirit of Dante seemed to 
have possessed him, how he broke every convention of decent 
society, cheated nearly a whole family, defied the opinion of the 
greatest medical authorities, married and eloped to Paris, and 
then to Italy with Elizabeth Barrett, who for the most part of 
fourteen years had spent her time between a sofa and a bed, with 
spinal complaint and hysteria, and yet within eighteen months 
she was toiling up the crests of mountains to what she calls “an 
inaccessible voleanic ground, not far from the stars,” says a 
great deal for the power of love. All this would make a capital 
story, but it is not the adventure I wish to bring before you, but 
one of even more consuming interest, I mean ‘ Robert 
