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observations on the sanitary arrangements in connection with 
bathrooms, water closets, and slopstones, were made by Mr. G. 
B. Raweliffe, who also recommended that the division walls 
between water-closets and ashpits should be nine inches thick. 
Mr. Dall then replied to the various comments which had been 
made, in the course of which he advocated, as being extremely 
desirable, the printing in separate form of a code of good bye- 
laws for the use of builders. 
ON BROWNING’S POEMS. 
By BENJAMIN SAGAR, March 17th, 1885. 
If Browning as a poet has not invented for himself new sub- 
jects on which to write, he has at least treated the old ones ready 
to his hand in a manner very different from all his predecessors. 
He has stepped out of the ranks of “poet” as ordinarily 
conceived, and has written works to which the title of ‘“ poetry” 
is denied by his detractors, but which in the opinion of his 
admirers contain true poetry of the highest kind. 
Man is the sole study of Browning :—man, and man’s soul, 
and all that go to make up ‘“‘ man” in the abstract, or any given 
concrete man of whom he may be writing. In an essay on 
Shelley published about 1850, Browning explains his views on 
objective and subjective poetry. He speaks of the subjective 
poet as having to do “not with the combination of humanity in 
action, but with the primal elements of humanity. He digs 
where he stands, preferring to seek them in his own soul as the 
nearest reflex of that absolute Mind according to the intuitions of 
which he desires to perceive and speak.’’ And in issuing, thirteen 
years later, a revised edition of his ‘‘ Sordello” he says ‘‘my 
stress lay on the incidents in the development of a soul; little 
else is worth study; I, at least, always thought so.” Still later 
—in 1876—he writes ‘‘mine be man’s thoughts, loves, hates.” 
With these distinct declarations before us we can understand 
how it is that in most of his works Browning has called before 
him souls for judgment or for investigation. 
‘Take the least man of all mankind, as I; 
“Look at his head and heart, find how and why 
“He differs from his fellows utterly.” 
And we can perceive how persons and things objectionable and 
repulsive to some of us have an attraction for Browning. Noth- 
ing human is alien to him, and if critics bring against him the 
