But sacred fervour is confined to no sect.  Here it is of the profoundest, and uttered with a homely tenderness equal to that of the earliest writers.  Mrs. Browning, the princess of poets, was no partisan.  If my work were mainly critical, I should feel bound to remark upon her false theory of English rhyme, and her use of strange words.  That she is careless too in her general utterance I cannot deny; but in idea she is noble, and in phrase magnificent.  Some of her sonnets are worthy of being ranged with the best in our language—­those of Milton and Wordsworth.

  BEREAVEMENT.

  When some Beloveds, ’neath whose eyelids lay
  The sweet lights of my childhood, one by one
  Did leave me dark before the natural sun,
  And I astonied fell, and could not pray,
  A thought within me to myself did say,
  “Is God less God that thou art left undone? 
  Rise, worship, bless Him! in this sackcloth spun,
  As in that purple!”—­But I answer, Nay! 
  What child his filial heart in words can loose,
  If he behold his tender father raise
  The hand that chastens sorely?  Can he choose
  But sob in silence with an upward gaze? 
  And my great Father, thinking fit to bruise,
  Discerns in speechless tears both prayer and praise.

  COMFORT.

  Speak low to me, my Saviour, low and sweet,
  From out the hallelujahs sweet and low,
  Lest I should fear and fall, and miss thee so,
  Who art not missed by any that entreat. 
  Speak to me as to Mary at thy feet—­
  And if no precious gums my hands bestow,
  Let my tears drop like amber, while I go
  In reach of thy divinest voice complete
  In humanest affection—­thus, in sooth
  To lose the sense of losing!  As a child,
  Whose song-bird seeks the wood for evermore,
  Is sung to in its stead by mother’s mouth;
  Till sinking on her breast, love-reconciled,
  He sleeps the faster that he wept before.

Gladly would I next give myself to the exposition of several of the poems of her husband, Robert Browning, especially the Christmas Eve and Easter Day; in the first of which he sets forth in marvellous rhymes the necessity both for widest sympathy with the varied forms of Christianity, and for individual choice in regard to communion; in the latter, what it is to choose the world and lose the life.  But this would take many pages, and would be inconsistent with the plan of my book.

When I have given two precious stanzas, most wise as well as most lyrical and lovely, from the poems of our honoured Charles Kingsley, I shall turn to the other of the classes into which the devout thinkers of the day have divided.

  A FAREWELL.

  My fairest child, I have no song to give you;
    No lark could pipe to skies so dull and grey;
  Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you
        For every day.