It may be difficult to discover the principles of the Rosicrucians, but it is much easier to discover the principles of the Rosicrucians than the principles of the United States: nor has any secret society kept its aims so quiet as humanity.

The way to be inexplicable is to be chaotic, and on the surface this was the quality of Browning's life; there is the same difference between judging of his poetry and judging of his life, that there is between making a map of a labyrinth and making a map of a mist.

The discussion of what some particular allusion in _Sordello_ means has gone on so far, and may go on still, but it has it in its nature to end.

The life of Robert Browning, who combines the greatest brain with the most simple temperament known in our annals, would go on for ever if we did not decide to summarise it in a very brief and simple narrative.
Robert Browning was born in Camberwell on May 7th 1812.

His father and grandfather had been clerks in the Bank of England, and his whole family would appear to have belonged to the solid and educated middle class--the class which is interested in letters, but not ambitious in them, the class to which poetry is a luxury, but not a necessity.
This actual quality and character of the Browning family shows some tendency to be obscured by matters more remote.