BROWNING AND HIS MARRIAGE Robert Browning had his faults, and the general direction of those faults has been previously suggested.

The chief of his faults, a certain uncontrollable brutality of speech and gesture when he was strongly roused, was destined to cling to him all through his life, and to startle with the blaze of a volcano even the last quiet years before his death.

But any one who wishes to understand how deep was the elemental honesty and reality of his character, how profoundly worthy he was of any love that was bestowed upon him, need only study one most striking and determining element in the question--Browning's simple, heartfelt, and unlimited admiration for other people.

He was one of a generation of great men, of great men who had a certain peculiar type, certain peculiar merits and defects.

Carlyle, Tennyson, Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, were alike in being children of a very strenuous and conscientious age, alike in possessing its earnestness and air of deciding great matters, alike also in showing a certain almost noble jealousy, a certain restlessness, a certain fear of other influences.