And this hope for the individual and the race was one of the deepest elements in Browning's religion.

It was also the hope of Tennyson, but Tennyson was often uncertain of it, and bewailed the uncertainty.

Browning was certain of his hope, and for the most part resolved his discords.

Even when he did not resolve them, he firmly believed that they would be resolved.

This, his essential difference from the other poets of the last fifty years, marks not only his apartness from the self-ignorance of English society, and the self-sceptical scepticism which arises from that self-ignorance, but also how steadily assured was the foundation of his spiritual life.