Hence we are hurried from the austere solitary meditation of the aged Pope to the condemned cell of Guido, and have opened before us with amazing swiftness and intensity all the recesses of that monstrous nature, its "lips unlocked" by "lucidity of soul." It ends, not on a solemn keynote, but in that passionate and horror-stricken cry where yet lurks the implicit confession that he is guilty and his doom just-- "Pompilia, will you let them murder me ?" It is easy--though hardly any longer quite safe--to cavil at the unique structure of _The Ring and the Book_.

But this unique structure, which probably never deterred a reader who had once got under way, answers in the most exact and expressive way to Browning's aims.

The subject is not the story of Pompilia only, but the fortunes of her story, and of all stories of spiritual naivete such as hers, when projected upon the variously refracting media of mundane judgment and sympathies.

It is not her guilt or innocence only which is on trial, but the mind of man in its capacity to receive and apprehend the surprises of the spirit.

The issue, triumphant for her, is dubious and qualified for the mind of man, where the truth only at last flames forth in its purity.