I took it and tread firm there; wherefore change?"[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1886-1887.]

Jean Paul Richter said that he knew another way of being happy, beside
that of soaring away so far above the clouds of life, that its miseries
looked small, and the whole external world shrunk into a little child's
garden. It was, "Simply to sink down into this little garden; and there
to nestle yourself so snugly, so homewise, in some furrow, that in
looking out from your warm lark-nest, you likewise can discern no
wolf-dens, charnel-houses, or thunder-rods, but only blades and ears,
every one of which, for the nest-bird, is a tree, and a sun-screen, and
rain-screen." There is a similar way of being good, with a goodness
which, though limited, is pure and perfect in nature. Nay, we may even
admit that such lives are frequently the most complete and beautiful,
just as the fairest flowers grow, not on the tallest trees, but on the
fragile plants at their foot. Nevertheless, even in the case of those
persons who have never broken from the traditional faith of the past, or
felt it to be inadequate, that faith has been silently reconstructed in
a new synthesis of knowledge. Spiritual life cannot come by inheritance;
but every individual must acquire a faith for himself, and turn his
spiritual environment into personal experience. "A man may be a heretic
in the truth," said Milton, "and if he believe things only because his
pastor says so, or the assembly so determines, without knowing other
reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes
his heresy." It is truth to another but tradition to him; it is a creed
and not a conviction. Browning fully recognizes the need of this
conflict--

"Is it not this ignoble confidence,