Should we not credit human testimony?
Should we not evict prejudice from our understandings?
Should we not investigate alleged facts?
Should we not keep an open mind?
We cannot but feel a certain sympathy with a woman of ardent nature who fails to observe the bounds of intellectual prudence.

Browning himself with all his audacities was pre-eminently prudent.

He did not actively enter into politics; he did not dabble in pseudo-science; he was an artist and a thinker; and he made poems, and amused himself with drawing, modelling in clay, and the study of music.

Mrs Browning squandered her enthusiasms with less discretion.

A good dose of stupidity or an indignant energy of common-sense, impatient of the nonsense of the thing, may be the salvation of the average man.