It is in this kind of thing that we find the roots of the real anger of Browning.

He did not dislike spiritualism, but spiritualists.

The second point on which any one wishing to be just in the matter should cast an eye, is the record of the visit which Mrs.Browning insisted on making while on their honeymoon in Paris to the house of George Sand.

Browning felt, and to some extent expressed, exactly the same aversion to his wife mixing with the circle of George Sand which he afterwards felt at her mixing with the circle of Home.

The society was "of the ragged red, diluted with the low theatrical, men who worship George Sand, _a genou bas_ between an oath and an ejection of saliva." When we find that a man did not object to any number of Jacobites or Atheists, but objected to the French Bohemian poets and to the early occultist mediums as friends for his wife, we shall surely be fairly right in concluding that he objected not to an opinion, but to a social tone.