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Study having shown that a direction line without tunnels, and even with the steepest gradients for traction by adhesion, would lead to a considerable lengthening of the line, and would expose it to avalanches and to obstructions by snow, there was adopted upon a certain length a rack track of the Abt system, with gradients of 8 per cent., and the neck is traversed by a tunnel 3 miles in length and 1,968 feet beneath the surface.
As 25 per cent. is regarded as the maximum safe gradient for an Abt rack railway, since the cog-wheel is liable to climb out of the rack on any steeper grade, it will be seen that the strain upon the credulity of the hearer of this story is almost as great as that upon the car must have been.
As he sits in the twilight, holding his wife's hand, and talking in a half-musing way, it is readily seen that his love for this beautiful but soulless woman has caused many of his failures and sorrows in the past, and will continue to arouse conflicts of soul in the future. Abt Vogler, one of Browning's noblest and most melodious poems, voices the exquisite raptures of a musician's soul:
Side just abov a Cave Called Monbrun Tavern & River, passed a Creek on the Lbd. Side Call Rush Creek at 4 Miles Several Showers of rain the Current Verry Swift river riseing fast Passed Big Miry River at 11 Miles on the Starboard Side, at the lower point of a Island, this River is about 50 yards Wide, Camped at the mouth of a Creek on Lbd Sd of abt 25 yds.
Have we not here, in this odd earliest allegory of music and theology, this earliest precursor of the organ-playing of Abt Vogler, one of those choirs, clusters of singing childish heads clusters, you might almost say, of sweet treble notes, tied like nosegays by the score held scrollwise across them, which are among the sweetest inventions of Italian art, from Luca della Robbia to Raphael, "cantatori, guibilatori, che tengon il coro?"
That is, there is something more distinctive, something more indicative of a great individuality speaking a new language. "Compare these men with composers of the order of Abt, Steibelt, Thalberg, and Donizetti, and you will see at once what I mean about originality being the basis of permanent art.
As Master Hugues of the earlier collection of poems converts a bewildering technique of music into poetry, and discovers in its intricate construction a certain interposing web spun by the brain between the soul and things divine, so Abt Vogler interprets music on the other side that of immediate inspiration, to which the constructive element real though slight is subordinate.
Die, indeed! when one recalls the ideal characters he has invested with reality; how he has described love and joy, pain and sorrow, art and music; as poems like 'Childe Roland, 'Abt Vogler, 'Evelyn Hope, 'The Worst of It, 'Pictor Ignotus, 'The Lost Leader, 'Home Thoughts from Abroad, 'Old Pictures in Florence, 'Herve Riel, 'A Householder, 'Fears and Scruples, come tumbling into one's memory, one over another we are tempted to employ the language of hyperbole, and to answer the question 'Will Browning die? by exclaiming, 'Yes; when Niagara stops. In him indeed we can
Robert Browning's "Abt Vogler," passing through his eyes. This power of painting the portrait of an emotion, of depicting by the features a deep and powerful but tranquil moment of the inner life, must have been possessed by Giorgione in an eminent degree. We find it again in the so-called "Begrüssung" of the Dresden Gallery.
Faith, victor over loss, in Abt Vogler, is victor over temporal decay in Rabbi Ben Ezra. The poem is the song of triumph of devout old age.
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