But, beyond the protest, the two great points in
the second part of the poem are, first, that, when he
recovers from his madness, it is to a life as healthy,
though not as happy as when Maud lived and he
loved her, that the man awakens, not to the morbid
state of the earlier time ; and, second, that England
too has been awakened from her self-centred worldly
condition into a truer and nobler state of heart, and
that by the same means as first saved the man — that
is, by throwing her thoughts and interests outside
herself into some other nation and its life. How is it
that the man, though once more stricken down by
grief — grief, too, full of terror and- bitter regret — yet
keeps the strength and the health of soul that happi-
ness had brought him ? Did he take refuge in
philosophy — in general arguments concerning what is
worthy of man, and due from man ? It was not so.
There are not many men who can be saved by general
considerations. This man was saved by a person, and
the love of a person, in the first instance ; he is saved
by that person and that love stilL It is wonderful to
think how nearly all that is done upon men is done by
the influence of some personal being, and how, never-
theless, men are perpetually wandering away from the
person who can help and save them to the system, the



VII THE PRINCESS" AND "MAUD" 95

creed, the philosophy that cannot. The deepest Christian
teaching is that not by belief in any abstract doctrine,
however true, but by contact with a Person men are
saved.
