ll rest on Colombe if she gives up her duchy;
not even that the pang at doing so will be over-acute or entirely
unrelieved. All the interest centres in the purely personal and
psychological bearings of the act. It is perhaps a consequence of this
that the style is somewhat different from that of any previous play. Any
one who notices the stage directions will see that the persons of the
drama frequently speak "after a pause." The language which they use is,
naturally enough, more deliberate and reflective, the lines are slower
and more weighty, than would be appropriate amid the breathless action
of _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_ or _The Return of the Druses_. A certain
fiery quality, a thrilling, heart-stirred and heart-stirring tone, which
we find in these is wanting; but the calm sweep of the action is carried
onward by a verse whose large harmonies almost recall _Paracelsus_.

Colombe, the true heroine of the play named after her is, if not "the
completest full-length portrait of a woman that Browning has drawn,"
certainly one of the sweetest and most stable. Her character develops
during the course of the play; as she herself says,

"This is indeed my birthday--soul and body,
Its hours have done on me the work of years--"

and it leaves her a nobler and stronger, yet not less charming woman
than it found her. Hitherto she has been a mere "play-queen," shut in
from action, shut in from facts and the world, and caring only to be gay
and amused. But now, at the first and yet final trial, she is proved
and found to be of noble metal. The gay girlishness of the young
Duchess, her joyous and generous light heart; her womanliness, her
earnestness, her clear, deep, noble nature, attract us from her first
words, and leave us, after the hour we have spent in her presence, with
a memory like that of some woman whom we have met, for an hour or a
moment, in the world or in books.

Berthold, the weary and unsatisfied conqueror, is a singularly
unconventional figure. He is a man of action, with some of the
sympathies of the scholar and the lover; resolute in the attainment of
ends which he sees to be, in themselves, vulgar; his ambition rather an
instinct than something to be pursued for itself, and his soul too
keenly aware of the joys and interests he foregoes, to be quite
satisfied or content with his lot and conduct. The grave courtesy of his
speech to Colombe, his somewhat condescending but not unfriendly tone
wi