, of intellect against brute force.
"Brute force shall not rule Florence." Even so, it is only after
conflict and fluctuation that he decides to allow Luria's trial to take
its course. Puccio, again, the former general of Florence, superseded by
Luria, and now serving under his command, turns out not quite the "pale
discontented man" whom Browning originally designed and whom such a
situation was no doubt calculated to produce. Instead of a Cassius,
enviously scowling at the greatness of his former comrade, Caesar, we
have one whose generous admiration for the alien set over him struggles
hard, and not unsuccessfully, with natural resentment. In keeping with
such company is the noble Pisan general, who vies with Luria in
generosity and twice intervenes decisively to save him from the
Florentine attack. Even Domizia, the "panther" lady who comes to the
camp burning for vengeance upon Florence for the death of her kinsmen,
and hoping to attain it by embroiling him with the city, finally emerges
as his lover. But in Domizia he confessedly failed. The correspondence
with Miss Barrett stole the vitality from all mere imaginary women; "the
panther would not be tamed." Her hatred and her love alike merely beat
the air. With all her volubility, she is almost as little in place in
the economy of the drama as in that of the camp; her "wild mass of rage"
has the air of being a valued property which she manages and exhibits,
not an impelling and consuming fire. The more potent passion of Luria
and his lieutenant Husain is more adequately rendered, though "the
simple Moorish instinct" in them is made to accomplish startling feats
in European subtlety. The East with its gift of "feeling" comes once
more, as in the _Druses_, into tragic contact with the North and its
gift of "thought"; but it is to the feeling East and not to thinking
North that we owe the clear analysis and exposition of the contrast.
Luria has indeed, like Djabal, assimilated just so much of European
culture as makes its infusion fatal to him: he suffers the doom of the
lesser race

"Which when it apes the greater is forgone."

But the noblest quality of the lesser race flashes forth at the close
when he takes his life, not in defiance, nor in despair, but as a last
act of passionate fidelity to Florence. This is conceived with a
refinement of moral imagination too subtle perhaps for appreciation on
the stage; but of the tragic power and pathos of the concepti