ecial interest to Browning in his dramas. These loyalties may
be well and wisely fixed, or they may contain a portion of error and
illusion. But in either case they furnish a test of manly and womanly
virtue. With a woman the test is often proposed by love--by love as set
over against ease, or high station, or the pride of power. Colombe of
Ravestein is offered on the one hand the restoration of her forfeited
Duchy, the prospective rank of Empress and partnership with a man, who,
if he cannot give love, is yet no ignoble wooer, a man of honour, of
intellect, and of high ambition; on the other hand pleads the advocate
of Cleves, a nameless provincial, past his days of youth, lean and
somewhat worn, and burdened with the griefs and wrongs of his townsfolk.
Mere largeness in a life is something, is much; but the quality of a
life is more. Valence has set the cause of his fellow-citizens above
himself; he has made the heart of the Duchess for the first time thrill
in sympathy with the life of her people; he has placed his loyalty to
her far above his own hopes of happiness; he has urged his rival's
claims with unfaltering fidelity. It is not with any backward glances
of regret, any half-doubts, prudent reserves, or condescending
qualifications that Colombe gives herself to the advocate of the poor.
She, in her youth and beauty, has been happy during her year of idlesse
as play-Duchess of Juliers; she is happier now as she abandons the court
and, sure in her grave choice, turns with a light and joyous laugh to
welcome the birthday gift of freedom and of love that has so
unexpectedly come to her. Having once made her election, Colombe can
throw away the world as gaily as in some girlish frolic she might toss
aside a rose.

The loyalty of men, their supreme devotion and their test may, as with
women, spring from the passion of love; but other tests than this are
often proposed to them. With King Charles of Sardinia it is duty to his
people that summons him, from those modest and tranquil ways of life of
which he dreamed, to the cares and toils of the crown. He has strength
to accept without faltering the burden that is laid upon him. And if he
falters at the last, and would resign to his father, who reclaims it,
the crown which God alone should have removed, shall we assert
confidently that Browning's dramatic instinct has erred? The pity of
it--that his great father, daring in battle, profound in policy, should
stand before h