The region of untrammelled, unclouded passion, of spiritual intuition, and of those great words from heaven, which pierce “even to the dividing asunder of the joints and marrow,” is, for Browning’s imagination, the East.  The nations of the West—­and, before all others, the Italian race—­are those of a subtly developed intelligence.  The worldly art of a Church-man, ingenuities of theology having aided in refining ingenuities of worldliness, is perhaps the finest exemplar of unalloyed western brain-craft.  But Italy is also a land of passion; and therefore at once, for its ardours of the heart—­seen not in love alone but in carven capital and on frescoed wall—­and for its casuistries of intellect, Browning looks to Italy for the material best fitted to his artistry.  Between that group of personages whom we may call his characters of passion and that group made up of his characters of intelligence, lie certain figures of peculiar interest, by birth and inheritance children of the East, and by culture partakers, in a greater or a less degree, of the characteristics of the West—­a Djabal, with his Oriental heart entangled by Prankish tricks of sophistry; a Luria, whose Moorish passion is enthralled by the fascination of Florentine intellect, and who can make a return upon himself with a half-painful western self-consciousness.

Loyalties, devotions, to a person, to a cause, to an ideal, and the sacrifice of individual advantages, worldly prosperity, temporal successes to these—­such, stated in a broad and general way, is the theme of special 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.