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.