In _Bishop Blougram's Apology_ we are afforded yet another striking illustration of Browning's methods of working by means of dramatic machinery. On some occasions we have already found him relying on the arguments of his imaginary soliloquists to support an apparently favourite theory, on others we have noticed him employing these arguments to expose the weak points of a system of which he personally disapproves. More rarely two conflicting theories are placed side by side, the decision as to the author's own relation to either being left to the judgment of the reader. Thus with the Bishop and the Journalist of the present instance--who may assert with confidence to which side Browning's sympathies incline? How are we to judge of his actual feelings in the case? Would he hold up to severer opprobrium the representative of honest scepticism or the advocate of opportunism? Does he intend us to accept the scepticism of the Journalist as genuine, the justification of the Bishop as offered in entire good faith? Do his sympathies indeed belong wholly to either side? To hold that he necessarily sets forth a direct expression of his own opinions is to misunderstand the spirit in which he is accustomed to approach his subject. As well believe Caliban to give utterance to his conception of a Supreme Being as the personification of irresponsible and capricious power; and Cleon to estimate his recognition of Christianity as "a doctrine to be held by no sane man." This and the two foregoing dramatic poems have been chosen as leading step by step from the earlier and cruder forms of religious belief, to the later and more complex: before approaching the debatable ground of _Christmas Eve and Easter Day_, and the unquestionably personal expression of feeling in _La Saisiaz_. A wide gulf seemed indeed, at first sight, to be fixed between Caliban and Cleon, but yet wider is the actually existent distance dividing Cleon from Blougram. Less marked the change in outward circumstances, the inherent difference becomes the more striking. The beauties of Greek art and culture are but replaced by the nineteenth century luxury surrounding a dignitary of the Roman Catholic Church. "Greek busts, Venetian paintings, Roman walls, and English books ... bound in gold"; the central figures, the Bishop and his companion dallying with the pleasures of the table, discoursing of momentous truths over the wine and olives. Surely the distance between this and Cleon is less to traverse than that between the Greek, surrounded by the proofs of the munificence of Protus, and Caliban revelling in his mire. The superficial difference less, the inherent difference so wide that the idea at first suggested itself of taking as an intermediate and connecting link the poem immediately preceding this in the collected edition of the works, _The Bishop orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church_. On more mature consideration it would seem, however, that the prelate of the nineteenth