and when the old man, baffled and exasperated, is brought before him and imperiously demands the crown, he puts it upon his father's head. Neither character is drawn with the power of Strafford, but the play is largely built upon the same contrasts between personal devotion and political expediency, the untutored idealism of youth and the ruses or rigidity of age. This was a type of dramatic action which Browning imagined with peculiar power and insight, for it bodied forth a contrast between contending elements of his own nature. Towards this type all his drama tended to gravitate. In _The Return of the Druses_ Browning's native bent can be more freely studied, for history has contributed only the general situation. His turn for curious and far-fetched incident is nowhere better illustrated than in this tangled intrigue carried on between Frankish Hospitallers, Venetians, and Druses of Lebanon in a lonely island of the Aegean where none of the three are at home. A political revolution--the revolt of the Druses against their Frankish lords--provides the outer momentum of the action; but the central interest is concentrated upon a "Soul's tragedy," in which the conflict of races goes on within the perplexed and paralysed bosom of a single man. Djabal, the Druse patriot brought up in Brittany, analyses his own character with the merciless self-consciousness of Browning himself: "I with my Arab instinct--thwarted ever By my Frank policy, and with in turn My Frank brain thwarted by my Arab heart-- While these remained in equipoise, I lived-- Nothing; had either been predominant, As a Frank schemer or an Arab mystic I had been something." The conflict between policy and devotion is now transferred to the arena of a single breast, where its nature is somewhat too clearly understood and formulated. The "Frank schemer" conceives the plan of turning the Druse superstition to account by posing as an incarnation of their Founder. But the "Arab mystic" is too near sharing the belief to act his part with ease, and while he is still paltering the devoted Anael slays the Prefect. The play is thenceforth occupied, ostensibly, with the efforts of the Christian authorities to discover and punish the murderers. Its real subject is the subtle changes wrought in Djabal and Anael by their gradual transition from the relation of prophet and devotee to that of lovers. Her passion, even before he comes to share it, has begun to sap the security of his false pretensions: he longs, not at first to disavow them, but to make them true: he will be the prophetic helper of his people in very deed. To the outer world he maintains his claim with undiminished boldness and complete success; but the inner supports are gradually giving way, Arab mystic and Frank schemer lose their hold, and "A third and better nature rises up, My mere man's nature."