At all these points Browning differed from Tennyson. He never displayed a special patriotism. On the contrary, he is more Italian than English, and he is more quick to see and sympathise with the national characteristics of Spain or France or Germany, than he is with those of England. No insular feeling prevented him from being just to foreigners, or from having a keen pleasure in writing about them. _Strafford_ is the only play he wrote on an English subject, and it is rather a study of a character which might find its place in any aristocracy than of an English character. Even Pym and Hampden fail to be truly English, and it would have been difficult for any one but Browning to take their eminent English elements out of them. _Paracelsus_ and _Sordello_ belong to Germany and Italy, and there are scarcely three poems in the whole of the seven numbers of the _Bells and Pomegranates_ which even refer to England. Italy is there, and chiefly Italy. In _De Gustibus_ he contrasts himself with his friend who loves England: Your ghost will walk, you lover of trees, (If our loves remain) In an English lane By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies. * * * What I love best in all the world Is a castle, precipice-encurled, In a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine. "Look for me, old fellow of mine, if I get out of the grave, in a seaside house in South Italy," and he describes the place and folk he loves, and ends: Open my heart and you will see Graved inside of it, "Italy." Such lovers old are I and she: So it always was, so shall ever be! It is a poem written out of his very heart.